Did we kill Linux's killer feature?

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?

sgtnasty,
@sgtnasty@lemmy.ml avatar

I use Fedora for work, but ArchLinux at home. If you really want to skip flatpak then you need the AUR.

phoenix591,

I mostly stick to things in the repos, if theres something I want that’s not yet packaged I package it myself because Gentoo packages are fancy bash scripts with libraries (eclasses) to handle the normal make && make install sort of things for most build systems

TrivialBetaState,

I know that a lot of people share the same thoughts with you but I respectfully disagree. If you want your system to be updated only with your apt/yum/dnf program, then just don’t install anything useing snap/flatpak/etc. Sure, you will not have all the apps available in the repos, which was also the case in the past before these systems. Back then, your only option was to compile from source, which was more work-intensive than flatpaks/appimages/snaps. And updating was also much more complicated. Therefore, unless you wanted something really special, you’d stick to your repos. Flatpaks allow developers to distribute their software (and users to install it) in a less labour-intensive manner for the developer. Compiling and testing your app for Debian, Fedora, Arch, SuSE, MX-Linux, Linux Mint, Linux Mint DE, Gentoo, and all the other popular distros is an impossible task for small developers. Flatpaks was a godsend for them and for the users who don’t want to compile from source. Now, you can argue that we shouldn’t have all these systems (flatpak, snap, appimage, docker, etc…) but one would be OK. And again I will disagree. One of the most important aspects of FOSS is diversity. Embrace it even with its drawbacks. It would require a much longer post to explain this and others have done it already better than I would.

mfat,

The official software manager on my Fedora system (Discover) presents me with Flatpaks. If I use Discover for updating ,the Flatpaks will update too. But when I use the official CLI tool to upgrade the system only RPM packages are updated. The other package managers on the system are not affected (Flatpaks, Snap, Cargo, PIP). I think there should be no discrepancy between CLI and GUI interfaces for system updates. The fact that I should “remember” how to update stuff shows that something is wrong or is not perfect.

TrivialBetaState,

You have a point here indeed. But it is much easier to create a CLI tool that combines the updates of all systems rather than destroying the incredible things that flatpak and pip offer. A five-line bach script would do. Although, a reliable distro would probably want to rely on something much more elegant and harder to break. For Fedora specifically, the python-based dnf tool should be straightforward to be extended to do that. Perhaps the Debian apt tool has a lot of functionality to carry on and may be harder to do. In the essence of unix philosophy and modular approach, it should be a separate tool. I’m looking forward to that too.

Dirk, (edited )
@Dirk@lemmy.ml avatar

We can no longer do that thanks to Flatpaks and Snaps as well as AppImages.

That is a you-problem to be honest. If updating the system needs more than one command, then something is wrong with the distribution.

If you install applications using something else thatn the system’s package manager, you need to take care of them by yourself, too.

Also:

alias update=‘pacman -Syu && flatpak update && flatpak remove --unused --delete-data && snap refresh’

AppImages need to be updated individually, but AppImages suck anyways.

yum13241,

Flatpaks have crappy names and a crappy CLI. Snaps just suck, and AppImages need a package manager.

ProgrammingSocks,

AppImages are horribly bloated, I personally would never use them on my machines. Snaps I’m also still biased against because Canonical’s shady practices. So for me it’s still just pacman -Syu && flatpak update.

happyhippo,

Your single command is just an “&&” away

RIotingPacifist,

flatpaks are all updated at once, just like distro packages, so yeah you might need to commands, but that’s still very different to having each application update itself (and the security hell implied by that)

Also I think pkcon can manage your updates across various backends (unless you are on Arch, where I think there are both technical & ideological objections to having a simple tool that just works)

lord_ryvan,

Meanwhile Arch users are just using the AUR for everything.

I don’t use Arch btw, but I’m thinking I should.

themoken,

Honestly, I use Arch (btw) but after living on Fedora for a while, when I returned I started using podman over AUR for some stuff. If a package is going to pull a bunch of weird dependencies, or I want to easily migrate it later, it’s just so much easier to keep it containerized.

Dirk,
@Dirk@lemmy.ml avatar

I use three tools from the AUR and I am the maintainer of those.

VinesNFluff,
@VinesNFluff@pawb.social avatar

Arch-based distro here, a lot of shit from AUR and such and it autoupdates from my package manager/aur helper.

The 2 or 3 flatpaks I installed I have to manually update… But to be honest I’m fairly sure that there’s some config or change I could make to yay that would make it update flatpaks too. And even if not… Well. I could do what the (as of now) top comment said and make a lil’ script. Though running two commands is really not a huge sacrifice :P

Also back when I used Debian, apt had some hook in it that would update Flatpaks there too.

No Appimages for me though. Don’t care for the entire format.

Anyhow to me the killer feature of Linux was never the package manager so much as it was how much liberty it gives me to customize everything. Flatpaks and such are just another aspect of that.

rsolva,
@rsolva@lemmy.world avatar

Fedora updates flatpaks automatically, system updates too, but you need to reboot. Which Fedora version do you use?

brian,

What about pkcon? I haven’t used it in particular, but packagekit based GUIs work pretty well in my experience, and then it supports flatpak/snap/apt/kde addons/etc in one interface, which is better than it was originally.

nik282000,
@nik282000@lemmy.ca avatar

Debian, no flatpaks, snaps or appimages.

Nomad,

Also stable rolling release.

gbrlsnchs,

Well, that’s Fedora, my friend. On Gentoo it’s still the same.

Chobbes,

Yeah, as a NixOS user I was like “what?”

gamer, 

<span style="color:#323232;">#! /bin/sh
</span><span style="color:#323232;">#update_everything_in_one_command.sh
</span><span style="color:#323232;">set -e
</span><span style="color:#323232;">apt update
</span><span style="color:#323232;">apt upgrade -y
</span><span style="color:#323232;">flatpak update -y
</span>

$ sudo update_everything_in_one_command

Tada!

sane,
@sane@feddit.de avatar 

<span style="color:#323232;">echo -e "nalias upgrade='sudo update_everything_in_one_command.sh'" >> ~/.bashrc
</span>
ReginaPhalange,

This dude, this dude procreate.

slacktoid,
@slacktoid@lemmy.ml avatar

This dude… this dude fucks

Grant_M,
@Grant_M@lemmy.ca avatar

On Mint everything updates automatically for me, Flatpaks and all.

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