The Problem with End of Life Linux Distributions

[@Ashleyyyyy666]

this is why Windows 10 has forced updates. to combat this exact issue. it's annoying but you need it otherwise you get a situation like this.

[@armorgeddon]

No, Microsoft does it to keep Windows' spyware components up to date. The forced Windows updates also cause as many issues as there would be when systems were outdated, maybe even more.

[@orcaflotta7867]

And Win10 updates aren't even important but mostly only for Microsoft's benefit. It's what I hear. Can't say exactly becoz not a single line of code produced in or for Redmond has touched any of my machines since late 2013. So the whole Win universe has faded away into meaninglessness ... plopp! ^.^

[@Ashleyyyyy666]

@@armorgeddon that’s not true lol

[@Ashleyyyyy666]

@@orcaflotta7867 security updates are for Microsoft’s benefit?

[@orcaflotta7867]

@@Ashleyyyyy666 Security updates are a lie. Are you a gullible American to believe in the corps' BS? You want security updates - install Linux and become an instantly happy penguin!

[@tommihommi1]

This is a problem with scheduled release distros in General, it encourages people to put off updates because updates are actual work that takes attention. Rolling release distros have updates that usually just work and don't take any significant time or attention, so people actually update more or less daily.

[@orcaflotta7867]

Even 3, 4 or a dozen times daily if need be. It's painless and takes mere seconds. Dunno why all the "super duper rock solid stable" systems have such problems. :|

[@yramagicman675]

@@orcaflotta7867 part of the issue is the definition of stable. Stable has 2 meanings in software, and once I understood this, it was easier to go rolling. Stable means either it doesn't crash, or it doesn't change. Debian is stable in that it never changes. Debian buster will always have the same major versions of software it shipped with. The minor version will change, but minor versions are rarely breaking changes. Arch is stable in that it doesn't crash. It gets the newest hotness when possible, so it's not debian stable, but it's still stable in the important sense that it doesn't crash. The stable distros end up with issues specifically because of this model. It's much easier to update a couple dozen packages without breaking things (the rolling model) than it is to update your entire base system and any user land package (the stable model) .

[@sablesanctum]

Mum and dad never update although I've told them to and showed them how multiple times. It just isn't something they think to do, I guess because it's challenging enough to do their banking and such.

[@mikaelrask]

if they run linux mint you can enable automatic update in linux mint through the update manager, could be a solution for them.

[@armorgeddon]

If it works for them it's perfectly fine since it sounds like they couldn't help themselves in case an update would go wrong.

[@sablesanctum]

@@mikaelrask Great tip, thanks. I'll consider installing Mint for them next time.

[@sablesanctum]

@@armorgeddon I'd reinstall for them in that case. They don't use their computers for much else than mail, bank and facebook. Wouldn't be much to backup. It's the security updates that don't get installed that concerns me somewhat.

[@drishalballaney]

@@mikaelrask the issue is, what if they shut down when the updates are installing?

[@peterjansen4826]

You can't really lose data because of an upgrade going wrong, insert a USB-stick with a live-distro on it and you get access to that data. Of course less tech-savvy users might lose access to their data until somebody explains that to them.

[@danielcoffman1022]

My aversion to upgrading to a newer LTS version is how it’s not safe enough to make the upgrade. Plus, I’m not a fan of having to do a fresh install. I forget configs I had and some software I wanted/needed. It’s all a HUGE decision.

[@yramagicman675]

I'm confused. I run a rolling distro and updating is almost an afterthought. What are you afraid of? I would assume that the process would be: 1. Backup your home directory. 2. Run update via apt or otherwise. 3. Check everything and restore home directory if necessary. Why is updating unsafe? I've never had an issue that wasn't caused by something I did to cause it. Also, if you're concerned about forgetting software it's not difficult to make a list of all software on your machine. `dpkg -l` will show you everything on your box. This can be saved to a file via `dpkg -l > ~/installed_pkgs.txt` (note: I don't even think you need sudo). Then it's a simple matter to write a script to go through and grab all the software you need. Forgetting configs isn't terribly difficult either. Linux is nice and saves everything in your home directory. Backing up that should catch all your configs. ~/.config, and ~/.local are the most likely places to store config data. Other directories in your home folder with a leading dot (.) may also be important, but software that follows the xdg standards should write to ~/.config specifically, with ~/.local being used for binaries, caches, and other files that are usually ephemeral. This all comes from a place of genuine confusion and a desire to help.

