Updates to 15.04 and 15.10

[geezer]

I have noticed the past few months that 15.xx has been getting updates daily or almost daily. Is this because 15 is so new and the developers are changing things so rapidly? Is 15 so unstable that they need to keeping updating?

I haven't really noticed it to be unstable. I have had problems with crashes and system freezes, but I am pretty sure that most (all?) were due to using the latest s/w for the AMD radeon cards. I have forgone the radeon s/w and now the crashes and system freezes haven't re-appeared. I sworn before and do so again to never buy another system with one of the gaming video cards. I think they work very well under Windows, but have forever been a headache for me under Linux.

I do not remember so many updates in the past.

What is going on? Not complaining, just curious.

[claydoh]

I dunno, it probably depends on what extra software sources one has added. I sure don't get updates on my 15.10 box all that often, but they are usually security updates - kernels and the like. Most linux distros push these out as they come in, so they seem like a lot, but they are tiny.

If you have ppas added, look at those - some of them do get updated very often, but that is not universal.

Anecdotally, I don't see/perceive a difference in the level of updates compared to, say, 14.04 after 6 to 12 months.

[geezer]

I dunno, it probably depends on what extra software sources one has added. I sure don't get updates on my 15.10 box all that often, but they are usually security updates - kernels and the like. Most linux distros push these out as they come in, so they seem like a lot, but they are tiny.

If you have ppas added, look at those - some of them do get updated very often, but that is not universal.

Anecdotally, I don't see/perceive a difference in the level of updates compared to, say, 14.04 after 6 to 12 months.

Hmm - strange. I have been getting updates almost daily. I say daily because I can remember only 2 or 3 days in Feb that I didn't get updates. Both back under 15.04 and now with 15.10. The only repository that I can remember adding is for VirtualBox. That certainly doesn't mean that I haven't added one or 2, but I do not remember doing so. I just checked package manager and the only added repositories are for Virtualbox and java.

I think I'll start noting down the days that I get updates, rather than relying on my memory.
And the updates seem to be for standard distro s/w. Today I got a notice for an update to VirtualBox, but that is the only update I can remember for s/w that wasn't installed when Kubuntu was installed.

[geezer]

In /var/log/apt/ you'll find the history of updates.

Thank you. I kept a simple log of my own on a post-it note. Simply noted the date and how many updates occurred on that date. I had one that I noted that did not show up in the log in that directory.

Here's what the log showed:

/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :2: Log started: 2016-03-01 12:43:05
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :130: Log started: 2016-03-01 12:57:59
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :168: Log started: 2016-03-01 21:08:33
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :202: Log started: 2016-03-02 08:57:06
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :243: Log started: 2016-03-02 14:03:34
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :304: Log started: 2016-03-03 11:40:40
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :333: Log started: 2016-03-04 13:25:43
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :451: Log started: 2016-03-06 08:44:33
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :483: Log started: 2016-03-06 08:45:11
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :525: Log started: 2016-03-07 15:05:45
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :557: Log started: 2016-03-07 16:23:57
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :597: Log started: 2016-03-08 13:29:41
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :633: Log started: 2016-03-10 09:07:44
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :729: Log started: 2016-03-10 15:31:29
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :795: Log started: 2016-03-14 16:09:41
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :948: Log started: 2016-03-16 17:53:24
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1098: Log started: 2016-03-19 14:48:39
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1245: Log started: 2016-03-21 09:49:59
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1282: Log started: 2016-03-21 14:57:59
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1326: Log started: 2016-03-21 20:15:53
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1364: Log started: 2016-03-24 08:58:46
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1393: Log started: 2016-03-25 10:01:47
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1428: Log started: 2016-03-25 17:44:26
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1548: Log started: 2016-03-29 08:19:29
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1585: Log started: 2016-03-29 17:05:15
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1641: Log started: 2016-03-30 09:11:57
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1679: Log started: 2016-03-31 08:53:49
/var/log/apt/term.log.1.gz :1725: Log started: 2016-04-01 09:23:55
/var/log/apt/term.log :2: Log started: 2016-04-05 09:35:01
/var/log/apt/term.log :157: Log started: 2016-04-06 20:30:02
/var/log/apt/term.log :191: Log started: 2016-04-08 11:43:24


That comes to an average of slightly over 1 day between updates.

Now I'm not complaining. Far from it. I appreciate frequent updates that keep things at the latest level.

It's just that subjectively, I don't remember this frequency of updates in the past. I never really kept any count before, so, objectively, I cannot really say.

It's just that it seemed they were more frequent now and I wondered why. Is it because of the move to a new base or what. A new base I can understand. Or maybe the developers are getting more help or there are more of them or they are more active?

Just wondering.

[jlittle]

Well, IMO, plasma 5 was half-baked when released with Kubuntu 15.04, so there's been a lot of fixes and a lot of changes as various components of KDE have been ported to the new framework. There has also been waywardness in the update notifier, affecting different installations differently; this might have caused different perceptions of the frequency of updates.

Regards, John Little