Kubuntu won't boot

[Ralf Mardorf]

Disclaimer - I fully agree with Liam to update our Ubuntu and all other
Linux installs as often as possible, but with the latest "Maliciousness
(Re: How do we disable the snap stuff)" related threads in mind, there
are a few things to keep in mind.

Note, I update my Arch Linux and Ubuntu installs usually more than one
time a day manually.

However, some Linux software is not security relevant, if a Linux
machine e.g. isn't connected to the Internet at all and not used with
USB sticks from others.

Some software wasn't improved much, if at all, most likely for
more than a decade.

IOW if there is no security or feature reason to update, an update
gains nothing and in the most worse case it does harm. Some users
probably should stay with a LTS release as long as possible and avoid
packages that receive major version updates within an Ubuntu release
cycle, when it is developed by shilly-shally upstream and results in
something like Firefox.

On Wed, 28 Jul 2021 11:05:13 +0200, Liam Proven wrote:
>OMG. This is not Windows, you know. This is not Windows. Updates are
>your friend. Do them early, do them often.

The same applies to Windows (assuming Windows 10). On Windows just run
the Windows update troubleshooter, if you get the obligatory error code
0x80070643, see
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-update-troubleshooter-for-windows-10-19bc41ca-ad72-ae67-af3c-89ce169755dd
. This error code is for nothing in particular, so don't follow hints
from the Internet. While one common issue indeed requires to uninstall
and reinstall two versions of .NET framework, it not necessary is the
culprit, let alone all the other odd pointers. Run updates manually and
if an update breaks the Windows machine, run the Windows update
troubleshooter. In my experiences the Windows update troubleshooter did
fix all issues that happened around every tenth update. I have to admit
that I'm not using Windows that much and apart from this it runs in a
virtual machine.

Updates are not always our friends. I'm very very very very much
experienced with Arch Linux, Ubuntu and iPadOS updates on bare metal.
Not that seldom updates are a PITA. After Linux updates a power user
sometimes has to do a lot of work, to fix issues, on iPadOS you can
only beg the developers to fix issues, to grant backwards
compatibility, but often begging gains nothing at all and a lot of your
work is rendered useless. To be fair, this is work you can't do with
Linux machines at all, since in some domains (audio, video and
photography come to mind) Linux software is way behind the times
(likely for several decades), for several reasons. If you e.g. buy a
full-frame DSLR camera today, you might get next year an ASP-C DSLR
camera for half of the price, that is as good, as your full-frame DSLR
camera today. Now take a look how many vendors of DSLR cameras are in
business. Each of those companies provides several product lines. How
should Linux software for free as in beer support all those cameras?
Who should pay for it?
This is how hdspmixer for Linux machine RME audio card does look like
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/user/nando/hdspmixer.png
for probably more than a decade, this is how the vendor's Total Mix FX
does look like for the same cards on Microsoft and Apple based
machines today
https://www.rme-usa.com/files/uploads/Artists/totalmixfx-screen.jpg.

There's quasi no reason to update the Ubuntu package alsa-tools-gui, if
you are using a RME audio card, as I do.

In a nutshell: Usually the best approach is to update as often as
possible, one reason to do so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-day_(computing)

Updates are not painless. Even not when using an Ubuntu LTS release,
since some software, at least Firefox, but probably other software,
too, is "inconstant", even when using an Ubuntu LTS.