Exactly.
Controversial?
- Thread starter Skybear
- Start date
There are no more factories producing buggy whips. Monochrome CRT TVs running on tubes are no longer manufactured. Cars don't have 8-track tape players. Things change, technology advances. Newer and shinier always overcomes old and tired. Deal with it.
SO adversarial, and in-yer-face. Been getting out of bed the wrong side this week, have we?
Goodness me...
I guess a good part of the reason I like older tech & software so much is down to my being a 'late-starter' with the 'techy' side of things.....and realising just how much good stuff I'd missed out on in the past. That, and the fact that I love seeing how far you CAN 'push' older gear, and finding out just what it's still capable of.
The 'latest & greatest' has never really held much appeal for me. That's an odd thing to admit to on ANY kind of computer tech forum, ain't it?
Lolololol...!!
Mike.
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Yeah well I was around in them days and I still like older tech and older stuff etc.
On the other side of the coin old tech becomes obsolete and then it's time to move ahead like it or not.
Some of you folks sound like old crotchety old codgers who bitch and moan and complain about everything new.
And if you're not an old crotchety old codger you're on the right track to becoming one.
Stop the whining about change and just accept it as it's going to happen and you can't stop it.
@MikeWalsh
You my friend are the exception I know and understand your point of view you are like my brother was and you know who he was.
Don't get me wrong guys I still drive a 1967 Ford F100 with three on the tree and no air conditioner needless to say I don't drive it in the summer.
I still use a vacuum tube stereo amplifier and tuner and play record albums on a turntable and use a reel to reel 10.5 inch tape deck.
So yes I too like old technology for some thing although on some things as computers I prefer newer although not the latest computers.
That being the case I accept new technology and new ways of doing things although i may like them or not like them I accept them.
Not really there's a lot of cool old usable tech still around.The 'latest & greatest' has never really held much appeal for me. That's an odd thing to admit to on ANY kind of computer tech forum, ain't it?
Lolololol...!!
Mike.
This thread isn't about old tech verses new tech it's about new software verses old software.
Here's all ya gotta do.
@The Duck :-
I hear ya, my friend. Don't get me wrong; in some ways, I like modern stuff.....to a point.
My desktop rig ain't brand-new - she's now 5 or 6 years old - but you know how much "upgrading" I did around Xmas. For what it is, it's now a whole heap more capable than it was this time last year.....considering it's DDR4-gen. But then we both know, from experience, how little THAT means in the 'Puppy' world, don't we?
The desktop rig is my main 'daily driver'. Stands to reason I'm going to keep this one as usable as I can. As for the Latitude, heh; I've always liked Dells, and the enterprise-grade Lats are about as good as they come, given what I snagged it for on eBay.
Yes, it's 'ancient' by most folks' standards. but for 'our Pup', it's still got several years of life in it yet. You learn to tailor your expectations, depending on what you have available......like learning to cut your cloth to make the most of what you can do with it. And I am, quite unashamedly, a "retro-freak". I freely admit to being so.
I've no complaints.
As for up-to-date software, I will freely admit I'm almost anal when it comes to keeping browsers up-to-date, 'cos that's the major malware vector where so much crap CAN get into the system, if you're not careful.....and as the recent slew of AI-assisted kernel reviews have shown, even Linux isn't invulnerable.
Yes, the robust permissions system goes a long way towards stopping a lot of malware in its tracks, but.....it can only do so much.
As for other software, with a lot of it we tend to take the view in Puppyland that "if it works, why try & 'fix' it?" Puppy's unique construction and usage method builds on top of the permissions stuff; it ain't perfect, but it's fairly bullet-proof once you know your way around the system.
You know yourself how secure EasyOS is.
Mike.
I hear ya, my friend. Don't get me wrong; in some ways, I like modern stuff.....to a point.
My desktop rig ain't brand-new - she's now 5 or 6 years old - but you know how much "upgrading" I did around Xmas. For what it is, it's now a whole heap more capable than it was this time last year.....considering it's DDR4-gen. But then we both know, from experience, how little THAT means in the 'Puppy' world, don't we?
The desktop rig is my main 'daily driver'. Stands to reason I'm going to keep this one as usable as I can. As for the Latitude, heh; I've always liked Dells, and the enterprise-grade Lats are about as good as they come, given what I snagged it for on eBay.
Yes, it's 'ancient' by most folks' standards. but for 'our Pup', it's still got several years of life in it yet. You learn to tailor your expectations, depending on what you have available......like learning to cut your cloth to make the most of what you can do with it. And I am, quite unashamedly, a "retro-freak". I freely admit to being so.
I've no complaints.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As for up-to-date software, I will freely admit I'm almost anal when it comes to keeping browsers up-to-date, 'cos that's the major malware vector where so much crap CAN get into the system, if you're not careful.....and as the recent slew of AI-assisted kernel reviews have shown, even Linux isn't invulnerable.
Yes, the robust permissions system goes a long way towards stopping a lot of malware in its tracks, but.....it can only do so much.
As for other software, with a lot of it we tend to take the view in Puppyland that "if it works, why try & 'fix' it?" Puppy's unique construction and usage method builds on top of the permissions stuff; it ain't perfect, but it's fairly bullet-proof once you know your way around the system.