[@danielcoffman1022]

@@yramagicman675 it’s just what I’m used to is what I’m saying.

[@yramagicman675]

@@danielcoffman1022 Interesting. If this is server use I get it. Upgrading a server is always a hassle for various reasons. I tend to be a bit more cowboy with my personal machines. You might try running a rolling distro for personal use some time. All the FUD about them breaking is mostly just that, FUD. There are rare occasions where a rolling distro does break, but that's definitely the exception. For me, at least, running a rolling distro is actually easier than running a fixed release. The benefit of a rolling distro is that you get much more incremental updates, so any issues are much less severe, assuming you manage things correctly. At most, you have maybe 2 packages that aren't 100%, or maybe they need manual intervention. The biggest key with rolling distros is always update everything. Partial updates are a quick path to maximum pain. The other thing is to avoid software from outside the main repos if at all possible. Arch and Arch based distros are nice because of the AUR. OpenSuse tumbleweed is another solid rolling release, but the official repos can be a little slim on OpenSuse. I've heard good things about Solus, but I've never run it personally.

[@yramagicman675]

@Infinite Possibilities in my experience that's FUD. Arch has 3 outside of overusing the AUR thing that make people feel like updates break and every one of them is a small problem. 1. Outdated mirrors. This is easy, install reflector and set up a cron job to update your mirrors, or just run it periodically manually. 2. Packages that require manual intervention. Another easy one. Don't do unattended updates, and read the error messages. The error messages always tell you what's wrong and give you a good idea of how to proceed. 3. Outdated keyring. This is rare, but the solution is to update the keyring package in isolation, then update the whole system. With opensuse tumbleweed, it doesn't really matter in the first place. Updates on tumbleweed send down an entire snapshot of the distribution at a point in time. On average you are updating 100-500 packages, and updates are released once or twice a week. I almost never had a bad update on tumbleweed, but it is possible, and it's very very rare.

[@gbrendel]

lol, i like how you pointed out the fact that i am watching means that i probably keep my stuff up to date so why am i watching and why are you telling me? great video.

[@MrBiky]

I think those numbers are in part users who bought a laptop with Mint preinstalled (Asus and Acer offered some). Not forcing users to update means some users won't update, it's understandable, which is why some reminders are necessary, like the ones popping out in the middle of the screen on Ubuntu from time to time, or the ones in the notification bars in Fedora Workstation and Workstation KDE Spin. But can we trust the snap statistics? I'm asking because I don't have any idea about their methodology. Do they update the numbers every month, or do they just keep incrementing the numbers? I'm too lazy to web search it. Among those old distros using chromium, I see Ubuntu 19.10, 19.04 and 17.10. Are we sure people didn't upgrade from those? I doubt people stay with interim releases and I'm not sure if OEMs preinstall interim releases, I remember only seeing LTS (but I could be wrong).

[@giovanni6643]

Apparently some users don't understand the concept of updating software, given the disturbing amount of people that think things like turning the screen off and on reboots the computer, leaving their laptop near a power outlet will charge it, that wireless means it doesn't need any wires at all, and many others i wouldn't be surprised if that actually was the case with some users.

[@AidanGeeMedia]

Really insightful video, thank you as always!

[@pcfabris]

I just upgraded mint yesterday via update manager.

