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We live in an era of constant updates, where your browser changes every six weeks, and your operating system changes every 12 months. […] Sometimes you just wan

We live in an era of constant updates, where your browser changes every six weeks, and your operating system changes every 12 months. […] Sometimes you just want everything to stand still for, like, a second. Amen. I for one wish there was a way to hop off the CADT [1] roller coaster and stick with an OS stack that would just sit still and focus on fixing all its damn bugs for once. X.org/GNU/Linux was finally in bugfix mode for a few years in the mid/late 2000s, and it was a stable place to live for the somewhat-technically-minded. Then the cloud, smart phones, and the HTML5 "living standard" all took off, and you're forced to ride that spastic technological train if you want to keep up with anyone. [1] https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html https://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html

rsync 11y ago
I have done this. In early 2009 I bought an octo mac pro with Snow Leopard and 6 GB of RAM. Although I have reloaded Snow Leopard thrice, it remains the exact same configuration: same mac pro, same 8 GB RAM, same Snow Leopard. I have not run into any problems whatsoever. I run a perfectly modern browser with 30+ tabs open, I run multiple guests in VMWare Fusion and I don't miss having the app store at all. In a few months, this will be seven years of platform stability. I have enjoyed it immensely. Further, provided nothing too sticky comes up with continuing to run Snow Leopard, I think I can add one of those bootable PCIe SSDs and max out my ram and run this to the 10 year mark.
- aidenn0 11y ago
  Sadly my wife's macbook could only take 2GB of RAM, so we had to get her a new one; this means no more AppleWorks; I'm going to have to get her Bento to import her databases.
- aidos 11y ago
  I was using the same setup as this for years. My laptop was stolen about 6 months ago so I got a new retina machine. I've just resigned myself to living with instability. Network dropouts that can only be resolved by restarting the whole machine. Occasional system crashes. Sluggish interface behaviour vs the old OS (which is insane given how much more modern the hardware is). One of the few reasons I actually had considered updating in the past was to get the latest 1password. It's a pretty thin silver lining, but it's something!
- blub 11y ago
  Isn't SL full of security holes at this point? Or do you not connect it to the network? I find this a big problem with Mac OS X, if you're not on latest, you're guaranteed to be insecure.
  - wtallis 11y ago
    If you're running it on your own LAN behind a firewall and using a current Firefox, the attack surface is pretty small.
- yuhong 11y ago
  Snow Leopard was not released in early 2009
  - wtallis 11y ago
    The "early 2009" probably refers to the model of Mac Pro, which might have been bought at any point in the first year after Snow Leopard was released.
- andrewgleave 11y ago
  I have a first-gen quad-core Mac Pro (2006) running Yosemite on an SSD. An excellent machine that has provided amazing value and is still my primary development box.
- avn2109 11y ago
  Snow Leopard was pretty much the peak of the OSX's, IMHO. If for no other reason that they hadn't yet broken Expose/Spaces and called it "Mission Control."
  - wtallis 11y ago
    And it was before they killed Front Row to force you to buy a separate box to do home theater duty. And before they broke full-screen apps. 10.7 kicked off a round of experimentation that really should have been optional to the end user, as most of that stuff has only recently started to settle down into something usable.
- ido 11y ago
  Unfortunately I had to upgrade at some point because apple likes to make newer versions of xcode stop working on older versions on os x... As a point of contrast, I run visual studio 2015 on windows 7 (a contemporary of snow leopard), and in fact I'm pretty sure it would run just fine on (14 years old!) windows xp too.
  - yuhong 11y ago
    2010 was last version of VS that run on XP.
ryan-c 11y ago
jwz dislikes hackernews and does referer checks - copy/paste that link if you want to check it out.
- smcl 11y ago
  Any idea why? Seems either a bit juvenile, or hostile
  - detaro 11y ago
    @sloverlord Hacker News is a steaming cesspool and I don't have time or desire to deal with their bandwidth demands, so I just block them. https://twitter.com/jwz/status/665658171415859200 https://twitter.com/jwz/status/665658171415859200
    - smcl 11y ago
      Ahh. Seems a little odd to me, but I can understand why it'd be inconvenient to be inadvertently DDOSd now and then
      - laumars 11y ago
        It's more than just odd. Most people strive towards their published articles getting attention and yet he's aggressively blocking entire communities against it. It's not even as if he has a valid concern about bandwidth since the content is all static and it would literally cost him nothing to run that behind Cloudflare and let them deal with the bandwidth spikes. The whole think feels more like an elitist attack against the HN community specifically (not helped by his description) rather than a carefully thought-out traffic management plan. But his site. His prerogative. It's not like he has to share his thoughts everyone indiscriminately.
        mreiland 11y ago
        My guess it because HN can feel a bit stifling to those that enjoy actual discourse.
krmmalik 11y ago
I hear you. I moved onto Linux Mint for this very reason earlier this year. For 6 months, literally the only bug i encountered was that the USB mouse would freeze around once a week. All I had to do is unplug and re-plug. Everything was solid. Stability bliss. Unfortunately I couldn't live life without a large app ecosystem despite trying WINE and what have you, so finally jumped onto the OS X Bandwagon (couldn't bear going back to windows) and encountered a bug within an hour of use. I've had a new machine for 5 days only and encounter one new, annoying -- albeit trivial or minor -- bug everyday.
rodgerd 11y ago
> Then the cloud, smart phones, and the HTML5 "living standard" And the GNOME 3 rewrite.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  I would say that comes on the back of the "living standard" thing, as the people involved are fervent UI/UX design wankers. From personal experience, you can't design for the "aunt Tillies" in the world. They are simply too afraid of screwing up to even try to do anything, no matter how simplified the UI/X has become. And while tilting at that windmill, they are alienating their existing community.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

