my two cents worth.
We used SL from 4.1 and still have a number of boxes with SL 6.5.
There is still a 7.6 running and never updated as the update killed the
ability to connect with our network.
On of our dislikes is system d and package manager.  
RH 8 - none of our cad tools worked.
A bright spot in the Linux mess is Devuan.  A non system D Debian.
It works:
All of our cad tools work and you can use apt-get and use most Debian
applications.  Several boxes have gone a year with out a reboot and were
shut down for a clean up and restarted.
The installation is pretty easy.  The only real down side is the add
users and groups function is retarded.  I told them to just copy SL 6.5
add users and get on with the show.
There is a lot of things 6.5 did well but are not in Devuan.
From an industrial vantage point we really miss SL 5.11 and 6.5.  We
have basiacally abandoned RH and its following.  They seam to pick up
the worst ideas and go with it. 
Our security is pretty simple.  - don't laugh too hard.  We cron to turn
off network after 5:30 and turn it back on at 7 AM.  This reduces the
time hackers have to pound on it.  The other thing is that your IP can
be long lived unless you reboot your router.  We reboot the router
before 7 AM and get a new IP.
For industrial use Devuan is a good answere.

Odd Notes.  We hade two Toshiba high end laptops we were ready to junk.
After looking at them in detail.  We replace the slow 125G HD with a 1 T
SSD.  Installed the 386 version of Devuan and we have two new laptops.
Performance is outstanding.  Not like my 8 core machine with 32G ram
undr my desk but the performace is acceptable.  Compared to the Windows
Dog slow boot it is amazing.  Everything works.  Save a few K bucks.

For a couple of CNC machines in the shop we need Windows.  Installed
VMWare and loaded Windows 10 and you can almost get your second cup of
tea while it is booting.

Enjoy the conversation and I really miss SL 6.5 but you have to move on
or quit.

So here I am 80 yeas old and still working.  Get up at 5:30, go to the
life maintence program at the local hospital work out for an hr. run
(fast old folks shuff) for 10 laps, lift 15 in each hand and 120 reps,
drive home get fed and work the next 12 hr.  The SW development keeps
the neurons connected.

One of the real sad thing that has happened to our Engineering Comunity
is the during the China Virus shut down the students didn't learn much.
They are pretty good a running windows but they don't know how anything
works or how to connect a scope etc.  The isolation is a disaster for
the new science / engineers who worked remotely.  My contribution is
that we hire one or two bright students and teach them the real world
applications.  I encourage each when they are ready to explore other
oportunities.  So far we have had 14 young men and ladies find their
lifes endever.  The comments I get from companies is how does a student
get 4 years of engineering experience when they get their Deploma.
When I worked at GE one of my jobs was to train new engineers in the art
of digital control.  The digital engine control (gray box) on side of
the CFM56 engines worked well and was certified in 1987.

Another condecending Unix / Linux user.
By the way my great,great,great grandfather was a Hessian solder and
decided he like the country, jumped ship, married a lady and had 12
Children.