[@mspeter97]

Windows 10 forced updates for this very reason. Now Chrome OS has a very robust update system, it just downloads it and tells you that you'd need to restart and we're done, no user action is required at all, which is very nice. The better way to handle system updates may just be having the system download and prepares the updates and then wait for the user to shutdown or restart the machine

[@drishalballaney]

thats how fedora also does updates

[@tealc6218]

Reason not to update old axiom: if it's not broke don't fix it. I've had to trouble shoot programs in the past after an update, so if I'm not going to have time to potentially trouble shoot something I might wait a bit....Now I'm not saying this is right, but it might explain people's reluctance

[@UnobtainableSilence]

After using arch linux I can see how how the debian based distros could be a little tricky to update for non savvy folks, pacman just works and is easy to use, apt is a tiny bit technical, you have to update and upgrade, you also need to clean it, I started with debian based distros and will be using mobian soon but I prefer the simplicity of arch. I'm not a hater, use what you want, just my perspective. Linux on my nerds.

[@armorgeddon]

Mint shouldn't care about how people run their systems. I'm sick about devices, operating systems, programs and even f****** websites telling me to update stuff. I'll udpate when there's a valid reason for my usecase (which differs from system to system) and not when panjandrum XY tells me to.

[@fawzanfawzi9993]

The reason why they tell you to update is because EOL Linux version is dangerous as they won't receive security updates anymore. Sure, you can choose not to update, it's your computer anyway. But if your Linux distro version has reached EOL, you should really update your system.

[@armorgeddon]

@@fawzanfawzi9993 No, not if the likeliness of something going wrong due to running an EOL software is basically zero which it is in many usecases.

[@tell1998]

My dad when I had him on Mint I always told him “you see that shield bottom right… if you see a blue dot click it and install updates… if you see a green check mark you’re good” month pass, I see the blue dot on he’s mint updater, then see it hasn’t been updated since I last installed it. People like my dad don’t pay attention to it, Idk if Mint has this now but they need a update notify when you boot or have it notify you every number of hours. My dad doesn’t shut his computer off at all so if he does run the update it won’t be applied until he shuts or restarts it.

[@mikaelrask]

you can enable automatic update in linux mint through the update manager, could be a solution for him.

[@ivailopetrov2827]

@@mikaelrask you can on any ubuntu iirc

[@jeremycheatham8811]

On Debian based I can see automatic updates being a nice idea but not like windows maybe write a function in apt to only install third party or top layered packages without user consent and make the kernel and system xorg and the like require direct user intervention and give them a bigger warning?

[@danstoian7721]

I have no idea if what I'm saying is totally non-sense. But, would a micro-Kernel, like Minix, proposed by Tanenbaum fix the updating issue? I mean I'm guessing it's have some sort of update service that could handle all in the background. But them I don't understand that. Maybe the problem could never be fixed at kernel level or such.

[@donvineyard8654]

Only so far... that would help a little with the kernel updates in pieces. But a lot of updates are the software, browsers, etc. But it is an old argument that has pros-cons both ways... even though some will rage at you for suggesting one is better than the other.

[@majorskies7091]

Hmm - I wounder over the lockdowns, businesses such as the magnitudes of airports for example have done a hardcore update on their systems which they otherwise can't do often ^^; I'm not sure about incentivising, but whenever I update my phone, I am excited to see a list of new features.

[@virtualizeeverything]

I being cheap have run into computers that just cant be upgraded 1 or 2 times in the last 15 years, Apple loves to do this. I know that Linux is often can fix the problem but alot of people dont have the knowledge to do an upgrade like this or the time to larn a new os and find new software.

[@drishalballaney]

wow the reactions to the linux mint post is quite varied..some people think this is an intrusion of privacy and others think this is good

[@MarloMitchell]

So there are no auto update mechanisms within these distros? regular people don't want to think about updates sadly. People hate on Microsoft for doing automatic updates but it is not all bad. Wish Linux community wasn't so harsh against automatic updates. Still hoping to use Linux as my daily driver but that day is not here as yet. I'll keep watching.

[@thomasa.243]

Yep, indeed. It makes it also easier for Microsoft because they only have a limited number of versions to support because you get all the updates anyway. It is a boon and a bane at the same time...

