All this MS bashing is a bit pointless as I have never used an OS that didn't need patches, whether it was Windows, Solaris, VMS, Netware or Linux. About four months ago I installed Ubuntu 6.06 and it downloaded about 600MB of patches after installing. I don't regard that as "bad" more a case of that's as good as software is. The main problem I find with Linux distros is they come with so much software the requirement for patching can be significant. To be honest the worst patching experience I have ever known is with Oracle Applications where patching can be incredibly time consuming and very difficult to do. No one has a magic bullet for this problem.