as someone who is a dev by trade I update/backup on fridays because I think it's funny.

And then, inevitably:

I have a script I run daily (named daily) that makes a timeshift backup, checks for updates from pacman, then checks for updates from the AUR. I'm very fond of it :]

whenever something is broken

When I am bored. A few times per month in winter. Once or twice per summer.

I do sudo pacman -Syu as a ritual each time when I start my computer or laptop. Like, the very first thing after the system is booted. So far so good, been doing that for 7 years.

Once a day

My Debian trixie desktop system rotates /var/log/apt/history once a month. So over the past year:

$ zgrep upgrade /var/log/apt/history.log*gz|wc -l
25
$ ls /var/log/apt/history.log*gz|wc -l
12
$

25 upgrades in 12 months. So about twice a month on average on that one.

At most once per day. Sometimes I can go three weeks without remembering to upgrade

For me, it's about reducing the amount of time the "update available" icon shows up in the system tray, because its very presence bothers me. Maybe there's something cool and new. Maybe it fixes a severe security problem. If it's for programs I'm not using right now, then the update can be applied right now. Otherwise it's going to have to wait until I'm done. And bother me.

Yes, I could turn updates off and never see it, but that seems like a bad plan in the long run.

My home PC, about once a week, or whenever I have to install new software. My work PC, about once a month because the nvidia driver takes fucking ages to update because of DKMS.

As for the servers under my professional care... it depends. Most of the servers that I made run Debian that I update three times a year whenever the downtime is acceptable for the university (spring break, late summer, early december) or if a CVE needs fixing (e.g. xz-utils). One internet-facing server that I inherited still runs Ubuntu 16.04 because some teachers can't possibly live without some legacy software and will throw a tantrum if upgrading is even mentioned -- that one gets zero updates, and I got the dean's promise in writing that I wouldn't be held responsible for it.

The big virtualization server still runs ESXi 6 because the university didn't want to pay for a lifetime license when it was available, doesn't want to pay for a subscription now, and doesn't want the downtime required to fully migrate to Proxmox VE. So it gets no updates. Plus it has a bad SSL cert and I need Chromium's thisisunsafe to bypass the error.

It's fucking rough out here.

every week more or less, it's basically just as often as I remember. oh and whenever I have to update a program for security reasons, like a system wide patch or a new browser release, that sorta thing. using opensuse tumbleweed btw

Once a week usually, or when I have to reboot anyway.

I've set up unattended upgrades and forgot about updates, until I get a mail saying they happened.

every 5 minutes sounds about right

Sometimes I let a Gentoo lapse on upgrades, just for the extra fun.

I have a bash alias alias update='flatpak update ; flatpak remove --unused ; emerge --sync -a ; emerge --ask --verbose --update --deep --changed-use --keep-going --with-bdeps=y --backtrack=500 @world ; emerge --depclean ; eclean-dist -d' Which i run like update && shutdown -P now And usually in the morning i do another update to check if it missed anything

Run the main update before i sleep computer shuts down when done and when i wake up i check what i missed

Does the job every time 😎

Fedora Silverblue (actually bluebuild building my own OS)

practically only if there's a new release of a software I want to install (which zeroes out to approx all 2 months)

If I’m bored and done with everything and can peacefully restart

Every 1-2 weeks, depends on how often I remember

sundays

paru -Syu; poweroff most evenings

I use Apdatifier for KDE and it checks every 180 minutes. If there are updates, I update.