[@SkyFly19853]

Until those forced updates from Microsoft break your systems and delete your files... or even worse...

[@mikaelrask]

linux mint have the ability to automatically update your system but is not on by default.

[@SkyFly19853]

@Infinite Possibilities They broke my year old PC and deleted all my files... You might say all you want... but that does NOT change the fact which is true about their updates... Btw, they got rid of their update testing team and replaced with us ( the free testing group ) since they don't do hold their responsibilities... There you have it...

[@donvineyard8654]

Linux Mint is now talking about AUTO-UPDATES. It is the #1 reason I left Windows. Let me enlighten you on the reason people might not update ALL the FREAKIN' time. 1. Mint 20 doesn't support 32 bit anymore. A BIG one for a lot of people who specifically chose Linux to run on older computers. 2. My software currently runs just the way I like it. I remember upgrading and the whole OS broke and had to be reinstalled. 3. I don't like being FORCED to update. I left Windows for that reason. I'll ditch Mint if they do. This is NOT a minor issue to me. 4. Some packages like browsers are BIG. I have slow internet and so I wait on browsers. 5. I update some things much less often, because the download usually fails for those large ones. I update them at NIGHT because it takes most of the night. 6. No I can't get faster internet where I am at. Not yet. Hurry up Elon. That is why I update in pieces and NOT all at once. 7. I hate Steams forced updates. So much, sometimes I disconnect my wifi connection. Otherwise it might be a couple hours before I can play a game. BTW. I am on 19.3 and up to date. My choice.

[@Leahi84]

I have to say, I'm surprised that there would be so many people using EOL Linux distributions. I would have thought people using Linux would stay on top of things like that. Likewise, I thought this would be a problem only for Windows and maybe Mac users. Fascinating.

[@DannyMexen9]

Imagine someone's grandmother has an old laptop and her granddaughter installs Mint on it and shows how she can open her browser. That's it. That's all grandmother knows.

[@peterjansen4826]

Respectfully, the problem is that most of us still use non-rolling distros.

[@serge5046]

People on rolling release distributions are in a worse scenario if they don't update their system frequently. The probability they'll get a broken system when they do the update is higher than for people doing the same on a fixed release distribution !

[@peterjansen4826]

@@serge5046 Which is why these people make a habit of updating almost every week.

[@giovanni6643]

@@peterjansen4826 And which is why if Im looking at installing linux on any machine i will avoid rolling distributions like the plague.

[@jakubbuszko3089]

The only problem was with my 32 bit Hardware we use Debian Mint distributions this time ...

[@draoi99]

My brother is still using Windows 7.

[@Khyree_Holmes]

I ditched my old Linux Mint 18.3 for Linux Mint 20.1 on Hardware cause my Laptop has Hardware issues. luckily I had a spare Laptop lying around for the ditch, its a Dual Core Celeron CPU and it PERFORMS for the age of it.

[@fawzanfawzi9993]

Windows 10 makes updates an evil thing in the eye of casual user. They just think they can switch to Linux so they won't bother with updates but leaving your system not up-to-date for so long, worse after the version you're on reaches EOL, is very bad.

[@Lp-ze1tg]

I think updating computer/OS system is not a problem for people even in their senior age. The problem would be how older generation treat their computer. I have a former co-worker retired 9 years ago but he has been a tech savvy and he found no issue to deal with PC or linux system. On the other hand, my childhood friend who has been working in the food industry as soon as he left high school years ago. He even has problem using his Android phone. People in their 60s and up doesn't want to learn new technology would have difficulty understand the concept of updating their system. It is possible that their Linux system was setup by their family member who doesn't live with them. For those elderly, they treated their computer as if it is just a TV or an appliances.

[@braindeadbzh]

This is the reason I moved to Manjaro on my desktop and Arch on my server, tired of the EOL non sens.

[@ivailopetrov2827]

or... update it when it goes EOL after 5-10 years?

