Updating Your Distro

UPDATING YOUR DISTRO

A very important job to do on a regular basis is to get the updates for your distro: Bugfixes and security updates. Some distro´s need very few updates, others need long lists and large amounts of MB´s to keep them running smooth and safe.

In a nutshell here is why; Distro´s like Mandrake and Redhat are always pressed to get the cutting edge of new verions KDE, Gnome, Mozilla etc. Also there is a big competition between the two of them, this puts pressure on their new releases that come every 6 month.
At the other end of the spectrum there are Debian and Slackware.
Debian has not had a new version since 2 - 3 years, they still do their super-stable ¨woody¨ 3.0 uptill today ( also the base of Knoppix ), all the bugs are fixed long ago and the only updates are security. Slackware is not really pressed for new versions either, they only include fully tested and bug-free apps in their releases, Slackware´s pride is the name they have in stability.

Allright, now we know why to update, here is how:

Mandrake/Mandriva: Mandrake Control Center --> Software Management --> Mandrake Update. A full discription and update-allerts are in This thread, subsribe to the thread and you will get a notification from this forum each time a new update comes out. ( For Mandrake 9.2 Here For Mandrake 10 Here For Mandriva 2006 Here )
( NOTE: The updates you do during install are only minimal, after the install you have to do a full update in the Mandrake Control Center )

RedHat/Fedora: All you have to do is type "up2date" in a console or at a shell or click on that ever so annoying red exclamation mark next to the clock.

Debian: Also very simple open a console ¨su¨ root and type ¨apt-get update¨ and after that ¨apt-get upgrade¨

Slackware: Major security updates are announced on the front page of slackware.com and changes are always being made to the "current" branch. You can follow the changes by checking out This link .
A good and reliable tool for updating is Swaret

SuSE As far as I know Yast has an update function build in:

QUOTE (Jason Wallwork @ Forum Jul 2003)

Specifically, YOU (YaST2 Online Update) and with 8.2, there's a thingie in the task tray (that checks once a day for updates and turn red if there are some available (SuSEWatcher). You can further configure it to automatically download and install updates without user intervention (it does it through a cronjob once per day).

For people on dial-in: Here you can find a list of update RPMs for SuSE. You can download them on any machine connected to broadband and install them later on your own PC.

So, from now on, no more excuses for not being fully updated and bugfree . . .

Bruno

-- Jun 16 2003 ( Revised Dec 9 2005 ) --