No, we should not. The update repo is for updating the current version with security patched etc. Like new KDE-versions come through the KDE repos. If all was to be updated through the update repos the load would be far to heavy. Imagine my main system: it has Gnome, KDE3, KDE4, Xfce.
On my laptop something like you’re suggesting happens. The latest update to latest Factory packages (1221 packages) was a full 3,59GB. Using the update repo will give you only the necessary updates, nothing more.
Well unfortunately that’s not my experience. The Firefox patches are applied quickly and sent to factory but the update packages are slowed down somewhere in the Novell QC and release process. This part of the process could do with some improvement. I remember once Firefox patch level n was released by Novell and around the same time Mozilla announced patch level n+2.
Not just Firefox. There was a showstopper (though not security) bug that was fixed quickly by the kernel developers but the package sat in factory for a while. And I still haven’t seen the xorg-x11-driver-video package reverting another showstopper bug for Intel video chips even though Bugzilla shows that the Novell developer put in the change.
You could be right this time. A couple of other distros I have around beat them by a day or two – kubuntu and PCLinuxOS. That’s unusual for the latter of the two. Perhaps the factory repo reorg delayed them.
This Firefox update in openSUSE 11.1 was only two days slower than the same update on my Ubuntu boxes. Not bad.
And in my experience, openSUSE does a better job in updating Sun Java JRE. In Ubuntu, that package is not updated at all, so you have to update manually!
I think you are mistaken here. FF 3.0.11 is a security update to the current version. and so @pjotr123 was correct in expecting it through the updater applet on 11.1, and 11.0 (I guess). That is also my expectation.