Linux Mint developers call Users to update their systems

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Update your computer!

Security updates are very important
Stats tell us they’re not being applied by all users
Apply updates right now!
Don’t run an EOL version of Linux Mint

About 30% of users apply updates in less than a week

Between 5% and 30% of users run Linux Mint 17.x..

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Microfix

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Back when I started out with Mint 17.3 I was surprised to learn that I needed to get Security Updates.  I was under the assumption that Linux didn’t need them.  I was even more surprised to learn that it was a good thing to get Kernel updates too, mainly for security reasons.  I can thank my brother first and then the experts here at AskWoody for setting me straight on a lot of Linux things I needed to learn.

Even astrophysicist Carl Sagan when speaking astronomically used Billions, not Trillions.

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Common sense takes too long to document, although Clem has nailed it
Having been using various (mostly debian based) distro’s for a long time,
security updates are exactly that, ignoring them or ‘thinking you know better’ and skipping them, is only going to cause trouble somewhere down the timeline.
As for running end-of-service linux distro’s…it’s your risk, your data and your fault, no-one elses.

Windows - commercial by definition and now function...

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Yes but Firefox is never a good example to update sight unseen as for the rapid release FF variant that ships standard with Linux Mint has to be vetted for other non security related changes that ship along with the FF “Security Updates”. Now Firefox ESR is different and gets security related patching only for the most part!

I keep all of my Linux/Windows dual boot laptops updated on a weekly basis, save Firefox updates until I’ve had a chance to see what the Mozilla Foundation’s added to FF and what they have taken out! But any talk of making Mint Security Updates mandatory is just too Windows 10 like and folks that can manage getting Linux installed are for the most part already more able to manage things on their own.

And many of the Linux Folks on older versions are there because they are waiting for driver updates for their hardware to work properly with the later Mint editions that have the newer Linux Kernels. And some folks like Me are running even newer Linux HWE(Kernel 5.8 for my newest laptop) Kernels  and Mint’s using 5.4 mostly as Mint is just not as rolling of a release as other Linux Distros! I’m on Mint 20.0 but my laptop  needs  Kernel 5.6/Later to operate properly with proper cooling fans ramping under load Driver/Fan Profile so the laptop’s processors will not become thermally throttled.

I will say this, a lot of Mint’s How To Guides are created so far back that the examples are mostly for spinning rust based Laptops and PCs and that needs updating with examples made on PCs/Laptops that are M.2/NVMe compliant or use other SSD IP so maybe that change warrants some reworking of some of Mint’s How To Guides that are having examples that are for modern PCs/Laptops that are mostly shipping with SSDs as their primary drive.

 

 

 

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anonymous wrote:

And many of the Linux Folks on older versions are there because they are waiting for driver updates for their hardware to work properly with the later Mint editions that have the newer Linux Kernels.

It usually works the other direction, like in your case. People with newer hardware sometimes have to wait for the Linux kernel version that works with their hardware to be created, tested, and to find its way down the line to their distro. (The drivers are distributed as part of the kernel, so anywhere you’re thinking “drivers,” “kernel” works too.)

In contrast, people with older hardware are not usually waiting for support to be added to a new kernel… the newer kernels would already have that support inherited from the previous versions, unless the dev team made the hard decision to drop support for the device in question because the technical debt is greater than the benefit of having support for a device that isn’t used much anymore.

If they decided that, there would be little point in waiting unless there was some idea that the kernel devs might change their minds, or if the distro was considering adding support for the thing back into the kernel.

There may be some edge cases that are something like this, but I don’t think there are necessarily a lot of people in this boat.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
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Linux Mint may force updates ?

Applying Updates

An announcement was made last week to explain why security updates are important and to remind people to update their computer.

If you haven’t read it yet please visit https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4030.

We started working on improvements for the Update Manager. In the next release the manager won’t just look for available updates, it will also keep track of particular metrics and be able to detect cases where updates are overlooked. Some of these metrics are when was the last time updates were applied, when was the last time packages were upgraded on the system, for how many days has a particular update been shown…

In some cases the Update Manager will be able to remind you to apply updates. In a few of them it might even insist. ..

Bug Fixes

Package updates were published yesterday for the following projects: xapp, warpinator, nemo, cinnamon-menus, nemo-dropbox, nemo-media-columns, nemo-python. They represent a significant number of changes and fix a variety of issues….

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Linux Mint Monthly News – March 2021

UsrMerge

Last month we announced problems were found in relation to UsrMerge. In particular, packages built in merged systems were not always fully compatible with non-merged systems. A complete scan was done in Linux Mint to identify any other similar issue and a tool was developed to automate this process. In addition, a system report will be backported to recommend a merge to Mint 20 and 20.1 users whose system is not merged yet.

