I'm running Kubuntu 7.04. The Adept Package Manager informs me there are 103 updated packages available. I'm used to deciding what updates I want to install via windows update (I know which types of patches are likely to cause interoperability problems, and what applications to ignore any patches for because I don't use them or rely upon common components they provide). How do I decide what to do in this environment?

install all of them, it will most likely contain an update to the kernel and you will need to reboot after a kernel update...

Well, you could ignore certain updates but that may be counterproductive in the long run. Interdependencies among packages often means that one update can't be done unless other, related packages are updated as well.

I suggest that you use the Synaptic Package Manager GUI to find out more about available packages (Systems > Admin > Synaptic). It offers concise descriptions and allows for various installing/updating strategies. I don't think Adept offers any real advantage over Synaptic, not on (K)Ubuntu at least.

By the way, frequent updates are inevitable with recent releases of distros. If this is inconvenient, you should consider installing an older, stable release (Debian Etch or Ubuntu 6.06).

that is exactly why i suggested he install all updates, i doubt anything will break...

I don't have a problem with frequent upgrades.

I'm used to the different risks of updating Mozilla Thunderbird automatically using the next nightly build, only for major releases, or automatically upgrading for every release. It sounds like upgrading every package is equivalent to the latter.

Thanks. I'll take a look at Synaptic but it sounds like both of you are saying a good rule of thumb is to periodically upgrade everything.

But there is no "Systems -> Admin -> Synaptic" in Kubuntu. It doesn't even come with Synaptic. Adept may not offer any real advantage, but from my experience it's not any worse either. Why bother switching?

What, no Synaptic for Kubuntu? That's weird, I don't normally use KDE distros but the ones I tried did use it (Mepis, PCLinuxOS). I'm sure it's in the repos because it's one of the desktop neutral packages. Oh Well, yes, I doesn't make much a difference anyway.

It's in the repos alright. Of course, you're missing the real problem with the post, which is that KDE doesn't have a "system" menu. As far as I know, Kubuntu is the first and only distro to use Adept by default. It used to be deficient compared to Synaptic, but the latest release (2.1) is pretty good, actually. It used to be crazy slow though.