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> I update Linux (Ubuntu) and, lo and behold, I can't really use any programs until I reboot Which is almost true. In fact, you were unable to use programs that changed runtime dependencies or conflicted with current user sessions, init processes or kernel modules. You can often use other programs, but not ones that in any way touched the ones you upgraded, for one reason or another. If you have to upgrade, say, a command line utility, that almost always doesn't require rebooting. If you have to upgrade a GUI app, or a tool that depends on some bastardized unholy subsystem designed to "secure desktop sessions", that may very well require relinquishing the session and restarting it. If you have to upgrade a tool used by your desktop (and if you have a complex desktop, that is literally thousands of programs), it's the same story, though you may even need to restart your desktop session manager or even your display server. Then there's system init processes, kernel modules, firmware, system daemons and the like. You can reload those without rebooting, but it's certainly not easy - you will probably have to change to runlevel 1, which kills almost everything running. You can reload the kernel without rebooting, too - very handy for live patching - but really, why the hell would anyone want to do this unless they were afraid to power off their system? So, technically, rebooting is not required to update in many cases in Linux, just like in Windows. But it is definitely the simplest and most reliable way. |
Thanks, I'm glad at least one person agrees I'm not hallucinating. The vast majority of people here are telling me I'm basically the only one this happens to.