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How can I push to Launchpad if port 22 is blocked??

Asked a question about using git, and pushing to Launchpad. I was asked my distribution, I responded "19.10", and asked why that mattered. I did not get an answer, because it obviously does not matter:

  • git -- a static and well established revision control system
  • launchpad -- a website

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The comments revolving around me being EOL are thus superfluous and annoying, because they are asked as routine but lacking any reasoning or justification.

There should be a caveat that when citing the No support for EOL rule, that the question has to be actually dependent upon the version of Ubuntu, and not simply asked as "Routine".

Asking,

  • Would the answer vary depending on the version of ubuntu?
  • If no, then don't bother asking.

Would be sufficient.

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    That policy (which is currently an unworkable policy for various reasons -- hoping to attend to it later) is indeed only supposed to apply when the problem is specific to an "EOL" version, so close-voting the question would be wrong. However it seems not unreasonable to ask what version you are using, for example to know what networking tools are most likely to be available.
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 3:39
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    Thank you for asking the question. It's part of a bigger issue of what's on- and what's off-topic. And whether such questions should be edited to make them "on-topic". I would love to edit questions about KDE neon to make them "on-topic" but am under the impression that's somehow wrong. Yesterday, we had this Kubuntu 19.10 question that was nearly closed (4/5). Fortunately, an answer was posted as a comment and the close votes have been removed after OP stated the issue exists in 20.04 as well.
    – DK Bose
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 4:22
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    @DKBose curious: why would KDE neon be any more on-topic than, say, Linux Mint?
    – muru
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 10:05
  • @muru (1/2) That's partly what confuses me. Simplistically, what's not an official flavor or EOL is off-topic. Re. the latter, "Support for versions for Ubuntu releases past their Support or "End of Life" (EOL) — unless the question is asking how to upgrade to a supported release." There's no other visible qualification, AFAICT. But I've read animated Q&As here about how some Mint questions could benefit Ubuntu users. Similarly, some questions about KDE neon, the Pop thing, and Debian, just to give a few examples, could fit the bill of being useful to users of Ubuntu official flavors.
    – DK Bose
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 10:38
  • (2/2) IIRC, there also were debates about leaving open questions posted in languages other than English. And rather recently, there were differing opinions on when questions about the release candidate would be on-topic. IMO, given the "diversity" of users, rules should be non-nuanced.
    – DK Bose
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 10:38
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    I consider the policy we have about other distros than Ubuntu being off topic (which I strongly support) to be very different from our EOL policy (such as it is). In particular, our scope is not defined with regard to Ubuntu specificity at all, and so we should not have to think about what is specific to Ubuntu. But, our site itself, and Ubuntu's own documentation, provides information on what is specific to a particular Ubuntu version, so it is reasonable to consider that.
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 11:53

1 Answer 1

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It does occasionally matter though... Even if it doesn't in this case.

The people initially involved in the question might not know or appreciate the finer details of what's going on. Networking stacks and application firewalls are slowly changing, and I won't be surprised when systemd takes over from iptables/ufw then grub, and bash, ad infinitum. The tools available to work around it (eg a wg VPN) might not be present in older unsupported releases.

That is all to say, the way we answer things will change with time, so it's good manners —if nothing else— to tell people what version they're answering for so their effort isn't wasted.

On your particular post, there's also an "is this legal?" question hanging over it. Circumventing network restrictions on a network you don't own are the sort of things mentioned in criminal computer misuse laws. I feel like this has come up on Meta before.

As for the broader policy of sun-setting old releases, it achieves a few things, from simplifying the pool of knowledge to answer things, to the public health argument, that it does none of us any good to have a pile of computers without security updates roaming around. Get vaccinated and install your updates.

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