[@SkyFly19853]

The problem with Linux is not supported by PC companies since people still use older computers by Linux, these companies do NOT make money. If people buy newer computers and still install Linux on them, then companies will support Linux more than ever...

[@danieleugen2010]

I've never understood why the software world can't operate like the automotive world. Once the original manufacturer no longer wants to make a model of vehicle or parts for it, they just license it to some third party, and you can buy compatible parts for ANY vehicle since inception. Out of greed, software companies want to force everyone to new versions rather than provide some third-party with a license to support "ancient" versions of the software. I'm certain that with a little effort, even windows 95 could be made secure enough so that anyone obligated to use it, could do so without suffering anxiety.

[@giovanni6643]

@Infinite Possibilities If someone has a very expensive custom machine that only takes floppy disks and said windows 95 machine has the same floppy drive format as the machine it makes sense to keep the computer running until it's time to completely replace the machine.

[@majorskies7091]

Gotta love Arch based life :) Of course the update broke your computer, lol. Tbh, I've been pretty atrocious of updates on my Manjaro system of late, both system and software.

[@DannyMexen9]

My Manjaro updates would reach 2+GiB and always fail. LOL. That's how friendship ended with Manjaro and Arch itself became my best friend. Sometimes I ran Syu more than once a day.

[@majorskies7091]

@@DannyMexen9 oh really, thats intresting, yeah I feel like moving onto arch soon for self learning but yeah running Syu little more often too now.

[@UnobtainableSilence]

I can't go back to debian on my computer, I'll be using mobian edition pinephone when it gets here, I'd rather have the arch though. Arch is simple and rock solid for the most part. I learned so much from installing it over and over and am glad I took the plunge, it was very worth it.

[@JessicaFEREM]

Microsoft forces updates, otherwise the user wouldn't install them, meaning that they have an insecure system. It's annoying, sure, but a little annoyance versus risking losing all of your data is what you have to consider. and obviously Microsoft does it for themselves, they don't want people thinking windows is an extremely buggy mess, even though it can be at times. But the thing is that windows updates weren't forced on by people that might watch this video, they probably know enough to make it manual or turn it off. no, it's made for the average joe who got a laptop to check their email and go on the web browser. although for those people, I'd direct them towards a Chromebook, it's harder to get viruses on and there's not much you can do as an average user to mess it up. and updates are installed in the background, just reboot to apply them, and it doesn't take that long to reboot. I wouldn't direct them towards Linux because there's gonna either be a massively out of date system because they never update, or there's gonna be people who mess something up by updating the kernel or something, meaning many support calls in the future.

[@learningbird9940]

CentOS 7 with them: 10 years of support!

[@yramagicman675]

Except for the fact that CentOS is dead. arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/12/centos-shifts-from-red-hat-unbranded-to-red-hat-beta/ I don't know what that means for support, but I'd definitely be looking elsewhere at this point.

[@learningbird9940]

@@yramagicman675 Clearly you didn't see the number 7 on my observation, and you don't know that Red Hat already backtracked on the stupid decision of ending CentOS and now offers RHEL 8 for free up to to 10 licenses per developer.

[@MrBiky]

@@learningbird9940 Using 10 dev licenses doesn't make up for the loss of CentOS, which is why I now recommend either people stick with CentOS 7 until EOL or move to Oracle Linux 8. If people don't need close RHEL compatibility, OpenSUSE seems like a really good alternative. In the network I administer, there's a combination of CentOS 7, CentOS 8 (I tried a few servers before the announcement, just to prepare for it, may leave 1 or 2 with 8 and upgrade to Stream just to see how it behaves), Oracle Linux 7 and OL 8. I sidegraded the majority of CentOS 8 to OL 8 using the centos2oracle.sh script. Worked flawlessly. I never thought I'd ever recommend Oracle, but it's a sign how crazy 2020 was. I still think if people can help, move to OpenSUSE instead of Oracle, but again, for RHEL compatibility, it's currently the best bet. Rocky is an alternative, but it needs to be battle tested.

