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Ksplice Offers Rebootless Updates For Ubuntu Systems
sdasher writes "Ksplice has started offering Ksplice Uptrack for Ubuntu Jaunty, a free service that delivers rebootless versions of all the latest Ubuntu kernel security updates. It's currently available for both the 32 and 64-bit generic kernel, and they plan to add support for the virtual and server kernels by the end of the month, according to their FAQ. This makes Ubuntu the first OS that doesn't need to be rebooted for security updates. (We covered Ksplice's underlying technology when it was first announced a year ago.)"
They appear to be releasing this licensed as GPL v2, but they have a "terms of service" click-through, according to their screenshot.
That doesn't give me great confidence that they really understand the GPL....
The technology looks pretty cool, though.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/packages/name/fedora-ksplice
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Most of the people who would want to patch a system without rebooting aren't upgrading to get new features - they're applying security fixes, which seldom break binary compatibility. That makes it pretty safe to replace an in-use library. Once the update has been installed, you can restart the affected services on a schedule of your choosing, rather than have several minutes of complete downtime. I would expect that the reason this isn't attempted as often under Windows is that DLLs don't follow any system-wide rigorous versioning system like what most Linux package managers impose. This, and the presence of closed-source software, makes it much harder to do this with confidence under Windows.
What more do you want? Specific examples are key if you actually do care about trying to fix the UI.
Out of the box after you install Ubuntu from the LiveCD, by clicking the Applications (you know, the things you run?) menu:
Firefox: Good internet browser.
Evolution: Email client and reminders.
Tomboy (oops it uses mono): Keep track of notes, can load specific notes for a day. Helpful for Todo lists.
Calculator: Normal 4 function calculator with scientific mode if needed.
CD/DVD Burner: works well.
Screenshot Tool: press printscreen, save picture. Much better than Windows where you press the printscreen button and open up Paint to save it.
Pidgin: All in one IM client. Very customizable.
OpenOffice Word: can open all MS Office documents and is a good Office clone.
Rhythmbox Music Player: Keep track of music, works with lots of USB MP3 players (including iPods).
Totem Movie Player: Limited at first, but when you can't play something, it will prompt you to install the needed codec.
Add/Remove: Miles ahead of anything MacOSX and Microsoft has EVER done. Takes care of everything FOR you: downloading, updating, installing, etc. Just search for what you want through the left side or in the search tab.
It's so easy my girlfriend uses it by herself.
Drivers are handled automatically out of the box. No other OS can actually brag about having the highest device support. If it does not work instantly, chances are there will be a prompt to download and install the driver.
The only issues I think are the most common AND frustrating are installing WiFi drivers through ndiswrapper (ndiswrapper is finicky, but when you get it working it works perfect), relearning all the programs you want to use to do the same things you want to do, Windows games and using Wine, and the fact you will have to do a lot of Googling to do advanced stuff. Luckily more and more WiFi cards are being supported out of the box and Wine is getting much better.
Oh, and it's all free.
After reading Windows Can but Won't I am still unimpressed. This article tries to hide a substantial feature preset in Linux but not in Windows. Call it a misfeature, a bug, an engineering decision or a precaution but, as it seems, Microsoft's filesystems do not support file removal well. If a DLL is in use you can't remove it without dire consequence, you are left with modifying the original file.
On Linux, you can remove the DLL without destabilizing running applications. This is because the file is unlinked from the directory structure, appearing as if it was removed, and the old file contents is still accessible to running applications. On Linux, an update mechanism can remove the DLL and put a new DLL in its place without affecting any running applications. Running applications continue using the old DLL, posing no substantial stability risk.
The Linux way isn't perfect either because running applications do not benefit from the update. Such an application will effectively use the old DLL until it is restarted giving a false sense of security. If an affected service is not restarted, then the computer is still at risk.