image caption: A Microsoft Windows screen showing “Active Hours” with start time set to 12 AM and end time set to 12 AM and an error that says “Choose an end time that’s no more than 18 hours from the start time”.
image caption: A Microsoft Windows screen showing “Active Hours” with start time set to 12 AM and end time set to 12 AM and an error that says “Choose an end time that’s no more than 18 hours from the start time”.
Linux “reboots” every program and service it updates separately.
So the only update that needs a reboot is one of the kernel, which doesn’t happen often.
With Enterprise Linux, you can update the kernel without a reboot, too.
Yes, RHEL and Ubuntu Pro have live kernel patching, but that only includes patches for select vulnerabilities and doesn’t always work depending on the state of the kernel (i.e. is the kernel tainted).
Your Linux distro doesn’t automatically relaunch your desktop session or browser. You need to close+reooen or log out/log in for updates to apply. That’s why Linux and software like Firefox constantly complain when you haven’t restarted after an update.
Can’t confirm. Linux hasn’t complained and I don’t remember Firefox complaining. Maybe it doesn’t happen with the flatpak
Not every distro monitors/reports required restarts, so I imagine not everyone will even notice.
I’m not sure about Flatpak. I think the way Flatpak updates work makes it impossible for Firefox to update itself or detect that a restart is required, as the image doesn’t get patched immediately. My normal go-to is to scan for processes marked yellow or red in htop, but I don’t know if that works for Flatpak.
Unfortunately, Flatpak launcher integration is broken on both of my Linux installs so I barely use it.
I have zypper ps -s as part of my update script so I personally notice through that when something needs to be restarted. It’s pretty rare to have to do an actual reboot. A lot of the software stores notify if you need to restart. I’ve seen it on Discover and GNOME Store (?) at least
Obviously there’s a small handful of things that would require a reboot, but unlike Windows, the vast majority of programs in user space don’t require reboots on update.
There’s also the fact that restarting Windows to update is a much slower and more disruptive experience than restarting Linux.
Okay, that’s not true. Glancing at dbus sideways will result in a reboot. But in systems free of systemd and all its entourage of shit, that’s still true.
OK my bad, I don’t run systemd.
dbus is 4 years older than systemd, thus proving once again that systemd haters have no idea what they’re talking about.