For me, it’s about reducing the amount of time the “update available” icon shows up in the system tray, because its very presence bothers me. Maybe there’s something cool and new. Maybe it fixes a severe security problem. If it’s for programs I’m not using right now, then the update can be applied right now. Otherwise it’s going to have to wait until I’m done. And bother me.
Yes, I could turn updates off and never see it, but that seems like a bad plan in the long run.
Can’t you update it all regardless of whether you’re using it because the Linux file system leaves the old file intact and just writes a new file and updates the pointer so anything still using the old file carries on as if nothing happened and just gets the update the next time you run it?
This is true. But then I’m not using the latest version while I still have an active session, and that can lead to weird behaviour or errors after the fact.
Case in point, I once received an Xorg update that I allowed to install, but didn’t restart the computer properly until much, much later.
By then I’d forgotten about the update, so when I restarted and started having graphics problems, I was mystified.
I’ve also forgotten how that all panned out, but in the same situation I’d roll back to a previous Timeshift snapshot and work the system forward again until I find the culprit or things are stable, so I assume that’s what I did back then.
For me, it’s about reducing the amount of time the “update available” icon shows up in the system tray, because its very presence bothers me. Maybe there’s something cool and new. Maybe it fixes a severe security problem. If it’s for programs I’m not using right now, then the update can be applied right now. Otherwise it’s going to have to wait until I’m done. And bother me.
Yes, I could turn updates off and never see it, but that seems like a bad plan in the long run.
Can’t you update it all regardless of whether you’re using it because the Linux file system leaves the old file intact and just writes a new file and updates the pointer so anything still using the old file carries on as if nothing happened and just gets the update the next time you run it?
This is true. But then I’m not using the latest version while I still have an active session, and that can lead to weird behaviour or errors after the fact.
Case in point, I once received an Xorg update that I allowed to install, but didn’t restart the computer properly until much, much later.
By then I’d forgotten about the update, so when I restarted and started having graphics problems, I was mystified.
I’ve also forgotten how that all panned out, but in the same situation I’d roll back to a previous Timeshift snapshot and work the system forward again until I find the culprit or things are stable, so I assume that’s what I did back then.