When you download software, are you getting the latest version? If you use a GNU mirror, you probably aren’t.<\/p>\n
GNU software is the core of most free Unix-like OSes, including Linux. The main site to download this software from is ftp:\/\/ftp.gnu.org\/<\/a> but it is often overloaded and slow. GNU is nice enough to publish a list of mirror sites so that you can get software from a faster and closer site at http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/prep\/ftp.html<\/a>. Unfortunately, MOST (not some) of the mirrors are out of date. And I’m not talking a few hours or days. A few are out of date by a month, most are outdated by at least six months, and some are out of date by two years! I realize this is all free software, but I’d expect a little better than this.<\/p>\n My own tests: All California mirrors outdated except Mirror Monster. All Taiwan mirrors outdated except Providence University and National Sun Yat Sen University. In a break with other regions, all Japan mirrors are up to date. A random sampling of other mirrors shows this pattern extends across other regions.<\/p>\n Don’t believe me? Do your own tests. Click through on the mirrors on the above list and look for the most recent file\/directory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you download software, are you getting the latest version? If you use a GNU mirror, you probably aren’t. GNU software is the core of most free Unix-like OSes, including Linux. The main site to download this software from is ftp:\/\/ftp.gnu.org\/ but it is often overloaded and slow. GNU is nice enough to publish a … Continue reading “Not so GNU”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jameslick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jameslick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jameslick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jameslick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jameslick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jameslick.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jameslick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jameslick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jameslick.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}