The embedded long-term support initiative [LWN.net]

The embedded long-term support initiative

Posted Oct 29, 2011 16:19 UTC (Sat) by fuhchee (guest, #40059)
In reply to: The embedded long-term support initiative by cortana
Parent article: The embedded long-term support initiative

"Everyone I know who owns a Playstation 3 complains when Sony push a mandatory update down their throat."

That's partly because Sony is known to regularly abuse their customers this way.

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The embedded long-term support initiative

Posted Oct 29, 2011 16:23 UTC (Sat) by cortana (subscriber, #24596) [Link] (2 responses)

Ugh. My point is that at least Sony bother to push out updates--unlike HTC or Samsung, who don't bother (not singling them out--I just happen to own devices made by both that I know are based on Linux, and have security vulnerabilities, and that don't have any updates available). And yet, the average user may _prefer_ the vulnerable device because it's less hassle to use--no pesky updates interrupting them!

The embedded long-term support initiative

Posted Nov 2, 2011 15:05 UTC (Wed) by jmm82 (guest, #59425) [Link] (1 responses)

People do not like the PS3 updates because they often lock down the system more and take away liberties they once had.

People do not like updating the firmware on their router because everyone has updated a router that worked perfectly fine only to either a. brick the device or b. have some feature that used to work suddenly intermittently fail.

Updating a kernel on a stable system is risky business. The people here should know that more than anyone, yet if security is a priority then it must be done.

The embedded long-term support initiative

Posted Nov 2, 2011 16:10 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

If the updates add additional features and seldom fail then customers generally like them

It's when the updates either don't add any new features, or worse, remove existing features (even if they add other new features), then users complain

This isn't limited to firmware/kernel updates.

The KDE and GNOME '.0' updates are perfect examples of updates that remove some things that existing users notice and therefor people are unhappy with them, even though the developers add a lot of new features as well.