[@learningbird9940]

@@MrBiky Yes, this Red Hat decision was stupid, but let time go, don't react too fast, because 2 months was enough for RH to backtrack and starting to offer RHEL for free.

[@SkyFly19853]

I enjoy updating on Linux, because it does NOT break my system.

[@373323]

clearly not knowing any statistics about your user base is very bad practice, you dont even know if you have a user base, what packages are they using, for all there is, you may be wasting maintenance and update resources on packages that no one installed. there has to be a better way. please.

[@DannyMexen9]

You mean through telemetry?

[@373323]

@@DannyMexen9 there has got to be something the community can semi agree on to give some feedback. this is like sailing your ship blind. i am pretty sure there are a hundred or so packages that no one uses, and they are taking up hours if not days of maintenance and testing time.

[@373323]

@Learn Linux this is the actual point, i know Ubuntu has some telemetry going, and i am aware about the noise that caused in the user base. but for rationality's sake, can we as a Linux / Free software community users, can we come up with a metric providing and collecting method that does not cause massive discomfort and protests, it would be of great benefit to the entire Eco-system, simply knowing ( to some degree ) how many installed systems of a particular distro / release are, and what packages are installed. here is mint, as you elucidated, trying to figure out why people are using eol distribution, and why they are not upgrading, and they, as you have shown, have literally no data to work with

[@373323]

@Learn Linux for all we know, these might be old, discarded computers rusting away in a landfill half way across the world, on the other hand, they could be actively in use by someone who may not even have a clue what update is

[@373323]

@Learn Linux yes, that would be an awesome idea, a custodial entity to collect and process this data, for all if not many of the distros, would just reply to statistical requests, and would have no interest, need or (maybe ) the ability to otherwise monetize the data. this would render the data completely anonymous, but would still keep the analytical value of the data actually existing, helping distros manage their resources better. i this this idea would be worth the effort perusing

[@egenethebest9107]

Still on Xubuntu 16.04, everything newer is kinda trash and bloat.... And NO fuck SNAP it's literally the wors piece of software and I will NOT use any distro that uses it.

[@armorgeddon]

You can easilly remove Snap from a current Xubuntu. I'd recommend to update since Xfce has much improved.

[@egenethebest9107]

@@armorgeddon Yes you can remove snapd however that just leaves you time until some package you use gets forcefully transitioned to snap and then you will have to stop using that, start looking for a PPA that keeps the dev version get that etc (good example of that is Chromium). If I wanted a distro where I manually search for PPAs that have a package that I want in a format that I want I would just use Arch and the AUR. What I liked in Xubuntu is that it is very undemanding to hardware (currently running Xubuntu 16.04 on a Q6600 with 4GB DDR2 and a GTX280) and have no performance issues. I tried 18.04 and 20.04 and the default performace is just trash compared to 16.04 due to the use of those god damn snaps. When I choose a distro I hand over the trust of choosing the compatible debs that will all work well with eachother to the maintainers of that distro. This is why I stick to Debian Stable releases on my production servers and used to use Xubuntu LTS releases up to 16.04 on my day to day machines. Now with Xubuntu not taking a stance at this Snap-garbage issue and including it by default, slowly transitioning default packages to using Snap, I am no longer considering Xubuntu as a viable distro option. Currently I am considering using Linux Mint with the XFCE desktop since they did take a stance against Ubuntu and their Crap-Snap and have gone through the trouble of choosing the good debs that will work well with the rest of their disto.

[@armorgeddon]

@@egenethebest9107 Absolutely, I fully agree with you, though currently Xubuntu with Snapd removed is still very good and fast and you could easily upgrade to that avoiding the full reinstall you'd need to do when switching to Linux Mint. I'll also avoid distributions betting on Snap in the future.

[@egenethebest9107]

@@armorgeddon I'm personally not a big fan of upgrading. I always prefer a clean install (less things that might go wrong), moving my home directory containing all my configs and files isn't difficult no matter what distro I choose.

[@Kajanos]

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