like not doing anything, just a spare laptop in case i ever need one, what if i use it years after i installed debian on it?? i would have to update like 300 packages and would take a lot??
You are not forced to update it.
it is absolutely recommended to keep any system that has access to the internet up to date. i don’t know why people keep saying it isn’t
even if you did, stable shouldn’t break itself regardless of how far out-of-date it is, nor will it upgrade to the next release without a little bit of hoop jumping first.
No, it’s not allowed. The police are already on the way for thought crimes against updating.
The thing is… The upgrade path degrades. Once one is 3 or more major versions behind, upgrading becomes technically challenging. (I have done this a few times…) It is better to just reinstall.
That said, a Debian system that works won’t just stop working. My Raspberry Pi 2 has no issues since the initial install.
Professionally, it is better to have a fast recovery path. PXE boot, Debian preseed, a config management system (Ansible, Puppet, etc) and local caches and you can be set in 10 minutes. (After years of setting all of that up.)
I had laptop running Ubuntu 16.04, which was running for 2273 days without reboots or anything. It was located in safe place so not even security updates were installed during that time. And it was still completely fine after all these days (little bit over 6 years). It was finally shut down when there was electricity break, and its battery failed, and I decided that it was time to retire it.
There of course were tons of updates available then, but no one forces you to install them. and in Debian system instead of Ubuntu, there will be lot less, their release policy is much stricter.
My record is 4 years without update. I had to upgrade every version instead of jumping directly to the latest because I read this is how it is done.
This worked for Debian flawlessly. Another Laptop with Arch Linux died after updating a 2 years old system.
Yeah, but it’s a well known, well hidden fact, that Arch users are the beta testers of packages before real distros includes them…
We don’t actually use Arch, it’s a testing environment.
But we need those testers you know… So…
GO ARCH GO best distro evar!!
Hehe…
Hypothetically, as long as you did your own feature freeze and security patching (and testing, and testing, and testing), you could use Arch in production.
Should you?
You said something about security patching, testing and production. I thought I’d let you know that those three words don’t really go together.
“Production” implies a professional environment, where “testing” usually applies to the newly added features (and if you’re lucky, to past features or even regression tests against bugs) but to my knowledge never to security. Security patching does happen, but I’ve never seen it tested before applying it in professional environments. And finally, the one instance I know where security patches were tested before applying them was in a college course, that is: not a professional, productive context.
Should you?
Yes, please. I’m running out of stories to go with my popcorn. All I’ve got are the type that would go with a tub of comfort ice cream (or a strong drink, if that’s your poison).