Larry Linder



On Tue, 2023-01-10 at 11:49 -0800, Keith Lofstrom wrote:
> > From: Konstantin Olchanski <[log in to unmask]>
> > Subject: Re: SL6 ssh fail
> ...
> > It looks like my remaining option is to build openssh from OpenBSD "portable" sources.
> ...
> > - "so old" - like a grand-father's axe, most our SL6 machines hardware was upgraded 2-3 times by now, they run from SSDs on DDR3/DDR4 RAM machines.
> > - exception is VME processors
> 
> I'm on Konstantin's side here - although it is a side many
> light-years wide, with MANY of us spread thinly across it.
> 
> While I do not have my grandfather's axe, I still use my
> great-grandfather's carpentry toolbox, which my grandfather
> brought from Sweden in 1911 (I also have my grandfather's
> steamship ticket, and his Swedish-to-English dictionary). 
> 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__wiki.keithl.com_JohanSigfridLofstrom&d=DwIBAg&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=iqT8zmlP56N56Jq9YP_a6cjE90PVa3LlHNdlKR14LBh4UY7CFKqQzSC6tQwZud2d&s=_bHbAaGb3b436-GEoRYnWCwPRLp6V7b_tiSALqhmBzY&e=  
> 
> I use those tools to build the gizmos that help me imagine
> space technology evolution into the 22nd century (and read
> emails from my Swedish fourth-cousins).
> 
> Science has plucked almost all of the low-hanging fruit; 
> future discovery lies in subtle manipulations of vast
> amounts of both new and archived measurements made by
> vast amounts of hardware accumulated over many decades. 
> 
> The huge problem with archived measurements is their origin
> in imperfect and evolving hardware, software, procedures,
> theories, and people.  Those inputs color the data;  new
> data collected with new hardware, software, etc. can be
> incommensurate with old data.  This is a good reason for
> keeping the old hardware/software sets alive, so you can
> measure twice, with your great-grandfather's ruler and
> with your laser interferometer, and cross-calibrate the
> data taken both ways.
> 
> Konstantin contributes to TRIUMF, Canada's premiere 
> particle accelerator.  I am amused that the photo associated
> with the TRIUMF Wikipedia page shows a Tektronix oscilloscope
> designed in the 1960s:
> 
> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_TRIUMF-23_media_File-3ACanadian-5FScience-5F-2D-5FTRIUMF-5Fcyclotron-5F-2D-5FFlickr-5F-2D-5FCargo-5FCult-5F-2821-29.jpg&d=DwIBAg&c=gRgGjJ3BkIsb5y6s49QqsA&r=gd8BzeSQcySVxr0gDWSEbN-P-pgDXkdyCtaMqdCgPPdW1cyL5RIpaIYrCn8C5x2A&m=iqT8zmlP56N56Jq9YP_a6cjE90PVa3LlHNdlKR14LBh4UY7CFKqQzSC6tQwZud2d&s=VoPCz_dAeUSdH6dEptF53yurEpghrR-JZvyRjGJ0Sj0&e= 
> 
> Also a large pipe and a huge dewar labeled "HELIUM", which
> will probably be all used up and dissipated to outer space
> by 2160.  Data measured with instruments consuming large
> amounts of helium may be non-repeatable in 2160. 
> Yet somehow, data wranglers like Konstantin must "pay data
> forward" so that 2160 scientists can evaluate 2023 data 
> (and 1968 data, TRIUMF's founding) in an accurate context.
> 
> ----
> 
> I began using Scientific Linux because I assumed that
> Fermilabs would maintain its data-handling infrastructure
> for decades.  I believed the RedHat booth-boys at Oscon
> who told me that long term support would not be affected
> by the sale to IBM. 
> 
> Oops.  
> 
> With decades of investment in my Gnome2-based creations,
> I spent the last year flirting with Ubuntu-Mate - and
> last week fault-isolating a borked desktop environment 
> (log error: Could not acquire name on session bus)
> to a flaw in /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80mate-environment,
> cured(?) by adding "unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"
> before the closing "fi" in that file. 
> 
> So, after climbing out of the Scientific Linux rubble,
> then beating my head against the crumbling Ubuntu wall,
> my next desperate move is to debian-mate, hoping that
> some flavor of mate (or other "gestureless" desktop)
> will last until I (and my jittery hands) die. 
> The only gesture I'm good at involves my middle finger.
>  
> I hope that the data and algorithms that I create in the
> debian-mate environment will endure, even if the desktop
> environment creators transition from mouse gestures to
> hand gestures to rectal thermometer squeezes.
> 
> I'm a circuit designer, more adept with solder than shell
> scripts.  My guess is that Konstantin is closer to me on
> the hardware-software spectrum than he is to most of you;
> he must make the instruments attached to Canada's premiere
> particle accelerator produce reliable and secure data, not
> animated web pages.  TRIUMF's data must be accessible and
> verifiable a century from now, so future researchers can
> answer the perpetual question about the past:
> 
> "What the HELL were they THINKING?"
> 
> Blovation off:  Now I must go outside with my great-
> grandfather's tools, to repair a 1960s greenhouse damaged
> by last week's windstorm.  Then back to a warm keyboard.
> 
> Keith
>