[sf-lug] updates Re: SF-LUG Sunday March 3, 2019 meeting notice

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Bobbie Sellers (bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com):

> Yes to personal users/volunteer administrators it may seem bizarre but
> to business users it seems like a good way to save time and thus
> money.  We see that business users are the slowest to adopt new
> versions of that ever colorful Microsoft Program launcher.  Some are
> still using XP and hated to give up 95.

Bobbie, you may not know that I'm a 33-year veteran of the computer
software and hardware industries, and had a longtime WAN/LAN
consultancy.

What you say is indeed widely believed in business but not actually true
_even_ in proprietary software environments, but that's not the point
here and we needn't spend time discussing that.  The point is that it's
absolutely and very obviously not the case in _open source OSes_.  There
is simply no benefit to running a ten-year-old Linux distribution.
Also, if as seems likely you need to install and run on hardware
manufactured within this decade, it probably won't even successfully
install (other than in a VM environment, if you're desperate enough).

Also, you should be aware that business users in general have a hardware
upgrade cycle that EOLs hardware after it's about five years old.
That's why the asset depreciation schedules (such as the IRS's MACRS
one) all assume five year asset lives.  (Before I was in IT, I was a
staff accountant for a living, and passed the CPA exam.)

When I say 'business users in general', I'm not denying the endless
edge-cases people can doubtless dredge up, so I'd rather not hear about
Bob's Pet Obedience School and Taxidermy Shop that still runs its
general ledger on an IBM Personal Computer XT, thankyouverymuch. ;->

> As for me I run a rolling release and am up to Linux 4.20.13
> yesterday.  And if you want to split hairs, the base of the system is
> from 2017.03 if not earlier.

If it's a rolling release, then there's probably roughly nothing left
from 2017.  But you be the judge.

> Gnome 3+ is now tied to systemd by the way, not that I ever
> thought it was what I wanted to run.

GNOME3 is the very _epitome_ of what's tied to systemd.