Linux Mint will work on improving the update installation manager

Updates in an operating system and / or applications, they are a fundamental pillar And it is that although, it is possible to work without updates, the risk of being exposed to vulnerabilities and failures is enormous and in the case of Linux Mint the updates are not installed due to various factors.

Developers Linux Mint recently released that intend to rework update install manager in the next version of the distribution in order to force the distribution to stay up-to-date.

This has been because in a study conducted, it was shown that only about 30% of users install updates in a timely manner, less than a week after their publication.

With that, developers realized that telemetry is not collected in the systemTherefore, an indirect method was used to evaluate the relevance of the distribution components based on the analysis of the Firefox versions used.

Linux Mint developers worked with Yahoo to analyze which version of the browser Linux Mint the users are using. After the release of the package with the Firefox 85.0 update, based on the value of the user agent header transmitted when accessing Yahoo services, the dynamics of the transition of Linux Mint users to the new version of Firefox was calculated.

With that, the result was disappointing, since in a week only 30% of users switched to the new version, while the rest continued to connect from previous versions of the browser, even without support.

Also, it turned out that some users don't install updates at all and continue to use Firefox 77 (which was proposed in Linux Mint 20 version).

As well It was revealed that 5% of users (according to other statistics, 30%) continue to use the Linux Mint 17.x branch, whose support was discontinued in April 2019, that is, updates on these systems have not been installed for two years.

The 5% figure is based on an estimate of browser home page requests, and 30% is based on APT package manager requests to repositories.

From the comments of users who do not update their systems, it can be understood that the main reasons for using old versions are ignorance of the availability of updates, installation in outdated hardware where there are not enough resources to run new versions of the distribution, unwillingness to change the familiar environment, the appearance of regressive changes in new branches, such as problems with video drivers, and discontinued support for 32-bit systems.

Linux Mint developers they considered two ways Main ways to proactively push updates: increase awareness of updates by the user and install updates automatically by default with the ability to easily revert to manual mode for those used to self-monitoring their system.

With this, they announce that in the next version of Linux Mint, it is decided to add additional metrics to update manager to assess the relevance of packages in the system, such as the number of days since the last update was applied.

We are still strategizing and deciding when and how the admin should be made more visible, so it is too early to talk about these aspects and get into the details ... So far, we are working to make the admin smarter and provide more information and more metrics to analyze.

If there are no updates for a long time, Update Manager will start showing reminders about the need to apply accumulated updates or switch to a new distribution branch.

In this case, the warnings can be disabled in the settings. Linux Mint continues to adhere to the principle that harsh enforcement is unacceptable, as the user owns the computer and is free to do whatever it takes with it. The transition to automatic installation of updates is not yet planned.

Finally if you are interested in knowing more about it, you can check the details In the following link.