Richard Brown <RBrownCCB@opensuse.org> 01/24/17 10:04 AM >>> While it could be seen to be disrespectful, sometimes ignorance or poor judgement needs to be challenged and it is clearly in the best interest of 13.2 users to cease using 13.2 as soon as possible if they wish their systems to remain secure on the internet or stable with new hardware and peripherals.
IMO, the biggest fault that openSuSE has is that it doesn't have an LTS version like other vendors do. I understand that if you want a long-term version, you're supposed to head to either SLES or SLED. But those platforms don't have the "end-user" feel of openSuSE, nor do they have all of the same packages or package versions available to them. (For example, SLES12 comes with PHP 5.5 released in 2014, and the latest is 7.0.14.) This is especially painful with regard to libraries, and means that some software simply cannot work on the enterprise SLE versions because they only support old versions of core libraries. I've uses openSuSE at work for almost 10 years now, where we have a three- to five-year computer replacement cycle. It's a royal pain in the rear to (re)configure all of my software, and a lot of it simply doesn't work on SLED. Believe me, I've tried. In the past I've gotten around this by using whatever openSuSE Evergreen release existed, but that's been eliminated. So, sadly, my next work laptop upgrade will probably have to be Debian, which I've been playing around with for a while at home. It's not as refined as openSuSE, but it means that I'll have to rebuild my laptop a third as many times during its lifetime... I know that we're supposed to upgrade regularly to stay "fresh" and "recent," but when you're trying to actually use your laptop for stuff, it's an incredible pain to have to stop, upgrade, then fix what broke (and hope that you can fix it...) I just don't have time for that -- my computers are supposed to work for me, not the other way around. I want to upgrade my laptop when I'm ready, not when someone tells me that I have to. openSuSE: https://en.opensuse.org/Lifetime A Leap Minor Release (42.1, 42.2, etc.) is expected to be released annually. Users are expected to upgrade to the latest minor release within 6 months of its availability, leading to a support life cycle of 18 months. Fedora: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_Release_Life_Cycle The Fedora Project releases a new version of Fedora approximately every 6 months and provides updated packages (maintenance) to these releases for approximately 13 months [[18 months total]]. This allows users to "skip a release" while still being able to always have a system that is still receiving updates. Ubuntu: https://www.ubuntu.com/info/release-end-of-life Standard Ubuntu releases are supported for 9 months and Ubuntu LTS (long-term support) releases are supported for five years on both the desktop and the server. During that time, there will be security fixes and other critical updates. Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/LTS/ Debian Long Term Support (LTS) is a project to extend the lifetime of all Debian stable releases to (at least) 5 years. Windows: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13853/windows-lifecycle-fact-sheet 5 years for mainstream support, 10 years for extended support -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org