Fedora updates getting more like Windows every day

[Siddhesh Poyarekar]

On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 5:13 AM, Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com> wrote:
> It's getting so keeping systems up to date with current patches is
> incompatible with reasonable uptime goals. More and more upgrades
> require a reboot, and even reading the CVE data behind the update it's
> not always possible to tell if a fix is urgent. I'd like to encourage a
> bit more detail in the info with the upgrade, and a little more thought
> about what can be done to reduce reboots.
>
> More operations are specifying maximum outage figures, running 7x24, and
> running things which have long run times and bad checkpoint code.
>
> At least two companies are done with reminding people to shut off the
> desktop overnight, they are putting cloud software on desktops and using
> cloud tech to offload mainframes. Not just new tech such as SETI at home
> and folding use, but things like PVM. I was admin of a PVM group 21
> years ago, but people are still using it.

If you subscribe to the package-announce list, you will get detailed
emails about updates, like this one:

http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/package-announce/2010-August/044962.html

This can help you decide if a kernel update is important for you. If
it is not a kernel update then it will most likely not require a
reboot. Everything else can be made functional through a service
restart at most.

> To some extent RHEL suffers from this as well, though systems seem to
> have fewer and more stable things running.

Same for RHEL too. You get information on pages like:

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2010-0046.html

Customers also get emails with this information so that they can
decide if they want to do an update or not.

To conclude, just because an update is available does not mean that
you need to apply it. You need to do your own research and decide if
an update is relevant for you. And on the point of comparison with
Windows, there is none because you cannot really compare the amount of
information given out on a Windows update as compared to updates for
any Linux distribution.


-- 
Siddhesh Poyarekar
http://siddhesh.in