M$ FUD "of the year"

[nanonyme]

opensolaris does just that; i.e. create a new zfs snapshot for every update. once brtfs has stabilized, linux distros may do the same.

I know and I'm slightly jealous of that feature. It's actually a sane thing to do. (Though implementing it in a way that works on top of LVM2 and can be ported later on to Btrfs would imo be more preferrable. Btrfs is still too far in the future)

[suokko]

I know and I'm slightly jealous of that feature. It's actually a sane thing to do. (Though implementing it in a way that works on top of LVM2 and can be ported later on to Btrfs would imo be more preferrable. Btrfs is still too far in the future)

Why not just keep old packages around and then reinstall them if something goes wrong? We just need some way to boot to fix mode if grub or kernel is failing in early boot.

[wiscados]

Why not just keep old packages around and then reinstall them if something goes wrong? We just need some way to boot to fix mode if grub or kernel is failing in early boot.

I think that's what RHEL does. I think downgrading is the only feature RPM has over DEB.

[nanonyme]

Why not just keep old packages around and then reinstall them if something goes wrong? We just need some way to boot to fix mode if grub or kernel is failing in early boot.

Because if an install is actually botched (say, due to a power failure or so), you can get your libraries in an inconsistent state where high-level package manager is unusable and fixing the problem might require sorting out dozens of packages with low-level package management (where you have to sort out the dependencies yourself). To be easy and usable for HC geeks and casual users alike, Linux should be able to rollback in such situations.
(let alone the scary situations where power failure happens in the middle of something more important like eg glibc install)

[AdrenalineJunky]

I think that's what RHEL does. I think downgrading is the only feature RPM has over DEB.

though its not built in functionality for apt, you can still downgrade easily enough on debian, just download the package from debian-snapshot.org and install with dpkg -i

[suokko]

though its not built in functionality for apt, you can still downgrade easily enough on debian, just download the package from debian-snapshot.org and install with dpkg -i

apt-get install <package>=<version>

If repository still has the old version.

[Svartalf]

Because if an install is actually botched (say, due to a power failure or so), you can get your libraries in an inconsistent state where high-level package manager is unusable and fixing the problem might require sorting out dozens of packages with low-level package management (where you have to sort out the dependencies yourself). To be easy and usable for HC geeks and casual users alike, Linux should be able to rollback in such situations.

You're going to have cases where Windows won't do it any better- lots of them (I distinctly remember some rollback hell on some hotfixes in MS' past where it wasn't "simple" or "easy"...and they fubared your box so badly that it was easier to back up your data somehow and do a nuke-n-pave on the box.). And Linux is capable of the rollback- it's just that most distros don't worry about doing that because it IS painful unless you're using something like Nix or Conary and those two have their own issues and pains that don't make them much better than what we have right now.

[Max Spain]

Don't forget the Windows Update M$ pulled a few weeks ago that was bricking people's boxes (no boot). On Ubuntu for me updates are extremely quick and painless compared to updates for M$ OS's.

[deanjo]

Don't forget the Windows Update M$ pulled a few weeks ago that was bricking people's boxes (no boot). On Ubuntu for me updates are extremely quick and painless compared to updates for M$ OS's.

That pretty much happens from time to time on any OS where updates are applied.

[nanonyme]

You're going to have cases where Windows won't do it any better

Note that I didn't say they did. I just said we could do it better than we do. And a rollback isn't that bad if it's filesystem level and you can fallback to *everything* before the failed upgrade, perhaps by telling it in the bootloader. You'd have a series of upgrades be one transaction that would trigger a snapshot and then you could "cancel" even distro release upgrades if it doesn't work properly.