> On Nov 29, 2022, at 06:55, Gerben Wierda via macports-users
> <macports-users@lists.macports.org> wrote:
>
> Before Monterey I was running Mojave and that worked very well. I skipped
> Catalina and went straight for Monterey so I would have a long period of 'no
> large migrations'.
I'm running file servers on Snow Leopard, Mountain Lion and Mojave, and I'm
seriously considering taking the Mojave machine back to High Sierra, except
Mojave works well and my need to compile to 32-bit hasn't yet materialized.
Mojave does eat RAM doing nothing in a way that Mountain Lion simply doesn't,
and I am curious about High Sierra, so the consideration remains.
Running a mail server, presumably exposed to the Internet, I suppose you'd have
deeper security concerns.
Maybe something changed with email that I'm not aware of like the way the Web
keeps breaking older browsers, but if you upgraded without consideration of
precisely which security enhancements you needed or which new features you
could not live with out, then, as it always is, we do it to ourselves. Once
upon a time, servers were rarely, if ever, upgraded. They stayed up so long the
new hardware and software passed them by, but they kept working, so they were
left running. It was a dark day that macOS users began treating their systems
like Windows, feverishly updating and upgrading production machines as soon as
patches were available. But Windows security is scary, and the risk of updates
and upgrades on Windows less scary than not. I don't think we're there yet with
macOS.
But Linux has more in common with Windows than macOS. Linux's first best reason
for existing was fixing things Microsoft broke. There was no great reason Linux
took over the datacenter. IMO, it was fanaticism alone that caused this. And
now Linux has become a larger target, increasing need to keep current and
patched when facing the Internet, and jeopardizing production with every patch.
If you feel you have to leave macOS, no one would find fault (perhaps fault
could be found choosing macOS as a server in the first place, though ;) But
Linux is not required. I'd choose NetBSD over Linux all week long and twice on
Sundays. FreeBSD is also fantastic, and its ports system far, far, far more
secure than any Linux repository. If security is your concern, you should also
consider OpenBSD. With any BSD, you can profoundly relax your update trigger
finger and take your sweet time in consideration of why you should or should
not upgrade, and research every angle, then wait a decade if you wish, and then
decide.
