What I have done for a long time with my Linux installations is to keep them up to date. So, that is, as they are Fedora I have issued "yum update" commands periodically. There are generally a lot of updates.

I am not sure, however, this has not been more trouble than it was worth. Often what seems to happen after an update is that something stops working and I have to spend quite a bit of time trying to find out why.

Far fewer times have I directly found something fixed (and usually it was something I had done a work around for, anyway).

I wonder if people have thought instead that it might be better to only update things that either one really needed, or that one knew were, for example, crucial security updates.

If updates keep breaking your system, then only update for security fixes.

Yes, and things one needs to run newer software; I have more or less decided that, but was wondering what people thought of this in general.

It's not that the system is totally "broken", but there are regressions, and often then can be fixed after some work, but it doesn't seem worth it.

It's not just my system though. Pretty sure this is a common issue (that's usually what I find when googling).

Easy solution - stop using Fedora. If you can't handle things spontaneously breaking on an update, you shouldn't be using a bleeding edge distro like Fedora, it's what they do. Drop back to a more stable distro and you'll find that updates stop breaking things, albeit you have to deal with older versions of software - it's a tradeoff.

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Obviously there is a tradeoff between those two things, but that doesn't mean that the degree of things breaking in a "less stable" distribution can reasonable be excused no matter how high it is (I am not saying it reaches that point for any distribution, just making the general point). Incidentally, the current broken thing is also broken in current Ubuntus, and so, I think, was the previous one.

I would also think that the main point of updates, even for Fedora, should be to fix bugs. So even if each of its stable releases are "bleeding edge" (does Fedora itself describe them that way?) the updates to those releases should be steadily becoming less "bleeding edge" over time.

In fact they do say here that
Maybe I should switch distributions, but, yes, since it is a tradeoff, it would be rather hard to evalute. I've used Fedora since 1995 (since RH 4.0) although that should not a real consideration.

Anyway, I wasn't asking whether I should change distributions. I was asking whether people had opinions on whether to keep system totally up to date, versus just updating what one needed.

That will depend on the type of system one is using. Systems like Debian and Slackware are stable releases with reliable software. They do not introduce new applications until the next release. Systems like Arch are constantly changing with new software continually being added and updated, instead of periodically releasing new versions of the systems. Obviously, the updating regimes will be different. With systems following different development models, there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach to updating.

Traditionally (and I mean since about 1960) commercial software is issued in releases where a release contains new features. Between releases bug fixes are issued as needed. One of the reasons for doing it this way is that commercial software can charge for new features but not for bug fixes. As I understand your question that is what you are looking for. Open source does not work that way.

Open source is a mixture of a large number of projects each working to their own development schedule. Open source project releases include both new features and bug fixes mixed in whatever ratio the developers feel like producing. A distribution is a collection of a large number of projects at an arbitrary point in time. The main bug control that a distribution exercises is to make sure that a software package and its dependencies are in sync. Some distributions also do a fair bit of work finding bugs and reporting the bugs to developers. A few distributions even sometimes submit bug fixes with their bug reports.

The only control that you have over the long term stability of your software is to do like suicidaleggroll suggests and use a distribution which delays distribution of software until it has been field tested for a while.

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Steve Stites

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OP said:

Maybe I should switch distributions, but, yes, since it is a tradeoff, it would be rather hard to evalute. I've used Fedora since 1995 (since RH 4.0) although that should not a real consideration.

Anyway, I wasn't asking whether I should change distributions. I was asking whether people had opinions on whether to keep system totally up to date, versus just updating what one needed.

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Sid-based Debian distros like siduction (and others using sid repos which are usually installed using the smxi script of H2O), are a favorite of mine and I recommend them to broaden out with. Even their distro-specific forums warn of dangers encountered for dist-upgrades, especially. Once packages are as desired (and I always for example) I backup with clonezilla and pay attention to the distro's forum regarding upgrades.

It can be fun to have the latest packages for selected tasks. I quite enjoy it. No regular intervals for upgrades, just as desired, is how I operate. If I want to upgrade regularly, I use "testing."

But I'm a Debianite with Slacker leanings, so I say, "Do as you wish and have fun!"