rsync 11y ago

I have done this. In early 2009 I bought an octo mac pro with Snow Leopard and 6 GB of RAM. Although I have reloaded Snow Leopard thrice, it remains the exact same configuration: same mac pro, same 8 GB RAM, same Snow Leopard. I have not run into any problems whatsoever. I run a perfectly modern browser with 30+ tabs open, I run multiple guests in VMWare Fusion and I don't miss having the app store at all. In a few months, this will be seven years of platform stability. I have enjoyed it immensely. Further, provided nothing too sticky comes up with continuing to run Snow Leopard, I think I can add one of those bootable PCIe SSDs and max out my ram and run this to the 10 year mark.

aidenn0 11y ago
Sadly my wife's macbook could only take 2GB of RAM, so we had to get her a new one; this means no more AppleWorks; I'm going to have to get her Bento to import her databases.
aidos 11y ago
I was using the same setup as this for years. My laptop was stolen about 6 months ago so I got a new retina machine. I've just resigned myself to living with instability. Network dropouts that can only be resolved by restarting the whole machine. Occasional system crashes. Sluggish interface behaviour vs the old OS (which is insane given how much more modern the hardware is). One of the few reasons I actually had considered updating in the past was to get the latest 1password. It's a pretty thin silver lining, but it's something!
blub 11y ago
Isn't SL full of security holes at this point? Or do you not connect it to the network? I find this a big problem with Mac OS X, if you're not on latest, you're guaranteed to be insecure.
- wtallis 11y ago
  If you're running it on your own LAN behind a firewall and using a current Firefox, the attack surface is pretty small.
yuhong 11y ago
Snow Leopard was not released in early 2009
- wtallis 11y ago
  The "early 2009" probably refers to the model of Mac Pro, which might have been bought at any point in the first year after Snow Leopard was released.
andrewgleave 11y ago
I have a first-gen quad-core Mac Pro (2006) running Yosemite on an SSD. An excellent machine that has provided amazing value and is still my primary development box.
avn2109 11y ago
Snow Leopard was pretty much the peak of the OSX's, IMHO. If for no other reason that they hadn't yet broken Expose/Spaces and called it "Mission Control."
- wtallis 11y ago
  And it was before they killed Front Row to force you to buy a separate box to do home theater duty. And before they broke full-screen apps. 10.7 kicked off a round of experimentation that really should have been optional to the end user, as most of that stuff has only recently started to settle down into something usable.
ido 11y ago
Unfortunately I had to upgrade at some point because apple likes to make newer versions of xcode stop working on older versions on os x... As a point of contrast, I run visual studio 2015 on windows 7 (a contemporary of snow leopard), and in fact I'm pretty sure it would run just fine on (14 years old!) windows xp too.
- yuhong 11y ago
  2010 was last version of VS that run on XP.

ryan-c 11y ago

jwz dislikes hackernews and does referer checks - copy/paste that link if you want to check it out.

smcl 11y ago
Any idea why? Seems either a bit juvenile, or hostile
- detaro 11y ago
  @sloverlord Hacker News is a steaming cesspool and I don't have time or desire to deal with their bandwidth demands, so I just block them. https://twitter.com/jwz/status/665658171415859200 https://twitter.com/jwz/status/665658171415859200
  - smcl 11y ago
    Ahh. Seems a little odd to me, but I can understand why it'd be inconvenient to be inadvertently DDOSd now and then
    - laumars 11y ago
      It's more than just odd. Most people strive towards their published articles getting attention and yet he's aggressively blocking entire communities against it. It's not even as if he has a valid concern about bandwidth since the content is all static and it would literally cost him nothing to run that behind Cloudflare and let them deal with the bandwidth spikes. The whole think feels more like an elitist attack against the HN community specifically (not helped by his description) rather than a carefully thought-out traffic management plan. But his site. His prerogative. It's not like he has to share his thoughts everyone indiscriminately.
      - mreiland 11y ago
        My guess it because HN can feel a bit stifling to those that enjoy actual discourse.

krmmalik 11y ago

I hear you. I moved onto Linux Mint for this very reason earlier this year. For 6 months, literally the only bug i encountered was that the USB mouse would freeze around once a week. All I had to do is unplug and re-plug. Everything was solid. Stability bliss. Unfortunately I couldn't live life without a large app ecosystem despite trying WINE and what have you, so finally jumped onto the OS X Bandwagon (couldn't bear going back to windows) and encountered a bug within an hour of use. I've had a new machine for 5 days only and encounter one new, annoying -- albeit trivial or minor -- bug everyday.

rodgerd 11y ago

> Then the cloud, smart phones, and the HTML5 "living standard" And the GNOME 3 rewrite.

digi_owl 11y ago
I would say that comes on the back of the "living standard" thing, as the people involved are fervent UI/UX design wankers. From personal experience, you can't design for the "aunt Tillies" in the world. They are simply too afraid of screwing up to even try to do anything, no matter how simplified the UI/X has become. And while tilting at that windmill, they are alienating their existing community.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]