[RULE] Linuxjournal article, continued

[Liam Proven]

Don Marti has got back to me again. He's really concerned about
updates. He says:

«
Liam,


>> Althought recent 
>> "official" kernels are often compiled with optimisations for 686-level 
>> processors, as I understand it, all or virtually all the actual binary 
>> packages are merely compiled for i386/i486 and so will run on virtually 
>> anything.


Likewise, sorry about the delay.  I'm curious
about the "virtually all" part though.  Could I
break something by downloading an update to get a
security fix?


>> I suspect the main use of RULE is for building client machines rather 
>> than servers, though, so it's not so critical as for a directly 
>> Internet-connected host.


"client systems don't need security updates" is why I
get so much spam -- and maybe why all those perfectly
good old machines getting converted to Linux got
thrown out in the first place.  If it has a browser
it's slurping down untrusted stuff.

I don't want to be too obnoxious, but I'm not hearing
"install a fix and it will keep working" -- and
putting Linux on an old machine is a lot of people's
first exposure to the OS.

-- Don Marti Plain text email only, please. Editor in Chief
dmarti at linuxjournal.com Linux Journal 510-814-0932
http://linuxjournal.com/ Linux Journal editorial office:
206-782-7733x3
»

-- 
Liam Proven
Home: http://welcome.to/liamsweb * Blog: http://lproven.livejournal.com
AOL, Yahoo UK: liamproven * ICQ: 73187508 * MSN: lproven at hotmail.com

_______________________________________________
Original home page of the RULE project: www.rule-project.org
Rule-list at rule-project.org
http://mail.rule-project.org/mailman/listinfo/rule-list_rule-project.org