OS that keeps itself updated?

[hendry]

IIUC https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentati ... erry-pi-os requires manual updates.

Is there a system like Google Chrome OS for the Pi that keep itself automatically up to date?

I'm even curious if there is some vendor offering this as a managed service.

Many thanks,

[kerry_s]

auto updates is always a bad idea in linux.

[MarkDH102]

auto updates is always a bad idea in linux.

Is there any chance you could give a brief explanation as to why?
With Windows, I always hold off updating because of potential issues and their updates are huge, take ages and are quite opaque.
But every day I update/upgrade my 64 bit PiOS. I've not been bitten by anything yet...apart from 'code', but I hold that off now.

[kerry_s]

linux is dependency based, 1 hiccup and it can remove something important and leave the system unbootable.
happened lots back in the day. things changed got better.

as far as i know only ubuntu has auto set security updates to download and install, it's already giving issues. some disable after install, but most don't know and comeback to a broken system or software that was working no longer working.

[jamesh]

I have never had an apt update fail on me on a Pi, or cause any issues. A while back I ha a problem with an Ubuntu system but its one I have continually upgraded for about 10 years so there was quite a lot of installed crud. Still working now after some tweaks.

The don't think to blanket statement its a bad idea holds up, certainly in the majority of use cases. Works for Android and ChromeOS which are both Linux kernel based, although not sure off the update system they use.

[DougieLawson]

Is there a system like Google Chrome OS for the Pi that keep itself automatically up to date?

Yes there is, but it's a bad idea.

sudo apt install unattended-upgrades

[kerry_s]

android/chrome os

they use a kind of atomic update like fedora silerblue or endless os.
totally specific build

[AndrewPiEater]

I would say it depends on your circumstances. I wouldn't apply untested patches to any production system that is depended on for work. There's always the chance that it would affect the application you are hosting. Apply to test first. But on my development desktops, I wouldn't be too worried about it. Though the actual update process is a trivial few minutes for me.

[jahboater]

In about 10 years of updating multiple Pi's every week or so, I cannot recall any serious problems after an update.

The only reason I don't schedule a weekly update with cron is that I am curious to see what's being updated, and also, depending on whats changed, I might, or might not, reboot the system. I presume a reboot is required to bring a new kernel into use for example, ditto systemd, libc and any other obviously memory resident software.

[BigRedMailbox]

This is entirely a skill-level thing - whether or not it makes sense to do it or not.

For mass-market OSes, like Chromebook and Windows (and, to some extent, Ubuntu Linux), it makes sense. For the rest of us, not so much.

[pidd]

I've seen more problems from people that only sporadically update and get some distance behind. I update every time I log in an its never caused a significant problem other than some random issues with chromium some time ago.

One update that is coming up which I am wary of is losing dhcpcd, will the settings be transferred? ..... or did I dream that announcement?