I have been using SuSE on my desktop for 4 years now, as of its version 6.4.
In the four years I upgraded my system two times:
- the first time because of a hdd failure
- the second time I had to upgrade in order to be able to give the best support to some guys who had a newer version of SuSE.

I never had to upgrade because of a partial or complete failure of the SuSE system, as it never happened.

I've found that the key to a long lasting, stable system is to know exactly what's installed. When you install by source, make sure you use checkinstall or a distribution specific equivilant. The best way to bork a system is to mess up the library structure. If you get multiple versions of libraries installed, you run into problems as well.

I find that Slackware's package manager makes it very easy to keep track of what there is and isn't. You can add/remove programs without breaking package manager dependencies. With RPM, you can't uninstall, then install a different version of a library without using --force or --nodeps flags which can bork the RPM dependancy database. It's crazy. Makes life hard!

When you tinker with new programs, also realize that you oftentimes don't have to use 'make install' in order to try the program. Keep the app in its little self contained area and run the compiled executable with ./executablename. If you like it, run make install or checkinstall. This helps keep system kludge to a minimum.

Don't go upgrade crazy. If a new app has features you want, sure -- go ahead and grab it. By all means, grab security updates and patches. However, don't just upgrade to upgrade. I'm in the crowd that likes to be running the latest stable version of just about everything. Maybe I should follow my own advice, but I haven't had stability problems yet. :)

And don't run as root!

--Shade

I run FC3, about 4 months now, re-installed 2 times to repartition disks, only locks up when I force it to. runs great, but misses alot, LIKE MP3 SUPPORT *hello, fedora developers, fix this please?!*


Still 99999999999999999999999999999999999999999 times better than microsuck.

MS needs rebuilds just to work, at least linux functions


anyway, rebuild and reconfiguration is a 1-day process at the max.

Still learining.........:study:

First 3 months I've been reinstalling my Slackware very often, because I was failing in kernel recompiling... until I got it running.
I've reinstalled it today because I wanted to "convert" all my Ext3 partitions to ReiserFS3.6. I've succeeded, now I don't know when I will want to change smth in the system - everything's keep working just fine.