A few years ago we were able to upgrade everything (OS and Apps) using a single command. I remember this was something we boasted about when talking to Windows and Mac fans. It was such an amazing feature. Something that users of proprietary systems hadn’t even heard about. We had this on desktops before things like Apple’s App Store and Play Store were a thing.
We can no longer do that thanks to Flatpaks and Snaps as well as AppImages.
Recently i upgraded my Fedora system. I few days later i found out i was runnig some older apps since they were Flatpaks (i had completely forgotten how I installed bitwarden for instance.)
Do you miss the old system too?
Is it possible to bring back that experience? A unified, reliable CLI solution to make sure EVERYTHING is up to date?
I’ve used Linux since the 90s and I’ve never installed a flat pack or snap or whatever. They’re not required.
There has always been the option of installing software from source. The package manager won’t update anything installed from source.
You don’t have to use Flatpak, Snap or AppImage if you don’t want to. If you use the package manager to install everything, it will update everything.
If you use a graphical tool like gnome software, it will update everything with one click on a button
I would really love gnome software to add update on background feature and set update interval (update only once a month, hold update indefinitely etc.)
But fedora software center behavior is the most intuitive and easy compare to other popular desktop OS/distros: Mac, Windows, or Ubuntu.
I love and use Fedora but I still think Mints update manager is the best GUI implementation I ever used for updating, it has all the essentials, is easy to use and looks nice.
I have never used mint, so I dont know.
One of the thing that drived me from Ubuntu to Fedora is that Ubuntu has 3 different UI for system, apt, and snap/flatpak update. It feels really segmented.
I personally prefer Gnome experience more than any other DE (including windows and macOS). But mint only include Gnome version on Ubuntu LTS, so it is a bit dated. But no doubt that mint is extremely user friendly.
And sometimes it will even work!
Oh really. I should probably try that again sometime. Usually I just choose not to roll the dice on gnome, and update through the terminal instead.
Well I did say sometimes.
arch repos + aur got you covered
This. AUR packages are easy to create too. Flatpaks are only useful if you want to use something temporarily.
Yes we did. I miss the old system.
Also I don’t like my laptop rebooting in my backpack to install updates, after I’ve tried to shut it down.
We never lost any “ild system” and the rebooting is probably how your distro implements updates, I use Fedora so mine often wants a reboot but that’s definitely not the norm on Linux as far as I know and I never had a device turn back on on it’s own…
I think I first saw that on Fedora, years and years ago. I’m currently running Debian (testing) on my laptop. There was definitely some change at some point.
Well. It’s more, I click shutdown and because Linux has been 500% reliable for me, immediately shut the lid and throw the thing into my backpack. And instead of a shutdown, it tries to reboot, apply the updates and then do the shut down. But that fails because I use full disk encryption and it just sits at the password prompt until I pull it out again. Just heating my backpack from the inside and depleating the battery. So technically it doesn’t turn on on its own. It just doesn’t turn off as expected.
I feel you. At some point distro designers decided that shutdown/reboot were suggestions instead of commands. I too have had troubles with hot backpack syndrome and it’s super annoying especially when traveling. You think you’re going to turn on your laptop on a plane with 100% battery ready to do some offline work and now you’ve got a lava hot brick with 7% battery life left.
What I think the biggest problem with the traditional package managers is that (1) they don’t isolate packages from each other (when you install a program files are placed in many random places, like /usr/bin, /usr/lib etc) and (2) you can’t have multiple versions of the same package installed at the same time.
This creates a lot of work for package maintainers who need to constantly keep packages up to date as dependencies are updated.
Also, because of this, every distro is essentially an insane dependency tree where changing even one small core package could break everything.
Because of this, backwards compatibility on Linux is terrible. If you need to run an older application which depends on older packages, your only choice is to download an older distro.
This is what snap and flatpak try to solve. I think they are not great solutions, because they ended up being an extra package manager next to the traditional package managers. Until we see a distro that uses flatpak or something similar exclusively, the problem is not solved.
What I think the biggest problem with the traditional package managers is that (1) they don’t isolate packages from each other (when you install a program files are placed in many random places, like /usr/bin, /usr/lib etc) and (2) you can’t have multiple versions of the same package installed at the same time.
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I’m still updating the whole system with one command. Just avoid flatpaks. Repackage for your distro if you need to.
