How updates are offered

Hardware Librem 5
1

I’ve two L5 (luck I am) and one of them I only use for special tests, while the other is my daily driver. The latter was last night updated to this kernel (and many other packages too):

ls -ltr /boot
...
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2327 Nov 10 06:30 boot.scr.bak
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 65946720 Nov 13 22:57 initrd.img-6.0.0-1-librem5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       52 Nov 13 22:57 dtb-6.0.0-1-librem5 -> dtbs/6.0.0-1-librem5/freescale/imx8mq-librem5-r4.dtb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       52 Nov 13 22:57 dtb -> dtbs/6.0.0-1-librem5/freescale/imx8mq-librem5-r4.dtb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2327 Nov 13 22:57 boot.scr

The other one was unused for around six weeks and an apt update / apt full-upgrade installed this kernel:

ls -ltr /boot
...
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2328 Oct  2 10:19 boot.scr.bak
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 65920113 Nov 14 08:30 initrd.img-5.18.0-1-librem5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       53 Nov 14 08:30 dtb-5.18.0-1-librem5 -> dtbs/5.18.0-1-librem5/freescale/imx8mq-librem5-r4.dtb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root       53 Nov 14 08:30 dtb -> dtbs/5.18.0-1-librem5/freescale/imx8mq-librem5-r4.dtb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root     2328 Nov 14 08:30 boot.scr

Why this did not updated to the most recent version 6.0.0-1?

Btw: I do not use the PureOS Store for updating.

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2

I noticed this also, that updates arrive with different timing for different devices, even though the different devices are supposedly running precisely the same OS, PureOS Byzantium.

Just speculating, but it could be that some updates are intentionally spear out over time, to avoid a sudden disaster on many devices at once. If a certain update leads to a terrible problem then spreading users out over time means that there may be time to roll it back before all users are affected. Just guessing, no idea if this is really what is going on.

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3

Just speculating further … there may be a need to spread users out over time because the servers can only download to so many users simultaneously.

Another complicating factor - and I don’t know whether it applies here - is that if there is more than one physical server for the repo (whether via anycast, CDN or other techniques) then those servers won’t be exactly in synch i.e. an update will arrive at some servers later than others, and you may happen to choose a server that gets the update earlier or later.

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4

Why do full-upgrade any time other than when there has been a major version release?

5

There’s no such system in place for PureOS.

Because on the phone, stable PureOS version does not technically match the Debian’s definition of stable distro and occasionally gets updates that can get some packages replaced. You should use full-upgrade all the time.

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