---
layout:    post
title:     "Fast world, fast updates"
date:      2012-03-27 06:18:43+00:00
tags:      [linux]
permalink: /blog/2012/3/27/fast-world-fast-updates
published: true
author:
    name: Gergely Polonkai
    email: gergely@polonkai.eu
---

We live in a fast world, that’s for sure. When I first heard about Ubuntu
Linux and their goals, I was happy: they gave a Debian to everyone, but in
different clothes. It had fresh software in it, and even they gave support of
a kind. It was easy to install and use, even if one had no Linux experience
before. So people liked it. I’ve even installed it on some of my servers
because of the new package versions that came more often. Thus I got an up to
date system. However, it had a price. After a while, security updates came
more and more often, and when I had a new critical update every two or three
days, I’ve decided to move back to Debian. Fortunately I did this at the time
of a new release, so I didn’t really loose any features.

After a few years passed, even Debian is heading this very same way. But as I
see, the cause is not the same. It seems that upstream software is hitting
these bugs, and even the Debian guys don’t have the time to check for them. At
the time of a GNOME version bump (yes, GNOME 3 is a really big one for the
UN\*X-like OSes), when hundreds of packages need to be checked, security bugs
show off more often. On the other hand however, Debian is releasing a new
security update every day (I had one on each of the last three days). This, of
course, is good from one point of view as we get a system that is more secure,
but most administrators don’t have maintenance windows this often. I can think
of some alternatives like Fedora, but do I really have to change? Dear fellow
developers, please code more carefully instead!
