I was forced into updating my ancient Samsung R580 notebook from 15.04 to 15.10 today. I didn’t feel the need to update to 15.10 when it was released back in October because it had nothing new I wanted and I was more than satisfied with 15.04. I’d planned to stretch out my use of 15.04 until the next LTS, 16.04, is released in April.

That plan got knocked to the side of the road when I checked with Software Updating to get the latest fixes and updates and it displayed a message that 15.04 would not longer be updated, would I please step up to 15.10. Sort of reminded me of Microsoft’s entreaties to me to update from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10. So I updated the Samsung and everything updated and upgraded without a hitch.

I now have three key notebooks whose native OSes are, respectively, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. Because the R580 is as old as it is I’m now in the market for a used notebook that’s current enough to last another 5-10 years to replace the R580. The R580 is old enough that it was originally sold with Vista, then later upgraded to Windows 7. That Win7 install eventually ate itself up, at which point I replaced it with Ubuntu 13.10 right after Christmas 2013. Except for one very brief side track to Fedora/RHEL, it’s been on Ubuntu ever since.

I’m not sure I’ll ever switch to Ubuntu the way Dan Gilmore did, but as soon as I get my finances back in order I intend to never spend as much on computers as I have in 2015. I have my strong business reasons for owning these three machines, but I don’t want to be dependent on any of them. But if I had to, I’d probably pick Ubuntu.