The Debian project might receive an automatic update system in the near future. This is new addition to the popular rock-solid Linux distribution will improve its overall experience for end users.
A proposal, presented by developer Steve Mclntyre at Debian Cloud Sprint in November, has revealed the possibility of automatic upgrades. Mclntyre proposed the default adoption of an unattended-upgrade package that uses a Python program to automatically install pending updates.
“Most of our desktop environments already have some automatic notification of available updates but not everybody uses them, and that is not so useful on a remote server installation where there is no desktop for the system to show a pop-up or similar. To solve the issue and provide security updates by default, I am proposing that we should switch to installing unattended-upgrades by default,” McIntyre wrote in the proposal.
Though automatic upgrades are the need of the hour, there are few significant problems with them. Some of the sites and developers may not want to reboot master MySQL server. Also, there is a possibility of reboots during critical operations that can be fixed by live-patching the kernel.
The arrival of automated upgrades is certainly a good move to secure the future of Debian. Moreover, it could soon be a part of the Debian project on the cloud in near future.
In the meantime, you need to download all the updates for your Debian system manually.
