updates on production machines

[Nils Kassube]

Matt Johnson wrote:
> I've been following the forums for a little while and there seem to
> be quite a few 'show-stoppers' that arise when folks update their
> machines (remaining in the same release).

> Are these issues pretty rare?

I would think these issues are quite rare. On this list you only see 
those who stunbled upon problems. But you don't see all the others who 
had no problems. They have better things to do than tell everybody that 
the update worked.

It is similar to a hotline that helps people with alcohol problems. If 
you listen to those calls you might think that everybody is an 
alcoholic. In reality there are many people without alcohol problems but 
they won't call that hotline.

Now I don't want to say that there are no issues, but they are surely 
not as frequent as it seems to be from reading this list.

> How do people protect against issues
> caused by updating packages?

In the last years there was only one security problem I remember which 
demanded rapid action. Everything else could wait a few hours. Therefore 
I usually only install updates when I have time to troubleshoot possible 
issues. OTOH, I'm running Kubuntu on my private machines at home, not on 
machines which are used for business work. So this may not be an option 
for you.


Nils