Vince Hoang wrote: >My main point against blind automatic updates is the timing >of it. With automatic updates, the administrator will not be >around if the updates fail. Imagine the system breaking when the >administrator is out sick or on vacation. When manual updates >are performed, it gives the administrator an immediate chance to >check and see if anything went wrong. > >-Vince > That's considering the symptom is immediately recognizable. It won't be with a newbie.
I usually wait for complaints from the users. In a one-man-show you don't have hours to spend every day verifying every detail. Developers and TCs probably have better stuff to do than what sysadmins do - and it's better to have the updates and a dented cog than not, in that case. Now on huge production servers you need to be strict and monitor every change but not for desktops and classrooms. It's a matter of preference. I'm feel pretty sure Microsoft put a lot of thought into putting these two update ideologies as options in their Windows update tool. My favorite thing about Linux is updating. You can do it a zillion different ways - and they're all better and faster than windowsupdate.com. Tom