Just for interests sake, here is the complete paragraph about Fedora update policy for stable releases that I quoted part of above:
Admittedly, if Fedora primarily wants to, as it claims, just fix bugs with its updates, it will be more difficult to for those included packages that do not distinguish between bug fixes and new features. It seems that this problem would be faced by all distributions, though.

I know Slackware has a security mailing list, which discusses only security updates.

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Thanks, I (hope I) don't the need the discussion myself... but of course also in Fedora it is very easy to automatically get only (what it considers to be) security updates.

So I think what I will do most of the time in the future is avoid updates other than security updates and those that I know I need for some reason.

That statement is mutually exclusive. Fedora doesn't have stable releases, Fedora releases are what they are, there are no stable versions, no long term support, etc.

Regardless of what they say in their documentation, Fedora is a bleeding edge distro. Package versions are the latest of the latest, distros are released every 6 months and go unsupported after 12 months, and updates VERY OFTEN introduce just as many bugs as they fix. Fedora is the test bed for RHEL. It's the distro they use to introduce new features and work out the bugs. Bug reports, in my experience, often go unfixed, as by the time the cause is finally found the Fedora version on which it was reported goes unsupported and the bug is dropped, regardless of whether or not it's been fixed. This is part of the reason why elusive bugs persist through many different versions of Fedora. The support cycle doesn't stick around long enough for the cause of a bug to be identified and fixed, so before you know it, POP, it gets dropped without any kind of answer.

I used Fedora for many years, and finally dropped it after version ~17 because I just couldn't handle the bugs anymore. Everything is working one day, then you do a yum update and some random service breaks. Three days later you do another yum update, and it's magically working again, or not, depends on if other people ran into the same problem. If you care about stability, don't run bleeding edge distros. This includes Fedora, Arch, Ubuntu, Debian Unstable, etc.

These distros certainly have their place, I'm not saying they don't, but you need to sit down and have a serious discussion with yourself about your requirements for bleeding edge library/version support versus your requirements for stability. You can't have both. You don't have to stick with the extremes either, there is a middle ground. There are distros out there that offer, let's call it "advanced" support, rather than bleeding edge, with quite a bit more stability compared to Fedora and friends, eg: OpenSUSE. There's also Debian testing, which is a bit more stable than those mentioned earlier. You don't have to jump straight from same-day "let's see if this works" program versions to 5+ year old archaic never-going-to-die versions ala RHEL 6. The available distros run the entire gamut. In fact how aggressive the developers are with program/library versions is one of the defining characteristics of a distro IMO. Default DE and package management systems are much less important.

When I go to pick a distro, the very first question I ask myself is, "Which one follows a software latency/stability approach that is most in-line with my intended use of this machine", and go from there. From the sound of it, you're simply picking the wrong distro for your intended application.

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When I used Fedora, I always installed the security plug-in for yum:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US..._security.html
http://linux.die.net/man/8/yum-security

Even then, I still found it too experimental: the last straw was when they switched to Gnome 3 before the configuration tools were finished.

I don't keep my systems up to date, I also do use distros that have LTS style releases versus continual updates. Meanwhile there are still tons of updates which come down all the time and I set it up to ignore them.

That's just me and I prefer to have consistency until I choose to update or install a new OS. I'm the same with Windows.

Right, even with LTS distributions there will be updates (not as many but potentially still quite a lot, as you observe) and the question arises *even there* as to whether one should apply them all. I think the reasonable position is that there is no good reason to just mindlessly do that, even if (as is declared to be the case even with non-LTS Fedora) they are all just intended to be bugfixes and (I at least find that) it is so temptingly convenient and easy to do.

I like to get new things quite frequently (fully understanding there will be some breakage there) so I probably don't want to use an LTS distribution and thus have a higher risk of *other* things breaking as well in the bargain (although with an LTS, once could just selectively build oneself the new things one wants to try, but it seems to me not so convienient). But it seems to make sense to lessen the risk by dividing updates roughly as follows: (1) those that seem likely to fix an explicit issue one has (2) those that are considered important security updates by a reasonably trusted authority (3) those that that are intended to fix bugs, but not bugs one is personally aware of as impacting one's experience (4) those that are considered enhancements. Then, apply just updates (1) and (2).

(I consider this basic position to be a "solution" and have marked the thread accordingly)