> > With all due respect to you all, but I don`t like the idea one bit. It > means > Mandrakesoft has a line into my taskbar which I did not ask for. Just as I > don`t like Microsoft working interactively with my computer, or other > adware/spyware calling home when I still used Windows, I wouldn`t like > Mandrakesoft to have a thread into any corner of my boxes. If it`s an > optional package, fine I won`t use it. If it comes built in the distro I > will disable it, remove it or whatever it takes to avoid it. It goes > against > my sense of privacy. Maybe not to that of others, very well, but I don`t > like the idea.
I've been looking at many of the auto-update features for different distros. RedHat keeps a central database of installed packages if you use their up2date mechanism, and this would probably irk many users. However, most of the others seem to be passive updaters. I.e., they pull down a list of packages and compare them locally *without* sending any information to a central database. In any case, Mandrake's really cool distributed update system would likely preclude an update mechanism that needed a single database. I would like to see a centralized management console for Mandrake systems. The designated management station could maintain a list of updates as some sort of server; the clients (whether local on on the LAN or 'Net) could then query the central server and update the local package database. This would be useful because it allows an operator to get an idea of a system's patch status without needing the machine to be online. The central server need not be an official site, but could be another machine on the LAN that you control.
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