Well, it seems it's new release time, SuSE's new offering will be out in a week or 3 and I'm sure RedHat and Mandrake can't be too far behind.

I'm sitting here thinking about how perfect my setup is right now thinking I may just stick with this for at least a year and just update as I need. SuSE 8.2 was pretty good out of the box, but it still needed some major work to get it the way I like it. But I have to say I'm really happy with what I have right now.

I started over a year ago with RH 7.3 and I have been on the update/distro-swiching bandwagon for the past year to get to this point. I feel tho that there were alot of big changes in DE's and XF86 and numerous 2.4 kernel updates and so the updates were worth the effort, time, and $ in my opinion.

My question is this (yes there's a friggin question )

Are you eager to upgrade and why. Is it a software issue, hardware issue, addicted to upgrading, can't leave well enough alone, have too much time on your hands, the medication doesn't seem to be working, you need to have the latest and greatest. What is it? What do you need? What are you looking for? or are you like me.... content (as soon as I get OpenOffice 1.1... and the new Enlightenment ... uh and ...)

Do you think linux users are obsessive compulsive in regard to updating. I see people clamoring for KDE 3.1.4 and then bitchin' because it's buggier than 3.1.3 . I'm still using 3.1.1 and it works just fine. Certainly not bad enough to warrant a 36 hour download at 56Kbps. If linux is so great, why are we in such a rush to change what we have?

I realize that the easy answer at this point will be the new kernel, but if the next releases don't have the new kernel (such is the case with SuSE - tho I think it may be an option) will you be upgrading anyway?

Well that's all.

Since most programs are generally working fine for me, I am just waiting to see some 2.6 kernel offerings and see what other changes that will bring about.

I'm usually bad at updating. I only update at times when I'm using a service that has a security patch, etc. I was bored at work and updated just about everything I could on my Slackware 8.0 machine... yes I said Slackware 8.0. Now I wouldn't even consider it 8.0, more like Slackware-Current machine.

Am I obsessed with updating, nope, if it works, I usually keep it around for a very long time. When I used mainly Windows, I was still on 95 with some of my machines when most were installing ME and 2000.

However, if I were to install Redhat right now, I'd probably install 7.3. I've got an old p166 still running 6.2, still the greatest Redhat release to date...

Thanks Franklin for your thoughts Double secret K+arma points and afferos.. whatever those are. Under your "ineffective medication" category you might add something like "Ooops I may have messed with my system too much and I will feel much better when this learning project is replaced with a nice clean install." Irrational as hell.. like an install can only take so many little side projects before it blows up.. hmm do I really want to tweak that nvidia thingy to show BOTH monitor and TV so I'm not running back and forth with every mouse move to start a movie in the next room?

But I do think that a good time to reinstall is just after you've decided about what you want the computer to do, considering the setup trouble of coarse
If Slack 9.1 keeps getting good reviews I'll probably do a clean install from there and swaret from then on. And have nicely-arranged packages or at least consistent source directories. And a real firewall.. Scout's honor.

For a while I was an upgrade/switching junky. Too much time, too many machines, and way too much to learn... heck at one time I think I had every major distro running at once.

I had a penta-boot.

Now I'm down to just the essentials: Slackware, OpenBSD, Gentoo, and that damn RedHat machine a friend has quartered here.

I don't really care about uptimes, so most of the house is running 2.4.22, with a -ac, -xfs, -lq, -rc or -pre somewhere around it.

I'm interested in using swaret next... although my main Slack machine is 160Gb spread over software raid 5 and that makes me a little leary of the idea...

Cheers,

Finegan

I'll probably upgrade... too much time on my hands and the medication isn't quite working...
Heard some rumor that there isn't going to be a Redhat 10... They are going to split the home/business areas. Fedora for home and Redhat Enterprise or some other name for businesses (free vs paying)
found this--> http://fedora.redhat.com/

I'm just sick of dealing with minutia. Having all those distros on one box at the same time was a great way to learn. By the time I started messing with slack I had just about had it with figuring out which config is were in which distro.... It was just time to pick one and make it perfect.

Now I kinda feel the same way about upgrades. It simply ain't worth the time and effort unless there is some big change. Otherwise it's just a huge waste of time that could be better spent learning to use the 4 gigs of software and languages that came with SuSE.

One thing I would really love to see is SuSE incorporate Apt into the YaST2 system. I know apt is available, but seemless integration as a YaST2 module would be a killer tool. I don't know much about it, but it seems to me that all the pieces are there. I guess SuSE would then have to GPL YaST so it probably won't happen. I personally think that would seriously increase thier sales making the loss of YaST as IP worthwhile.

Here is my philosophy on updating software:

Proprietary Software: They make you update for new additions, options, usually doesn't seem like security updates or patches but just an easy way to make money by adding crap your never going to use most of the time. Then they make it so the newer version creates the files so they aren't compatible with the older versions, so person A that started out with version 2.0 creates a file to person B with version 1.0, but now person B has to upgrade to version 2.0 just to be compatible with all those using the newer version. Hmm.. who's the biggest culprit I've see who does this, Microsoft with Office.

Open Source Software: Usually has updates for security reasons or they just overall improving the software. Since most of its freely given out or you can download, they have no reason to update on the sole purposes of making money off of it.

Like again, I get my systems going good, I keep them that way. Why download a new kernel for my machine when the existing one works flawlessly, supports all my hardware.. etc. Until there is a security patch, it stays the same and I get more done by not wasting all my time just updating software, etc.