"Pros" and their wisdom

Lounge EndeavourOS pub
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Something like five years ago, there was an article on certain Finnish computer magazine about installing Linux and using it as a daily driver. I don’t remember what the distro in question was, probably something like Kubuntu.

Instructions and article were really helpful and well written until writer got into part where he told about after installation shenanigans.

It went something like this:

“Now that you have successfully installed your system, it’s time to go into settings and disable update notifications. You are never going to update your system since it’s running. This is the beauty of Linux”.

I can get the reasoning behind this, but it has been burned into to my memory as one of those absurd things said by “pros”.

Do you have something similar that you can’t get out of your memory?

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All I can say is the writer was an idiot :wink:

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I have a vague memory.
I don’t seem to be able to get anything out of it :rofl:

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There are those famous statements that many of us remember:

  • nobody needs more than 64KB of RAM
  • the world needs 5 to 6 computers

and other real world examples like:

  • IBM PC hardware limited the maximum RAM to 640KB
  • maximum modem speed is 56 kbit/s (a.k.a. kbps)
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I would guess that your memory is betraying you. I can hardly believe that any author from any computer magazine would ever have said that.

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I know this kind of wisdom from my professional life. I have seen it many times, but I would never see those people as idiots. The story is often the same:

Somewhere 7 to 9 versions ago they had a problem. They researched the problem and found a workaround, which is often some obscure configuration or setting that needs to be en- or disabled - or, like maybe in this case, not updating. And every version later they stick to that workaround, never checking if it is still necessary. Because that’s not their job, usually.

Checking if your preconceptions are still valid with new and changing software is something you need to train, and get the professionally allocated time for. Often times you don’t.

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They’re human after all, they make mistakes or can just be plain wrong.

I know it’s not the same as a journalist, but back in my Atari ST days, Federation of Free Traders Disk 2 included a virus. Mistakes happen and thanks to Knife ST I got rid of it.

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That’s almost funny - it brings to mind the days of the Amiga, to get new software was a trip to the Post Office, sending a money order, then waiting for snail mail to bring a stack of Floppies… a couple of years later, Packet Radio started really taking off.

For sure, my Amiga would only get updates when I bought a new Magazine with a new Workbench floppy :rofl:

Sure, run without updates - but not after 1990. I guess this guy thought (and I do agree to some extent) that you can probably get away with it using Linux, as compared to a more ubiquitous targeted OS…

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Probably with Debian Stable, the statement “you are not going to update your system” would be safe to use…
although, still not advised.

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I think the assumption that Linux journalists are “Pros” is fundamentally flawed. :sweat_smile:

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