Linux Mint developers call Users to update their systems

[Alex5723]

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..

1 user thanked author for this post.

Microfix

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[Charlie]

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.

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[Microfix]

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.

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[anonymous]

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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[Ascaris]

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.

 

Group "L" (KDE Neon Linux 5.21.2 User Edition)

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[Alex5723]

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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[Author]

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