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1.9 KiB
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32 lines
1.9 KiB
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Upgrades requiring a reboot on Linux? At last!
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:date: 2012-06-22T20:04:51Z
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:category: blog
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:tags: linux
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:url: blog/2012/6/22/upgrades-requiring-a-reboot-on-linux-at-last.html
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:save_as: blog/2012/6/22/upgrades-requiring-a-reboot-on-linux-at-last.html
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:status: published
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:author: Gergely Polonkai
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I’ve recently received an article on Google+ about Fedora’s new idea: package upgrades that
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require a reboot. The article said that Linux guys have lost their primary adoo: “Haha! I don’t
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have to reboot my system to install system upgrades!” My answer was always this: “Well, actually
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you should…”
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I think this can be a great idea if distros implement it well. PackageKit was a good first step
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on this road. That software could easily solve such an issue. However, it is sooo easy to do it
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wrong. The kernel, of course, can not be upgraded online (or could it be? I have some theories on
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this subject, wonder if it can be implemented…), but other packages are much different. From the
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users’ point of view the best would be if the packages would be upgraded in the background
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seemlessly. E.g. PackageKit should check if the given executable is running. If not, it should
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upgrade it, while notifying the user like “Hey dude, don’t start Anjuta now, I’m upgrading it!”,
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or simply denying to start it. Libraries are a bit different, as PackageKit should check if any
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running executables are using the library. Meanwhile, PK should also keep a notification
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somewhere telling the users that some packages could be upgraded, but without stopping
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this-and-that, it can not be done.
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I know these things are easier said than done. But I think (a) users should tell such ideas to
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the developers and (b) developers (mostly large companies, like Microsoft or Apple) should listen
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to them, and at least think of these ideas. Some users are not as stupid as they think…
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