this post was submitted on 12 May 2025
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Debian - The universal operating system

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[–] [email protected] -3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Couching this as "Microsoft wants you to buy a new computer" doesn't help. They don't sell computers, they do sell an OS for commercial use.

Needing to upgrade is a decision of the individual use-case. If we didn't have the simplistic mantra of "you must always upgrade to the latest version" of software, and instead had conversations about when/why to upgrade, this would be a lot easier to manage.

Businesses must upgrade, in part because of cyber insurance that requires it, and support contracts with vendors and MS.

Home users are a completely different case. The assumption that upgrading an OS is necessary for security is just that - an assumption. After 35+ years in IT, I've had 100x more outages caused by software uogrades/changes than by malware/viruses/security flaws. In fact, I've never had a business outage caused by not being on the latest version of something, nearly all were cause by upgrades or changes intentionally made by IT (that is, myself or my peers), and properly registered with Change Management. The rest were changes not registered, including hardware failures or random software issues, etc.

Change Management exists because change is hard, now imagine the costs associated with the changes induced by upgrading an OS every few years. The testing we do on the latest OS before we deploy is extensive - we have labs that this is largely their remit (along with testing app changes/deployments on the current config).

So let's stop contributing to the black hole of constant upgrades, and start clarifying that upgrades for anything need to be considered in context.

Go ahead and downvote, but at least put forth a reasonable argument why upgrading shouldn't be a conversation in the context of the device/user/software/use-case.

For example, I have machines that perform one task - convert dvd's and other media. They have an internet connection only for apps that collect metadata, they only run with limited user accounts, the admin accounts are unique, with unique passwords, and sit on their own VLANS with connectivity only for RDP (which requires a cert from the local machines). Files are transferred using Syncthing (so I don't have to do anything and SMB sharing isn't required or permitted I to the VLAN). Make an argument why I should regularly update anything on these machines.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

They don't sell computers

You seem to have written a whole lot of words about it for someone who doesn't know that Microsoft has been telling people to buy new computers.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Like they're not selling licenses with those new computers.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 weeks ago