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West Columbia
I'm a mercenary systems administrator located in Columbia, SC. My first real hands-on experience with open source software was running Apache on FreeBSD webservers in the late 90s and early 2000s. Since then, I moved on to Samba, BIND, qmail, postfix, and anything and everything else that grabbed my attention. I currently support Windows, FreeBSD, Debian, and Ubuntu workstations and servers doing just about everything that you can possibly do with any or all of them. RAH said it best - specialization is for insects!
Authored Comments
As to why I believe I am "qualified to make the call" about something being an exception or not: I'm currently maintaining 7 personal computers and somewhere north of 50 Linux servers, none of which need custom-compiled software (unless you count in-house developed stuff). This includes sites in the Alexa top 5,000 - which I mention only to avoid the inevitable "there's more to the world than your personal blog site" response.
Very, very few people *need* the absolute most bleeding-edge version of a given piece of software... even developers who are building their OWN software using other packages as dependencies. The fact that so many rush for it anyway in no way changes this.
dis·in·gen·u·ous/ˌdisinˈjenyo͞oəs/
Adjective:
Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does.
Synonyms:
insincere - false - devious - hollow-hearted