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?

ryannathans,

Alias update=“sudo apt full-upgrade && flatpak update”

Fixed it for you

dino,

appimages though?

ryannathans,

They don’t update, they are standalone files

RickyRigatoni,
@RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml avatar

Appimages for in-dev programs usually have an auto-updater that runs when you run the program, too, which is accetapble by my factual and perfect standards. It would be nice if someone put together an appimage store to manage these, I guess.

finickydesert,
@finickydesert@lemmy.ml avatar

Why not create a plug in to the AppStore of whatever your using

KrapKake,

Im pretty sure there is a store, if I remember I think its called appimage pool.

Edit: github.com/prateekmedia/appimagepool

RickyRigatoni,
@RickyRigatoni@lemmy.ml avatar

Nice.

dino,

This is obviously what I was referring to, but yeah…

bitteorca,
@bitteorca@artemis.camp avatar

Since they’re using Fedora apt isn’t going to do anything, they would need to run sudo dnf upgrade -y && flatpak update

MajorHavoc,

Nice. Your excellent suggestion probably belongs in a meta-package somewhere so that users get it for free when appropriate.

grumpyrico,

Thats it … Thats how i do it in every distro inluding nix-env and i’m eine

No need to overengeneer

fmstrat,

If you’re an Obtainium/install from GitHub fan, then don’t forget gam update.

space,

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.

bhankas,

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.

Would you like to know about our Lord And Savior NixOS?

igorlogius, (edited )
@igorlogius@lemmy.world avatar

our Lord And Savior NixOS

mynixos.com/nixpkgs/…/system.autoUpgrade.enable

#amen

Sprite,
@Sprite@lemmy.ml avatar

I think I’ll look into NixOS once I’m done with the heavy games I’m playing. EndeavourOS is great, but I’m tired of files being hidden and programs therefore not removed correctly.

cyph3rPunk,
@cyph3rPunk@infosec.pub avatar

Amen!

space,

Wow, that’s exactly what I have been missing in my life. Amen, brother!

lemmyvore,

when you install a program files are placed in many random places, like /usr/bin, /usr/lib

That’s because back in the day those had some good logic. On mainframe systems you had to be able to split files by how crucial they are too keeping the system alive, so you’d mount something like /bin locally but you could mount /usr/bin remotely and still keep the machine running if the connection was lost. And so on and so forth.

Nowadays we really should revise the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard but it’s required by the UNIX compatibility and it’s baked into so many things that you wouldn’t believe.

I remember back in the 2000s the were distros like GoboLinux that tried to reorganize the files with criteria relevant to a modern machine but it didn’t catch on in the Linux world. However Apple did it for Mac OS.

ozymandias117,

The primary init manager for Linux is removing support for separating them later this year

lists.freedesktop.org/archives/…/048352.html

waspentalive,
@waspentalive@lemmy.one avatar

Gobo Linux is still there gobolinux.org

silent_water,
@silent_water@hexbear.net avatar

nix overall is a much better solution to this problem.

danielton,

Depends. Unless you’re on Ubuntu or Elementary, Flatpak and Snap are optional. When I’m on Arch, btw, I don’t bother with any of those and just use the AUR with a helper like yay.

But I find the convenience of Flathub too good to pass up on other distros. I have been using Linux long enough to remember when the only options if your distro didn’t ship something were to compile from source or to use a sketchy installer script, because Flatpak didn’t exist. And as others mentioned, if you’re using a full desktop environment, it likely can update everything at once via the GUI.

lemmyvore,

I don’t bother with any of those and just use the AUR with a helper like yay.

Normally I do that too but recently wanted to install an app from AUR that ran out of memory during compile on 4 GB of RAM. So being able to use an appimage or flatpak was still useful.

Unforeseen,

You could have just added a swap file

lemmyvore,

And I would die of old age waiting for the compile to finish.

Swap is not “disk RAM”. It’s used for storing pages that go unused for extended periods of time. It’s an optimization system designed to be used during normal system operations.

Technically it could solve some mild out-of-memory situations if given enough time but in practice the disk access is so slow compared to RAM that for all intents and purposes your system appears to freeze so you get bored eventually and reboot it. An attempt to compile a large application under these circumstances would last a very long time indeed.

If anything, you should disable swap in such a situation. Without swap the compile process would crash instantly when growing out of memory, with swap your system freezes.

Swap space is also used for storing a compressed dump of RAM during hybernation but that’s a special case.

Unforeseen,

Yeah, I know how swap works. I’m lazy and it would accomplish the task if needed, I’ve done it many times before in similar situations especially on low RAM Gentoo machines.

Agreed, it’s slow as fuck. It also gets the job done without going outside the package manager.

LeFantome,

There are lots of options. You can also setup a swap file in memory that uses compression. Since swap tends to compress really well, you can allocate more memory than you have RAM and still not use slower swap on a HDD or SSD.

jannis,

If you use a graphical tool like gnome software, it will update everything with one click on a button

baseless_discourse,

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.

gnumdk,
@gnumdk@lemmy.ml avatar

It does background updates for flatpak. For system, just move to Silverblue.

baseless_discourse, (edited )

I think it only downloads the update but you still need to click install to install it. I am looking for Google Play / Windows Store behavior, where the store juat keep my app up-to-date in the background, maybe push a notification after update is done or something.

