Has Linux patching surpassed Mac and Windows? (ZDNet)

My experiance is mostly with apt-get. I just write a script to send commands to bunches of different machines with ssh. Something based around the idea of going like this:
for i in list-of-machines; do ssh $i "apt-get --yes install blah" ;done

Of course if the deb package asks for some input it will kinda of throw a wrench into it.. but debconf is configurable for the sort of questions it asks. The nice thing about it is that it's usefull for lots of different stuff other then just installing or updating software. It's easiest when you have something like kerberos setup.

Of course I make it more complex with logging output and have it report weither or not the job completely successfully and whatnot.

There are also programs like Batch Manager Login that is something that you can use for a more widespread environment with multiple different authentication scemes. http://batchlogin.sourceforge.net/ Probably much better then anything I make up on the fly.