Re: Linux upgrade.

On Wed, 25 Dec 2024, 186282@ud0s4.net wrote:

Same here + the company web server, but it only has two ports open to the net, so nothing to worry about there.
 Then I have my colleague who runs some hosting, and I actually have no idea what he runs. Since he is responsible, he gets free choice as long as it's not windows or kubernetes, and those rules he has followed.

>
 Linux is pretty damned secure - so keeping up with
 the very latest updates (unless it's a busy busy
 outward-facing server) is usually not so critical.
 Kernel 6.x has some added goodies over 4.x, but
 it's not THAT much "improved".

This mirrors my experiences. I've never had any break ins on my servers. This
has always been to limited exposure, rather than me being up to date with the
latest patches. Oh, and also due to the simplicity of what I hosted which means
the limited exposure above.

 Alas most of my stuff is Deb based, and WORM was
 NOT encouraging - too 'Canonical' now. DO have
 some Arch/Fedora based boxes though ... may just
 go straight Fedora for awhile ........
  DID love OpenSUSE - but now it's kinda trapped in
 the IBM/RHEL vortex. Don't wanna be an unpaid
 beta-tester for IBM.

 Yes, opensuse has served me well for at least a decade if not more. But I've heard rumours they will stop with the leap distribution and do some kind of rootless, or rolling release stuff _only_. I do not like it! I want stability and not sand shifting under my feet.

>
 There's much to be said for solid 'releases'.

Amen!

 "Rolling" WORKS of course, but it subtly alters the
 landscape over short time-scales. Updates also use
 a lot of bandwidth - almost the entire distro - for
 even the smallest additions.
>
 DID get Tumbleweed to work on a Pi4 ... but it
 wasn't very snappy even using lighter desktops.

I tried to get opensuse to work on my radxa zero, but didn't work. I suspect
something needed to be changed or adapted with the image since the debian I used
in the end, had been massaged by the radxa team.

So if/when they disappear, I'm looking at FreeBSD to replace it, alternatively possibly debian or slckware. We'll see!

>
 FreeBSD ain't terrible. Depends on your needs however.
 One of my biggest gripes with the BSDs is that their
 drivers tend to be YEARS behind.

I imagine it should work fine on VM:s and a standard, older server. I tried it
on a 1 year old Asus laptop and it worked pretty ok.

 Despite bragging, never really got OpenBSD to install
 super-clean. It's also kinda too security anal. For
 SOME applications though that may be good.
>
 DragonFly is OK ... forked from Free4 ... has its own
 odd file system however.
>
 You MIGHT want to look at OpenIndiana. Again a bit
 odd, but it works.

Woulnd't that be even further behind than FreeBSD?

 In any case, Linux is NOT the alpha and omega of *IX
 systems.

This is the truth!