Tim Bray <[email protected]> wrote:
> Every user I know makes a judgment call.  E.g. I'll update Adium (aka
> pidgin) whenever it asks, but I never install Apple updates without waiting
> a few days to let others be the guinea pigs.  Apple stupidly requires
> reboots for trivial updates, so theirs tend to wait longest.

Sounds like Packagekit should have not just a single checkbox
for "apply security updates silently", but instead a way to
whitelist security updates for individual apps.
Maybe you should file an enhancement request...

> Dan, I think Linus is right: there are going to be *very* few IT shops where
> they'll let software providers do silent mandatory update.  It's a rare
> enough case that it hardly seems worthwhile building the machinery to
> support.

The machinery's already there, it's just a question of harnessing
it in a way that makes sense for both consumers (who want automagic
updates) and enterprises (who want automagic updates, but centrally
controlled by the enterprise).

Taking my workplace for example (which I think also violently objects to
ISV-driven autoupdates).  To set up a workstation, you do a network
boot, and it automatically installs Ubuntu from a local repo.
Ubuntu is then set up to grab updates from that repo (though in
our case the apt-get actions are triggered by some addon like
cfengine or puppet).
So the enterprise has total control with any app packaged as a .deb,
even if the app sneakily triggers "apt-get install /me" via cron.
(I have yet to run this scheme by them, perhaps I'll adjust it
once I get their feedback.)
- Dan
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