[NCLUG] Ousting Exchange

[Chad Perrin]

On Tue, Apr 25, 2006 at 06:33:17AM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > Sean Reifschneider wrote:
> > In the "real world", though, where the pointy-haired bosses don't have
> > everyone's family jewels in a vice 24/7, it's really not that big a
> > deal.  In other words, it's technically not bad, but when bureaucrats
> > get involved I can definitely see it becoming an issue.
> 
> Everyone will have different ideas what "real world" means.  But let
> me assure you that large companes such as the one I work for do not
> like things changing outside of their control.  They like to do things
> on their own schedule.  Security updates are one of those things.
> Therefore backports of security fixes only without new features are
> the general rule.

That was pretty much my point.

In any case, I put "real world" in quotes and followed it with a
description of what it omitted specifically because I wanted to ensure
the reader knew what definition of "real world" I intended.

This sort of thing is, in fact, one of the reasons I think Debian is
better suited to the enterprise than RHEL in some ways.  One can settle
into a given set of software versions for the long haul, without
short-term cycle of upgrades that is part of the Red Hat and SuSE
"culture", with the only software updates being for security purposes.
Debian Stable's long release cycle, security-only updates, and
comfortable "grace period" after a new Stable version roll-out add up to
a generally pretty friendly distribution when you need to avoid high
administrative overhead, high likelihood of glitches, and constant
fighting with the pointy-haired bosses over whether or not a version
upgrade is "really necessary".

-- 
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"The measure on a man's real character is what he would do
if he knew he would never be found out." - Thomas McCauley