You know yourself how secure EasyOS is.
Mike.
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If you're addressing this to me (are you?) I find that hilarious, because that's the way I feel about people who complain about OS's and apps no longer being written in a 32-bit version.
Thanks for summing up my point very well. You get it.
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I'm addressing this to anyone who is an old crotchety old codger who bitches and moans and complains about everything new.
I'm addressing this to anyone who is not an old crotchety old codger who's on the right track to becoming one.
Am I whoever fits the description already knows who this is about.
A good day to all.
When Windows 8 came out it was newer than Windows 7. Were the people who complained about Windows 8 an old crotchety old codger?
I've been on Ubuntu for a couple years now. I haven't experienced any of the problems that people are having with some of the new changes they're pushing but I've seen lots of complaints on the Ubuntu Discourse. Snaps, rust, etc... I haven't been around the Ubuntu Discourse for a while but the last time I was there there was a announcement about adding A.I. tools to Ubuntu that was definitely causing some controversy. I'm not sure what they're planning with that.
I'll be surprised if they don't add it.
One shouldn't be mislead about change in linux software. Basically, nearly all, or even all software that is maintained, changes regardless of how old the original version of the software was when it was first written and released. Some examples follow.if something works - and works well for its purpose - then where on earth is the point in constantly tweaking / altering / modifying / changing it purely for the sake of it, hm? Unless, of course, said changes are requested by real-world users, in order to make working with it easier for all concerned.
In other words, responding to "constructive criticism" rather than "change for its own sake" purely on a whim.
(shrug...)
One thing, however, is as true today as it's always been. Change is the only thing in the world that IS constant.....
Mike.
The major software package of coreutils, which includes the basic commands in linux like
ls, rm, mv, cp etc., one might imagine was pretty much set in the early years of linux. Viewing the changelog however, shows that changes to the code occur quite frequently, a number of which have been as recent as February this year 2026.In the case of xorg, one might imagine it's been set for many years since it "just works" and has done so for ages. However, it is not an unchanging mass of code. Reading the changelog, for example in /usr/share/doc/xserver-xorg/changelog.gz, it's readily apparent that instabilities have still been identified in recent years and the code gets altered and improved. Maintainers still work upon it to correct or enhance it. It may no longer get new features developed or added, but the latest changes are dated in October of 2025 in my installation of xorg.
Many major linux distros in the early years relied on sysVinit before systemd was developed. Today, there are a number of distros that still run sysVinit or a form of it, not having changed to systemd. Distros that run versions of sysVinit like antiX, devuan and MX, do not run the same sysVinit that was used in the early linux distros. If a user chooses a distro that uses sysVinit, they aren't choosing any identical version of the old traditional system that "just works" and hasn't changed, and therefore doesn't need to be replaced. Rather they are choosing a newly developed and tweaked sysVinit that the distro has prepared and keeps maintained so that the distro keeps working and improving and coping with whatever it needs to as software gets developed around it. Whilst the concept of sysVinit is kept in modern distros that use it, that is, the underlying architecture of runlevels 1 to 6, and the /etc/inittab configuration arrangement, among other things, so much of the surrounding code in the executable scripts has needed to be modernised to cope with modern hardware. SysVinit traditionally executes commands sequentially, but modern developments have introduced mechanisms for it to execute in parallel, which is one of the features of systemd. Modern sysVinit has to be able to work with modern linux kernels and handle things like tmpfs and devtmps filesystems, and has changed to do so. An original version of sysVinit would not cope well with modern demands.
Browsers are another example software with very frequent changes. Today's firefox is quite different to a version just a year ago, let alone any time before that.
All in all, from the above brief considerations, I can't see much validity in the argument users may posit that they don't make a change to a newer software alternative because the old one doesn't need to change. By far nearly all, if not all software that doesn't become abandoned or obsolete, actually changes one way or another to keep up with modern demands, both software and hardware demands.
If a user runs a computer online that has been installed at a point in time without any changes such as further updating or modifying of the software, that computer will shortly become out of date, more vulnerable to failures online such as no longer being to access some sites or function on some sites, more vulnerable to exploits, in danger of being used by illicit hackers and unable to take advantage of enhancements made to later versions of the software on the machine. There are other vulnerabilities and disadvantages too.
Rather than an argument about not wanting to change, I see the preferences users declare for sticking with some particular software as having other valid reasons. One might prefer a modern sysVinit style distro because it's a leaner system, more economical on resources than a fully-featured systemd system. They might prefer an older style browser like palemoon because it's also more economical on resources, or even for aesthetic reasons. They might prefer xorg over a wayland compositor because it runs a particularly preferred window manager or still caters natively for remote GUI connectivity. None of this software however, has been unchanged in its latest versions.
Overall, the argument that one is not changing because they "don't like change just for the sake of change", falls flat in the face of the fact that nearly all software that doesn't become abandoned or obsolete, changes. I think it's disingenuous to try and make the case that developers change for the sake of changing, compared to the notion that they make changes to improve and enhance their software.
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