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Fedora Introduces Offline Updates
itwbennett writes "Thanks to a new feature approved this week by the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee, you won't hear Fedora 18 users bragging about systems that have been running continuously for months on end. 'Fedora's new Offline System Update feature will change the current system to something that is more Windows- and OS X-like: while many updates can still be made on the fly, certain package updates will require the system to be restarted so the patches can be applied in a special mode, according to the Fedora wiki page on the feature,' writes blogger Brian Proffitt."
> Are Gentoo/Debian really that intertwined with whatever Fedora maintainers decide?
Not yet. But if GNOME and/or Firefox start requiring the feature other distros have a choice between two bad options. This new Linux only notion that started with systemd is increasingly Fedora only. You can have your distro if you want, if it behaves just like Fedora. One big monolitic blob of alien tech. Want the new udev? It is part of systemd. Want the new GNOME, wait for it to be unusable without udev which requires systemd. And so on.
Democrat delenda est
If X11 needs an update, bounce the user to the console until it completes.
Or, update X, and the user gets the new version when X is next restarted. This is what Arch does: the old files (binaries) are deleted, but remain on disk until the program exits. I've had uptimes of many months and not had trouble with X being updated.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I *suspect* it is perhaps due to securing system files in a manner so they can't be modified when running multi-user (thus immune to exploit by user code) - kinda like freebsd securelevels perhaps. At least, thats the only reason I can see for it.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
try resizing your /var or / LVM partitions while the system is running, let me know how that goes
An OS upgrade has no business resizing your /var or root partitions. Period. Heck, you have to be pretty ignorant if you presume they're always local.
Seriously, what has happened to Fedora lately? First they added gvfs so backup programs broke when root was denied access. Then the went Gnome 3 to cater to the iGeneration. Then they went to systemd, where you can't quickly and easily decide what to run on startup in each runlevel, but have to edit dozens or hundreds of different files. And don't even get me started on mtab. Now this?
Thank goodness RHEL is supposed to be feature fixed for many years to come. And there, updates don't require a reboot. They actually TEST.
It's not 1998 anymore, every OS is stable and can boot quickly. Nobody cares about your "uptime".
Business users sure care about uptime.
And a modern system can easily take 10 minutes or more sorting out and testing the hardware and RAIDs before it even begins to boot.
Continue living in your iPad world, but know that you can access diddley squat on your iPad unless the servers at the other end work reliably.