On Fri, 2002-10-18 at 14:12, Phil Mattison wrote:
> As I expected, lots of folks disagreed with my assertion that
> too many updates are a bad thing. I agree that updates are essential
> for some users, and would not suggest eliminating them. 
> Still, there are many users for whom the only updates are new
> releases of Windows. That happens once every couple of years,
> and that is too often for some. We may look down our noses at 
> such illiterati, but they still represent the bulk of the consumer market.
> What I would like to see is a level of ease-of-use closer to that 
> offered by Windows. I just bought a copy of RedHat 8.0 to upgrade
> from 7.2, but I suspect I will have to start from the disk partition
> step and repeat the entire install and configuration process, which
> is much harder than with Windows, even if you know what you're doing.
> I know I could upgrade the kernel and each little piece every time
> a bulletin comes out about some new security vulnerability, but not
> every update is necessary and its a pain in the @$$ to be tinkering
> with all the time. Its like having a car that needs a tune-up three
> times a week. I think RedHat and the other major commercial
> distros have the right idea, but just don't go far enough. Maybe
> I should just stop whining and accept the fact that using any OS
> is a recipe for exponentially increasing complexity. That's why
> we get the big bucks, right? ;-)
> --
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up2date -u

It's been in Redhat distro's since 7.0

It completely handles installing updates - by default, all except
kernel.

you can set it up as a cron job once a week and you'll never know that
the updates are being downloaded & installed unless you check the log.

Of course the debian folks had to sound off about the apt-get, which is
available for redhat but it is 3rd party.

Craig