It seems the updating technology in Ubuntu is just as much a mess as other distributions. After much forum reading I've got the problems associated with updates limited to the following:

I get these errors:
W: GPG error: http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org edgy Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 3FF0DB166A7476EA
W: GPG error: http://nightlies.videolan.org ./ Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 902817E4AA5F4DE6

Ive followed the instructions on the web sites of these repositories but clearly they aren't complete.

Can someone help with this?



Also - is there a different distribution that isn't plagued with this ridiculous update technology?

Thanks

Wow, you failed to update the GPG key for the repository (YOUR MISTAKE) and you blame the distribution ? How nice.. If you don't want the biting sarcasm in the replies, please ask your questions without trying to assign blame to others.

What you see happening is Ubuntu is downloading updates and wants to verify they are authentic by checking against the Ubuntu GPG Public repository key. It is failing because you do not have the current key in your keyring. the repository Keys in Debian are changed annually, I imagine Ubuntu changes theirs on a similar cycle.

Try the following method to retrieve the keys and place them on your public keyring

gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 3FF0DB166A7476EA && apt-key add /root/.gnupg/pubring.gpg
gpg --keyserver wwwkeys.eu.pgp.net --recv-keys 902817E4AA5F4DE6 && apt-key add /root/.gnupg/pubring.gpg

As far as update technology goes APT is far superior to most other available methods. but feel free to go try some other distros if you want..

Fedora uses yum,
Suse uses YAST
Gentoo uses portage
Linspire uses click-n-run It's by far the simplest update mechanism available.. (funny thing, under the hood Linspire is Debian based as well)

All Debian child distributions use apt (Debian, Knoppix, Ubuntu, etc, etc.. )

Yes, the technology of yesterday today; I think it's called Windows or something.

Seriously now, you're not obliged to do any updates. If it's all too complex, just stick with the default.

Yes I just came over from SuSE... their updating was the source of migraines.
They have multiple "highly sophisticated" schemes colliding creating quite the mess.


Thanks for all the info with the keys et al.

I've just been on this distro for two days so I imagine I'll get the hang of this.

As far as skipping the updating... is it my Windowz experience that is tainting my perspective, or is this a risky notion leaving one open to attacks? I'm curious.

Again thanks for the help.

Well, Linux isn't like Windows. It's still (sadly enough) a minor phenomenon and hackers generally do not want to spend their time on something minor. And if they do, they'll be way more interested in all those many Linux servers than in a simple home user. Also Linux has always been written with security in mind while security, even with Vista, was clearly only an afterthought to MS.

The most important thing is to use Linux sensibly, i.e. to avoid using the root account as much as possible; root gives anyone absolute powers, that is including any intruder.

Also updates do not necessarily fix security issues, there are a million reasons: better code, new features, bug patches, etc etc

Btw, there are times when you should be a bit sceptical about updates: while they are intended to bring some improvement at least, they may have exactly the opposite effect. Personally, I'm having major trouble with kernel updates right now, with each update solving one hardware issue only to introduce a new one at the same time. This is an odd case but a real one, too.

What is your problem with doing updates? Ubuntu has an update notifier tool, that tells you when updates are available, and automatically downloads and installs them for you (when you ask it to).

You can also run "sudo aptitude update && sudo aptitude dist-upgrade" in the terminal if you want to make sure everything is working right.

I have never had any major problems with updating Ubuntu or Debian. Apt is the best package manager around, IMNSHO. Fedora's Yum is also pretty good.

If you are having specific problems, do tell and then we can help you out.

--Ian