Updates notifications

Statistics recently showed us that many users did not update their computer. The way other operating systems handle updates is either by forcing their users to do so, or by frustrating them and annoying them until they do.

We spent time looking into this and talking to casual users to understand why they weren’t applying updates. We found many of them were sensitive to the importance of applying updates but didn’t do so simply because they were never really told to. When asked why and when they updated their phone they recognized that the phone update notifications were annoying but that they were successful in making them apply the updates…

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Alex5723 wrote:

We found many of them were sensitive to the importance of applying updates but didn’t do so simply because they were never really told to.

That’s a facepalm right there!

If they know it’s important and that an update is available, why would they wait for someone else to tell them to do it? If the house was on fire, and you know that fire burns and you don’t want to be burned, do you wait to be told to leave the house, or do you just do it? Why be a robot that just waits to be told to do something?

One of the key complaints I have about Windows 10, and one of the bigger reasons I left the Windows platform, was the lack of control over updates. When you get people like this, who know they should install the patches but don’t until they’re told to, it’s just giving Microsoft room to argue that forced updates are good.

I don’t know whether people being like that is one of the causes of MS deciding to have mandatory updates, or if it is the result of it. People who are coming to Mint from Windows have had MS forcing the updates for the past five years, so maybe they expect to be forced into an important update in Linux too. Freedom is more difficult than having someone else make all of the decisions, but these are Mint users, so there is already some reason they’re using that instead of Windows 10, where they would not have to affirmatively tell the PC to begin updating. Their ability to choose to update seems to have atrophied from disuse!

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Cybertooth

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Yep, it’s clearly Windows’ fault that Linux users don’t update!

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[Ascaris]

It’s not Windows’ fault. Windows is just a product… it cannot be at fault. It’s Microsoft’s fault (with some of them, at least. I didn’t interview any of them, so it’s a guess).

Many, probably most, Linux users are former or current Windows users, and they didn’t pick up the habit of waiting until someone tells them to update during their time with Linux, since browbeating people to install updates (or just forcing it) isn’t really a thing here. No, these former (or current) Windows users learned that particular behavior somewhere else.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

• This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by Ascaris.

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I agree that security updates are very important, and software updates are relatively important too for a safe and smooth running computer.  However, last year sometime my Linux Mint 19.1 Download Manager was showing the Chromium Browser as a security update.  I use Firefox and I chose to Ignore that particular update.  Firefox updates come in as security updates too, and I do all of those.

Now, about a week ago, I got yet another security update for the Chromium Browser which had this description:  “Extra ffmpeg codecs for the Chromium Browser”.  I still have it in the Download Manager because I’ve been waiting for a good chance to ask this question:  Do I really need these “extra ffmpeg codecs for the Chromium Browser” when I don’t have the Chromium Browser?

As far as I know, I have all the codecs I need and everything works fine.  I’m bringing this up because here is a situation where I’m pretty sure I’m being offered an update that I don’t need.  Am I right?

Even astrophysicist Carl Sagan when speaking astronomically used Billions, not Trillions.

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Are you sure it’s not installed? It should not have been showing as a security update if it wasn’t there. APT checks the installed version against the new version and selects the new version if it is newer. Could it be some other ancillary package for Chromium

As for the ffmpeg extras, you can uninstall those if you’re not using Chromium. It doesn’t matter if you take the update or not if they are not being used.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)

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Charlie

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The Chromium Browser does not show in the Synaptic Package Manager, but Firefox does.  There are no icons or other indications of Chromium Browser anywhere. This new ffmpeg extras update does show in the SPM but is not “supported” (little gold star is not there).  I can’t see any reason to install this new Chromium update either.

Even astrophysicist Carl Sagan when speaking astronomically used Billions, not Trillions.

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I’ve had one chromium update on ignore for a long time and just rechecked it after seeing new content in this thread. it was a dummy ffmpeg package pointing to snaps I think and  not a security update so I ignored it again. I don’t use chromium.

One thing to be aware of is the way flatpaks update on their own. I installed a flatpak program and wondered if I would manually have to update it when i heard of an update but the it updated automatically. Since the flatpaks I have are from the official repos I am not too worried but still scan them when I do my system updates.

My flatpak programs are in my home folder (.var/app) which gets scanned by Clamtk regularly because I have various mmo games that get updated when I sign in to them.

The main flatpak files seem to be in /var/lib/flatpak and the system seems to check for updates around boot time. Things can get a bit weird because we don’t recall installing programs and yet timeshift says many files were created since the last timeshift save. I had this happen today as flatpak updated it’s kde specific files. I ran clamtk because it was odd but nothing came up.

I like flatpaks but don’t like that they are more independent than .deb files.

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Charlie, Cybertooth

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