The updates firehose

[Pete Chown]

Christopher Blizzard wrote:

> Are people complaining?  Are we actually breaking stuff in the process?

Since you particularly asked, I will say that the volume of updates is a 
problem for me.  (Normally I don't believe in complaining about volunteer 
efforts, so I would have kept quiet.)

You asked if you were breaking stuff in the process.  This morning I was 
hit by this problem, which appears to result from the PAM update:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=244534

Although actually downgrading the PAM package is easy, it did take a 
certain amount of time.  I had to work out what was going on, check that 
downgrading wouldn't leave my system vulnerable, and so on.

I also eventually gave up trying to use a Wacom tablet with Fedora.  Most 
times a kernel update came out, the tablet would fail, always in a 
slightly different way.  It could generally be made to work again, but 
eventually I felt it was taking too much time, and went back to a normal 
PS/2 mouse.

> Are you upset with the amount of bandwith we're eating or just based on
> principal?

Actually the raw bandwidth isn't the important thing for me.  The 
frustration comes from updates that don't work properly, forcing me to 
spend time debugging a system that was previously working.

The perfect solution, IMHO, would be two separate update streams.  There 
would be a "recommended updates" stream for security patches and fixes 
for major bugs.  Then there would be an "optional updates" stream for 
minor bugs, new upstream versions, that sort of thing.  Then I could 
install all the recommended updates, but I could leave the optional 
updates unless I particularly needed the improved functionality.

It might be that the "recommended updates" are almost identical to the 
RHEL fixes, since they would have the same goal.

Pete