Let's talk about yum and p2p in Fedora

[Joe Zeff]

On 12/26/2010 11:40 AM, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> Automatic updates that leave the user out of the loop are known to be a Very
> Bad Idea (tm)

Automatic updates are part of the slavewear mentality: I know what your 
computer needs and you don't.  Once you allow them you're effectively 
giving control of what's installed on your computer to whoever controls 
the updates.  Granted, I've never needed to reject an update, but I like 
to know what's happening and occasionally, that's a Good Thing(TM).

I use nVidia graphics on this box and have had good luck with 
kmod-nvidia.  Once in a while, I'll see that there's a kernel update but 
no matching kmod.  With automatic updates, I'd probably end up being 
forced to update and reboot into a system that can't run X and, unless I 
understood what was going on, I'd be hosed.  I've been on 
fedoraforum.org for several years and every time this happens, there are 
threads from newcomers who don't know that they need to reboot into 
their old kernel, or how to do it.  As it is, I have two choices: refuse 
the kernel update or simply hold off on rebooting until the kmod catches 
up.  (Well, in point of fact, I picked choice number three: I have both 
the kmod and akmod so that it doesn't matter if the kmod's up to date.)

How I deal with the situation isn't the point, of course.  What's 
important is that I have enough control over my box to be able to 
control the situation.  My sister uses Ubuntu because, unlike me, she's 
not a geek and needs something that Just Works(TM).  When her updater 
has updates, she installs them; if it tells her to log out and back in, 
or reboot, she does.  On the very rare occasions that something goes 
wrong I walk over to her computer and help her.  Even so, she's still in 
charge because even Ubuntu lets her review the updates and decide if she 
wants them.  Granted, she doesn't have the knowledge to do so but if, 
let's say, I happened to know that a certain update were bad, I could 
warn her and talk her through rejecting it.  She's never forced to 
accept anything, and IMAO anything else would be counter to the basic 
philosophy of Linux.