Patching

There are very few Operating Systems that have an adequate patching process for applications. The only two I recommend to someone who is too busy to track all of their installed applications is FreeBSD and Debian GNU/Linux. Apparently you can do this with RedHat and its offspring, but I've heard about a lot of issues with "dependancy hell."

It should be noted that this is usually because the SysAdmin has installed packages from different distributions. For example, installing SuSE packages on a RedHat system is asking for trouble. Packages built for a specific RedHat version almost always work, as do packages rebuilt from .src.rpm files. (RedHat is quite a bit nicer, once you learn to build your own .rpm files)

OS Specific

In Windows, use internet explorer toupdate your computer. Let it scan your computer and install all of the high-priority/recommended updates.

Using Debian GNU/Linux it's as simple as "apt-get install update && apt-get install upgrade" and all of your installed applications will now be up to date!

With FreeBSD it's a little more complex. I've created two shell scripts which I've named update, and upgrade. You will need portsnap, portaudit and portupgrade installed to use these:

#!/bin/sh

# update

/usr/local/sbin/portsnap fetch && /usr/local/sbin/portsnap update && pkg_version -v -l "<"

#EOF

#!/bin/sh

# upgrade

portaudit -F && portaudit

portupgrade -a

#EOF

Rumour has it that OpenBSD is building a portupgrade tool, and I will surely switch to them at that point, based on their security history.