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A comment on Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish Released. Parent comment

Re:Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish Released by tapoxi on Friday October 19, 2018 @09:27AM (#18256551)
But now it can play MP3s out of the box. Not that I'd ever suggest Linux to someone who doesn't know what a codec is anyway. Fresh installs with friends/family are always fine, but its after an major version upgrade (or many years of version upgrades) that the system will eventually get into a state where Dad can't debug it. I stopped this recommendation after a family friend (who bought a laptop with Ubuntu) had a system update that overwrote xorg.conf, leaving them completely without a GUI.

ChromeOS is an ideal Linux for users like this. Keep updates atomic and the underlying system completely hidden.

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Re:Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish Released by apexalpha on Friday October 19, 2018 @09:59AM (#18256760)
I disagree I have some friends and family who rarely use a computer and I installed Ubuntu because they didn't want to buy a new one and Vista simply sucked. As long as you dont dist-upgrade everything is rock stable.

I set apt-get upgrades to go every month or so automatically. Kernel upgrades happen on reboot. Doesn't even notice!

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Re:Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish Released by arbie on Friday October 19, 2018 @11:28AM (#18257376)
> I set apt-get upgrades to go every month or so automatically. Kernel upgrades happen on reboot. Doesn't even notice!

From experience, this is a terrible idea.

ChromeOS is the only one that I have never had issues with when it comes to silent updates. Windows (document deletion in RS3), MacOS (scanner issues in Sierra), Ubuntu (rsyslog errors preventing Bionic upgrades) have had various issues over the years that I would not impose upon non-technical users. Granted these were major releases, but silent updates are generally trouble.

I like the definition above; a non-technical user is one that does not know what a codec is.

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Re:Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish Released by reitanqild on Saturday October 20, 2018 @03:57AM (#18262287)
>> I set apt-get upgrades to go every month or so automatically. Kernel upgrades happen on reboot. Doesn't even notice!

> From experience, this is a terrible idea.

> ... Granted these were major releases, but silent updates are generally trouble.

Running major updates automatically doesn't seem like a good idea, no.

But I've had few problems with running security updates automatically.

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Re:Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish Released by SSLy on Friday October 19, 2018 @09:38AM (#18256596)
How long ago that `xorg.conf` update was?
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