Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1299308
Accepted
apadana
Asked: 2020-12-12 06:04:49 +0800 CST

What is the formal definition of "critical update"?

  • 772

For some packages, in package manager I read that "Canonical provides critical updates for [PACKAGE-NAME] until [DATE]." But what is the formal definition of a "critical update"? For example, if a graphics driver doesn't work properly, would an update solving the issue be a "critical update"? Please cite official documents if possible.

updates

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The importance of an update reflects the importance of the bug(s) fixed by that update.

    • A 'critical' update fixes a 'critical' bug.

    Bug importance is defined at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Importance. A Triaged bug is usually assigned an importance (Wishlist, Low, Medium, High, Critical) based upon the severity of the problem and the estimated number of users affected. Importance helps developers establish the priorities for their work.

    Critical: A bug that has a severe impact on a large portion of Ubuntu users

    • Causes data corruption
    • Crashes the entire operating system
      For example, if the system fails to boot, or X fails to start, on various makes and models of computer
    • Renders the system temporarily or permanently unusable
    • Severely affects applications beyond the package responsible for the root cause

    Ubuntu generally releases fixes for most High and Critical bugs to the current releases of Ubuntu in the form of a patched package: Foo version 1.1.3 gets patched to 1.1.3a, not to 1.1.4 (that would be a new upstream release).

    • A few applications (like Web Browsers) get the latest upstream release (instead of patched versions) for all supported releases of Ubuntu.
    • Security patches are released are released to all supported version regardless of the original bug's importance.

    Graphics drivers (ALL "drivers") are kernel modules, and handled by the Ubuntu Kernel Team. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel for their workflow and bug-handling policies.

    • 4

  2. What is a critical update? critical update(Noun) A broadly released fix for a specific problem that addresses a critical, non-security-related bug in computer software.

    Definitions.net

    However this can very from manufacturer/vendor/OS as to what they consider critical so it is hard to find an exact definiton based on that, but it seems like your example would fit the definition if the said graphics driver was widely in use...

    • 1