What is broken with software update?

[John Mellor]

I'm getting to the point where I never want to use the graphical
software update facility, since it is ALWAYS wrong.

I just logged in, pulled up software update, and knowing that it
routinely messes up and says that there is nothing to update, I asked
it to recheck for updates.  It came back again with no updates.

Then (since I'm developing a deep distrust of software update), I did a
CLI dnf update.  There were 27 updates pending.  Clearly, software
update is broken.

Its possible that it is configured out-of-the-box wrong.  Is there
anything that I can set to make it actually work, or should I just stop
using it because it is too broken to fix?

Example where software update has totally failed:

[prodadm at production ~]$ sudo dnf update
[sudo] password for prodadm: 
Fedora 22 - x86_64 - Updates                    2.3 MB/s |  14 MB    
 00:06    
Last metadata expiration check performed 0:00:14 ago on Sun Sep 13
09:55:47 2015.
Dependencies resolved.
=======================================================================
=========
 Package                      Arch     Version                 
 Repository
                                                                       
    Size
=======================================================================
=========
Upgrading:
 epson-inkjet-printer-escpr   x86_64   1.5.0-1.1lsb3.2.fc22     updates
   2.0 M
 libxml2                      i686     2.9.2-4.fc22             updates
   684 k
 libxml2                      x86_64   2.9.2-4.fc22             updates
   677 k
 libxml2-devel                x86_64   2.9.2-4.fc22             updates
   1.1 M
 libxml2-python               x86_64   2.9.2-4.fc22             updates
   248 k
 mesa-dri-drivers             i686     10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
   8.5 M
 mesa-dri-drivers             x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
   8.2 M
 mesa-filesystem              i686     10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    35 k
 mesa-filesystem              x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    35 k
 mesa-libEGL                  i686     10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    97 k
 mesa-libEGL                  x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    96 k
 mesa-libEGL-devel            i686     10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    40 k
 mesa-libEGL-devel            x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    40 k
 mesa-libGL                   i686     10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
   213 k
 mesa-libGL                   x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
   191 k
 mesa-libGL-devel             x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
   160 k
 mesa-libGLES                 x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    41 k
 mesa-libOSMesa               i686     10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
   1.3 M
 mesa-libOSMesa               x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
   1.2 M
 mesa-libgbm                  i686     10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    55 k
 mesa-libgbm                  x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    55 k
 mesa-libgbm-devel            x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    28 k
 mesa-libglapi                i686     10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    70 k
 mesa-libglapi                x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    52 k
 mesa-libwayland-egl          x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    37 k
 mesa-libwayland-egl-devel    x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
    25 k
 mesa-libxatracker            x86_64   10.6.3-2.20150729.fc22   updates
   1.2 M

Transaction Summary
=======================================================================
=========
Upgrade  27 Packages

Total download size: 26 M
Is this ok [y/N]: