Questions about Kubuntu 12.04 and its updates

[Paul Mooring]

I'm a little late to the party on this one, but I faced the exact same
frustration a couple years back when I was running Ubuntu and Debian on my
workstations.  Both distros had major version upgrades to frequently and
imo pushed updates that weren't ready to get features I don't care about.
My solution was using CentOS as a desktop distro.  It's generally not a
popular opinion but Red Hat plays it ultra conservative and just fixes
security holes in bugs themselves when an upstream maintainer drops
support.  That means you can get 10 years of updates without any breaking
changes as long as you don't care about features.

While I'm stating unpopular opinions, I'd also like to say that not doing
security updates is not necessarily as frightening as some people make it
out to be.  Applying a little logic to the situation, if you're sure you
have no listening services (run `netstat -nalp|grep LISTEN\ ` for example)
your system can't be compromised remotely.  You're still vulnerable to
various user-initiated attacks (java drive-bys, downloading binary files
like executables or pdfs, ect.) but to be honest if you don't browse with
java/flash enabled and your not opening shady e-mails or websites the
chances of actually falling victim to any of that is really really low.

-- 
Paul Mooring
Systems Engineer and Customer Advocate

www.opscode.com



On 12/26/12 11:35 PM, "joe at actionline.com" <joe at actionline.com> wrote:

>As a long-time Linux user, I have tried dozens of different Linux distros
>and been repeatedly frustrated by the endless changes that often seem to
>have made things worse (for me) rather than better.
>
>Of course, there have also been many improvements along the way, but I've
>been burned so many times by doing an update that created a horrific mess
>that I finally came to the point that I have kept one or more older
>systems running an older version of some distro that I got to a reliable
>state as a fall-back position when updates on newer distros created yet
>another nightmare for me.
>
>The best (for me) system I ever had was PCLinuxOS with KDE 3.5 and I still
>have it on a couple of my systems which I *never* "updated" and which have
>remained rock solid.  Simultaneously, I suffered through endless ongoing
>nightmares with KDE 4 until I finally got a system that sort-of worked,
>marginally, but with a lot of goofy, needless widgets and garbage that I
>did not and do not want.
>
>Meanwhile, I tried numerous other distros and environments, none of which
>were as stable, practical, versatile, and functional (to my liking) as PCL
>KDE 3.5.
>
>Just as I started to get a PCL-KDE 4.6 to work reasonably well, PCL forced
>some new so-called "updates" on me that wrecked the whole system and
>caused it to completely quit working.  So, I am finally fed up with PCL's
>"rolling release" fiasco and trying, once again, to find a Linux distro
>that I can "lock-in" without being subjected to yet more "updates" that
>screw up my whole world and cause me endless wasted hours trying to fix
>what wasn't broken before another nuisance "update."
>
>Since I have always preferred a Redhat based derivative, I've generally
>tried to avoid anything *buntu based.  Among the many dozens of distros
>I've tried, older versions of Mandriva and PCLinux have been the
>best/most-stable I've used. I also tried CentOS and Mageia but ran into
>numerous problems with them.  Also tried Mint, Suse, Arch, Puppy, Sabayon,
>Slackware, Vector, Knoppix, Backtrack, Salix, among many more. I know that
>I want nothing to do with gnome or unity.
>
>Recently I tried Kubuntu (12.04) and it seemed potentially pretty good
>(with a few annoying problems), but then right after I installed it, I got
>an "update" notice listing a huge number of changes it wants to do and I
>thought "Oh, no, not again."
>
>So, please forgive the rant, but why can't we have stable Linux distro
>that doesn't try to force endless "updates" on us?   I hate updates.  They
>almost always mess up my systems.
>
>I just want a stable system that does not keep pushing changes.
>
>Are any of you Kubuntu users who have done all these hundreds of changes
>to 12.04 without experiencing problems as a result?
>
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------
>PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss at lists.phxlinux.org
>To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings:
>http://lists.phxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss
>