Automatic updates were introduced in Windows 98, and considering how many end users who think that Fluffy217! is a secure password, a IP address is some sort of bathroom joke, and WTF does a security code have to be sent to their mobile device when logging into a financial site wasn't computers supposed to make life earlier, it's a necessary evil. I've had too many discussions trying to justify why a security patch needed to be run which took much longer than actually installing the goddamn patch. Now, for a corporate or government environment where you actually got paid to test and validate is one thing, but to a parent who looks at you as unpaid technical support. Being one-two months behind is one thing, but being one year behind? Let me point you to our documentation about our slow release policies.
So for a parent you just set up a cron job for them.
I should get to decide whether and when the cron job is run on my own computer.
Are you saying that Windows Update should default to "opt-in" rather than "opt-out for 35 days"? Bad idea considering how most computers are connected to the Internet.
That's how it works on Linux (and thus the vast majority of servers and embedded systems in the world). System update doesn't happen until I type sudo dnf update. If I want to have cron automatically schedule this command to be run at a certain time (including on a recurring schedule), I can do that. But if I don't, no update will be run.
I am the one who tells the computer what to do. It doesn't get to tell me what to do. I don't need a nanny. If someone cracks my machine because I was too lazy to install an update, that's my own damn fault.
You said the magic word "Linux". It might as well be "FreeBSD" or "OpenBSD" or any of the other *nix variants out there. (hint hint... my TrueNAS server core operating system is FreeBSD). The Command Line Interface is your friend, and more than likely, you are SSHing into the server rather than interfacing with it directly. You actually know what happens "behind the scenes" and make the magic happen. You also know the difference between a TCP and a UDP packet, and why UDP packets are preferred for audio/video traffic, and why packet shaping can be bad for online meetings. You also know the difference between a CRC checksum and a SHA512 hash, and why it's
extremely important to never blindly trust user input, but to sanitize it to prevent a SQL injection attack to DROP all the tables.
Now, here is a reality check. Per
StatCounter, the worldwide market share for Desktop Operating systems is estimated at 74.14% for Windows, 15.33% for Mac OSX, and 2.91% for Linux users. Many of them don't know what goes on "behind the scenes" and, more importantly, don't really care as long as they get their job done. My mother doesn't care how my the Plex instance runs on my TrueNAS computer or how I copied the episodes from DVD to MP4 video files, all she cares about is playing her
Golden Girls over, and over, and over again "because they make me laugh" on her Roku bedroom TV.
My perspective comes from the fact that the team that I manage handles a wide spectrum of users from the system-level administrators who are managing deployments, making necessary adjustments to firewalls, and integrating their identity management servers (including diagnosing SAML assertions) with our cloud-based software down to the end-user support. There are many tales I can tell involving Mac Karins. I have seen many changes in the computer industry since I got my first computer in 1980.
Oh yeah, why are we here on AARoads Forums? Gee... because we want to know more about the road systems and the history of the highway system. That there is logic behind how Interstate/US highways are numbered. Why a diverging diamond intersection is safer for freeway interchanges than standard interchanges. And so on.
