Debian GNU/Linux Is Considering "Automatic Upgrades"
Short Bytes: Soon you may witness automatic upgrades in Debian GNU/Linux operating system. For a secure experience by default, this proposal was made during the Debian Cloud sprint in November. Due to various criticalities involved, initially, this feature could be limited to new cloud installations.
Debian GNU/Linux is regarded as a rock-solid Linux distribution that has become the foundation of many popular distributions like Ubuntu. It has a reliable package update system that has inspired many other operating systems.
Currently, the update process is manual for the users. Now, the Debian Project is looking at the possibility of making “the automatic minor upgrades to installed packages” the default for new installations.
Longtime Debian developer Steve McIntyre brought up this proposal during the Debian Cloud sprint in November. “A secure experience by default” was cited as the reason behind this step. This is supposed to be done by installing and configuring unattended-upgrades package within images.
Debian developer Antoine Beaupré has detailed these considerations in a detailed blog post. The post also underlines the problems associated with the automated upgrades.
“Certain sites may not be willing to tolerate a master MySQL server rebooting in conditions not controlled by the administrators,” according to Beaupré.
The possibility of reboots during critical operations was another issue discussed. To solve this, live-patching the kernel was considered.
Beaupré has concluded the post by hinting that, initially, Debian might enable the feature on cloud.
What do you think? Are automatic upgrades a good idea for Debian GNU/Linux? Share your views and feedback in the comments section below.