YDL 4.0

[R. Hirschfeld]

> From: David Hacker <dhacker@intrstar.net>
> Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 14:16:35 -0400
> 
> If you think about it Apple has good support for older models.  You can 
> do anything you need to do on an old IIcx with OS 7.5 and it will run 
> fast with that system.  By going with the newest and greatest you loose 
> speed, so sometimes it is better to stick with what works.  Why use YDL 
> 4 on and old system if 2.3 or 3.0.1 work fine and do what you need to 
> get done?

I agree with the sentiment and it may work in isolation but with all
the intercommunication these days computers tend to die of "creeping
obsolescence": people send you files in formats that are supported
only in later versions of your word processor, or the websites you
frequent start to use newer HTML constructs not supported by your
older browser, or a security issue or software bug is fixed only in a
later version.  Looking to upgrade, you discover that the new version
of the application requires a newer version of the OS, and the new
version of the OS doesn't support the old hardware...

Although I understand Terra Soft's (probably inevitable) move to
support fewer old models, I nevertheless find it unfortunate because
IMO (despite flame wars to the contrary) Linux and BSD and MacOS X are
essentially the same OS and the real benefit of PPC-based Linux is for
older machines on which OS X doesn't run well.  It would be nice if
bug fixes and security patches were backported to the older YDL for a
while in order to extend the life of those machines, but I'm not too
optimistic about that.  I'm more hopeful that the new version will
work on the older machines even though not "officially" supported.

Ray