Re: Linux variants that automatically download and update patches

Bennett Haselton writes:

Since this was the case for all of my CentOS machines at different
providers, I assume that the majority of CentOS dedicated machines
provisioned by hosting providers, are set up not to download and
install updates automatically.

This leaves me with a couple of questions:

1) Are there other Linux variants where the out-of-the-box default is
to download and install updates automatically?

Well, like CentOS and Fedora, for one. All that's needed to be done is to run "yum update -y" from cron, once a day, or something.

All other distros should also have a comparable mechanism for downloading and installing updates.

2) I know some people don't want automatic updates turned on because
they worry that an update might hose their machine, and then when the
machine goes down they'll have no idea that it was an update that
caused it. But even in that case, couldn't you have the default
setting be to check for updates but not to install them, and then next
time the user signs in, they could be prompted, "These updates are
available, do you want to install them?"

Well, maybe CentOS hasn't caught up with Fedora yet, but the default user profile in Fedora automatically runs a Gnome widget that notifies you when updates are available. That's the way it's worked for me, for the last couple of Fedora releases, at least.

3) What about making it the default setting to always download and
apply updates, and then only letting advanced users disable this
option (which is the approach that Windows takes)? Advanced users who

Quite often, an update requires some service to be restarted, upon completion of the update. This is why updates are not commonly autoinstalled, but the user is required to initiate them.


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