Maybe this is due to my flake setup, but the way I currently update (nix flake update, then nixos-rebuild) I can only update everything at once. At times, this can feel clunky compared to e.g. arch which lets me update individual packages. Do you have any suggestions on how to do partial updates?
You can add another revision of nixpkgs as a flake input and use that revision for certain packages. Its not as ergonomic as in Arch (even though they officially dont support partial upgrades). But its still possible and having a stable and unstable flake input usually does the job for me.
Hate those forced updates, first because years ago when laptops came with hdd, the updates where endless.
Then i hated it again when an update fucked all the pen tablet softwares and devices. photoshop and etc became unusable for a while, whas a nightmare.
if they force only security updates im ok, but this is not the case, they add new funny features that i dont need and drop support for things that works and i use for work.
I'm not ok with allowing a security loophole, they just call everything security and force it. It's my device, I get to decide what software belongs on it.
My view has always been that: “The most popular OS in the works will always need security updates frequently”. That’s true of Linux as well, if it ever broke Windows’ numbers.
That said, Windows has also fucked that argument by forcing unnecessary search additions and browser defaults in those updates.
Yeah and also you can just kinda do it in the background without much concern about it eating all your CPU or taking forever like Windows Updates does.
Also won't take several minutes when you shutdown to do the "Preparing Updates.... Don't shut off your PC" like Windows.
I'm actually encouraged to update often because if I don't, the updates keep accumulating and I end up with 200+ apps and dependencies that require such updates. Not that I'm affected or anything, I don't even need to re-start my machine, and pacman works in the background. So, It's been a positive experience over all. So yay! Updates!
Windows 10 users, I've been using kill-update.exe for years now to only update Windows when I damn well want to.
Disclaimer: before the inevitable dogpile, yes, this is bad practice. Yes there are many reasons why you might not want to do this. Yes, allowing your software to update itself whenever it wants is safer. No, I don't care. If you don't care either, this software might be for you.
Totally justifiable IMO. In my day-to-day life its much more important that my shit works when I need it to than that I get whatever potentially something-breaking latest hotfix patch for everything on my system. Put simply: My OS, and the packages I use, work. If I don't update, I'm sure it will also keep working. When I have time for an update to break something, or want to pull in some new feature or patch, I'll run an update.
I fucking love running updates on garuda. Watching the little ASCII pacmans gobbling up the progress bar... And it doesn't do it unless I tell it to so I never have the windows experience of "I just wanna play a game,oh look, 10 minutes of updates instead. Guess I'll go make a sandwich..."
It's because developers have stopped trusting users to update and not become an expletive filled customer service call when not updating inevitably leads to a security failure.
For me it was a mix of that, plus "great, so you're going to close everything maybe was using, sometimes restart some of it, and everything is going to be on the wrong screen and virtual desktop. Now that I've spent several minutes getting back to where I was yesterday, let's see what garbage I don't want that you've added"
Linux has its own inconveniences, but I don't regret the switch... It gets better every day while windows gets worse
I had one back in the vista days (I had the pro version it wasn't totally terrible) that bricked my laptop and I had to do a clean install from bios to get it working again. That was fun.
To turn away from the "go hard onto Linux" tropes, try Windows Update Blocker (WuB). I've been using it to pick when my machine, as well as friends and families machines, update. Every month or so, you need to turn updates back on by using it and updating the OS, but it can be scripted to enable/disable updates at any time, if you don't feel like thinking about it. It not only blocks if but protects from reenabling updates by that fucking medic service that will try to turn it back on when the machine is idle.