Linux Mint Wants You to Update your System More Frequently. To keep your system secure and safe from the newest vulnerabilities, you would like to stay it up-to-date. Without having the newest security patches available, you shouldn’t expect things to be completely secure (even if you think that so), right? However, even with all the notice about the simplest practices for complete security, we are humans in any case. And, not everyone realizes the potential risk of not applying updates.
Linux Mint assures no windows style updates
Recently, Linux Mint team observed that not all users regularly update their computers, and a few are still running EOL (End-of-Life) versions that include Mint 17.X. So, they published a blog post encouraging users to update their computers while mentioning how easy and reliable it’s to update your systems. They even mentioned the steps to enable automatic updates, if need be. Automatic updates aren’t enabled by default.
After a couple of days, Mint team also shared the plans on improving the update manager to encourage more users to update their systems.
Does it include ‘Forced Updates like Windows’?
No, Linux Mint won’t force updates to its users. Considering last year’s bold step to disable Snap by default, is that what you think that they’ll find yourself doing?
As per the official blog post, they mention:
In some cases, the Update Manager is going to be ready to remind you to use updates. during a few of them, it’d even insist. We don’t want it to be dumb and obtain in your way, though. It’s here to assist. If you’re handling things your way, it’ll detect smart patterns and usages. it’ll even be configurable and allow you to change the way it’s found out .
Here, some means the word “insist” and believe that Linux Mint goes to approach the system updates like Windows and doubtless force updates.
But, I feel that’s totally a wild claim to form supported the wording. You don’t need to take my word for it, Clement (Creator of Linux Mint) clarified more about it within the comments section of their official blog post.
Let’s undergo that here:
In other words, the Update Manager will allow you to configure how it behaves and would also ask you if you would like to be reminded of the updates. I don’t think that a reminder for important updates is invasive, especially if it helps a selected group of individuals to possess a secure PC as their daily driver. Also, as Clem mentions, the Update Manager is going to be smart enough to understand if you would like the reminder or not. So, definitely, the concept is clear here and therefore the user will have total control over what must happen.
Will the Update Manager Collect & Share your data?
As mentioned in their blog post:
In the next release, the manager won’t just search for available updates, it’ll also keep track of particular metrics and be ready to detect cases where updates are overlooked. a number of these metrics are when was the last time updates were applied, when was the last time packages were upgraded on the system, for a way many days features a particular update been shown…
This means that the update manager is going to be smart enough track of how you interact with updates. But, some had their concerns with the metrics being shared behind their back as a privacy issue.
Clem also clarified that by mentioning that the metrics are going to be only relevant to the Update Manager and can not be sent anywhere. Of course, if you’ve got trust issues with more metric collection to enhance the update manager, here’s what he had to say:
So, of course, there’s no doubt about any data being sent anywhere.
