Kernel releases

[Paul Smith]

On Thu, 2015-07-30 at 10:29 -0700,
Christopher.Carlson at zodiacaerospace.com wrote:
> I think having to upgrade the OS more than once a month is
> ridiculous.  One of the reasons I've always preferred Linux is because
> I don't have updates every week, but it seems we have kernel upgrades
> more often than that.

You don't say what version of Ubuntu you're using.  But, if you want to
know why the package was updated you can check the changelog; for
example:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/kernel/linux-image-3.19.0-25-generic

or whatever version of the kernel you have, then click the "Ubuntu
Changelog" link.  Or, you can read the changelog.gz file in
your /usr/share/doc/linux-image-$(uname -r) directory on your local
system.

Most likely the updates are due to security issues: you can find the CVE
numbers and look them up.  Or they are for other bugs; you can look up
the LP number.

You don't have take every update that comes along: you could simply
choose to update once a month instead.  Or, I often update immediately
but don't bother to restart my system (even though it says I need to)
until it's convenient for me.  For kernel packages there's absolutely no
reason you need to restart immediately; your system will work just fine
(modulo whatever bugs were fixed of course) running the old kernel for
as long as you want until you restart.  Most other packages are the same
way.

You can also reset your software updater settings to check for updates
only once every two weeks instead of daily.  Or you can set it to never
automatically check for updates, and just do it yourself whenever you
want to.

But many people prefer to get their security patches immediately and be
notified quickly when a security issue appears.