Re: [tlug] Kana-Problems

["Niels Kobschaetzki" <n.kobschaetzki@example.com>]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 12:06 AM, Josh Glover <jmglov@example.com> wrote:
> On 21/04/2008, Niels Kobschaetzki <n.kobschaetzki@example.com> wrote:
>
>  > I like my desktop-system up to date and I have not the time to follow
>  >  the changelogs of the 1000+ ports I have installed right now to check
>  >  if it is necessary to install updates.
>
>  If you don't have time to follow changelogs, then you almost certainly
>  don't have time to fix a system when a blind update hoses it, right?
>
>  So stop blindly updating.
>
>
>  >  I do not really expect an update of ports to break my system.
>
>  Then adjust your expectations.
>
>  Remember, you are talking about keeping--in your words--1000+ ports up
>  to date. Would you expect to be able to keep 1000 pieces of software
>  up to date on a MacOS X or Windows system, with no update ever
>  breaking anything?

Well, I can only speak for OS X because that's the system I'm using
mainly for the last years. System updates are tested from developers
in the developer programs from Apple and I guess they do it not on
production machines. After the update is tested Apple releases it into
the wild, tells me maybe what it fixes but usually one should do the
update. Those are bundled updates of packages I usually do not have to
deal with (I guess that would be something like 90% of the ports
because it's all the internal stuff, GUI and so on).
Those never broke anything in my case and when I was an admin in that
area it rarely broker other computers.
And the apps use usually appcasts to update themself. You open them,
they check an rss-feed if there's an update available and if yes you
get to see the changelog (if provided) and decide then if you want to
update or not. OSS-developers on Mac OS X usually tend to have some
version-control-system where you download the actual development tree,
then there are (usually daily) automatically built nightlies
(binaries) which you can use if you want to test and then there are
regular releases via appcast.

>  Modern desktop distros (and I include the BSDs here) are complex
>  beasts, with many intertwining tentacles.

Yp, but some stuff is more complex than it could be. E.g. drivel a
blog editor for gnome. It downloaded every media-app from gnome and
stuff needed to built those for, well, I don't know for what because
that little piece of software is just for posting stuff to blogs.

>  I'd really advocate that you update only security-related stuff
>  automatically, which you should be able to do easily by either simply
>  trusting the FreeBSD security patches implicitly or by following the
>  proper mailing lists (I think Scott gave you info on this). Other
>  updates should only happen when you *know* the update fixes a bug or
>  provides a feature that you really want.

The security-stuff I update via freebsd-update or when the rss-feed
mentions it and that works quite well.
Everything else -- well, I have to search for all the "interesting"
apps I use the rss-feeds to get to know if it provides a feature I
want. After using Mac OS X I learnt to know that there are a lot of
features you think in the first place they are just toys and not
really useful but when they aren't there you miss 'em (like Exposé,
QuickLook and Coverflow in Finder)

At the end I have to say that I get more a feeling for how to keep my
system up-to-date in a sense that it's useful I just have to adjust my
habits.

Niels