[conspire] Sat, 1/10 Installfest/RSVP

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Nick Moffitt (nick at zork.net):

> I don't consider it particularly foolish to want an OS with a fixed ABI
> for a few years that still gets security updates. 

A "fixed ABI" is primarily a convenience for binary-only proprietary
application code that you intend to keep around for ages and not
upgrade.  (Which makes me wonder why _you_ would particularly seek a
stable binary userspace interface, by the way.)

On all of my production machines, I'm happiest if I'm able to keep them
incrementally upgraded on an ongoing basis, which in my experience
(given a suitable Linux distribution, e.g., Debian testing/unstable)
leads to the fewest and least serious problems overall. In other words,
far from balking at "upgrading every six months", my strong preference
is to upgrade weekly or better.

> When you manage hundreds of servers, upgrading (even in apt-based
> distros!) can be a chore that gets in the way of real work.

Well, not when they're on Debian.  You may recall that VA linux had no
problem running the corporpate desktop system (not servers, but they
could have deployed the system to servers, too) using Debian packages
pushed out nightly via rsync and cron.