I understand this behavior is not for everyone, but I think it should be a toggle at least.

gnumdk,
@gnumdk@lemmy.ml avatar

It does the update here, on Fedora

Gamey,

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.

baseless_discourse, (edited )

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.

Gamey,

I prefer vanilla Gnome on Fedora too but Mint dose some things really well. Their update manager is nice but that’s a Debian tool, their file manager (Nemo) on the other hand is something I still use, I just prefer it to Nautilus.

baseless_discourse, (edited )

I like that the Mint UI show you that you are in sudo in a graphical app. It is really neat.

IIRC, if you do a file operation in Nemo that require sudo, then the file manager can directly ask you the password and lift itself to sudo, without needing to go into terminal. It is also pretty convenient.

mwguy,

And sometimes it will even work!

Hamartiogonic,
@Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz avatar

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.

mwguy,

Well I did say sometimes.

gnumdk,
@gnumdk@lemmy.ml avatar

Silverblue here with automatic updates enabled, I do not care anymore, it just works.

CjkOvPDwQW,

This, super love that distro !!! Perfect for users that don’t have a lot of needs.

Personally, I never got used to the container workflow :(

baconicsynergy,

Yes! The automatic updates are great for me and my family’s machines. System and Flatpak upgrades are done automatically, I never ever think of them.

Universal Blue has it too. They also have the “just” wrapper for not just system and flatpak, but containers as well.

h3ndrik,

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.

Gamey,

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…

h3ndrik,

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.

mwguy,

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.

Gamey,

Damn, that sounds like a really annoying issue, good luck finding a solution!

h3ndrik,

Hehe, thanks. Fortunately linux is very customizable. I’m pretty sure I can just set it to ‘false’ somewhere. Will google that at some point. I just have to find out what it’s called so I know which words to type into google ;)

Limitless_screaming, (edited )
@Limitless_screaming@kbin.social avatar

alias update='sudo pacman -Syu && flatpak update' or just use one of the trillion GUI app stores like pamac, discover, or gnome's thing whatever they call it.

ikidd,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

/etc/systemd/system/flatpak-update.service


<span style="color:#323232;">[Unit]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Description=Update Flatpak
</span><span style="color:#323232;">After=network-online.target
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Wants=network-online.target
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[Service]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Type=oneshot
</span><span style="color:#323232;">ExecStart=/usr/bin/flatpak update --noninteractive --assumeyes
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[Install]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">WantedBy=multi-user.target
</span>

/etc/systemd/system/flatpak-update.timer


<span style="color:#323232;">[Unit]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Description=Update Flatpak
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[Timer]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">OnBootSec=2m
</span><span style="color:#323232;">OnActiveSec=2m
</span><span style="color:#323232;">OnUnitInactiveSec=24h
</span><span style="color:#323232;">OnUnitActiveSec=24h
</span><span style="color:#323232;">AccuracySec=1h
</span><span style="color:#323232;">RandomizedDelaySec=10m
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[Install]
</span><span style="color:#323232;">WantedBy=timers.target
</span>

daemon-reload

enable --now flatpak-update.timer

jakob,
@jakob@lemmy.schuerz.at avatar

This should be added as hook to apt… as well.

anamethatisnt,

I still run everything I can as .rpm through dnf on my Fedora and .deb through apt on my Debian servers.
I only install a flatpak as last resort.
From a dev viewpoint I can understand the gains of flatpak but from a user viewpoint I prefer a “real” install.

canadaduane,
@canadaduane@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s funny, I do almost the exact opposite–whenever there is a flatpak version, I prefer it over a built-in apt package. The flatpak is almost always more up-to-date and often has the features and bug fixes I need.

Examples:

  • Vorta (0.8.12 flatpak; 0.8.3 apt)
  • Pinta (2.1.1 flatpak; 1.6 apt)
  • Minder (1.15.6 flatpak; 1.13.1 apt)
  • Xournal++ (1.2.1 flatpak; 1.1.1 apt)

.

I don’t think it’s fair to expect the distro maintainers to be up to date with every software out there–the universe of software has grown and grown, and we just can’t expect them to wrap/manage/test every new release and version bump.

sizing743,

Is it true flatpaks take up a lot more space due to bundling in dependencies etc?

canadaduane,
@canadaduane@lemmy.ca avatar

The short answer is “yes, but only as much as it needs to”. Flatpak had to make a decision between “do we guarantee the app will work, even with system upgrades” or “do we minimize space” and they chose the former. The minimum necessary dependencies will be installed (and shared) amongst flatpaks.

Have you had the unfortunate experience of a utility or program losing its packaged status? It’s happened to me before–for example fslint. I don’t think this can happen with flatpak.

ChristianWS,

Space usage under flatpak is highly overstated. It only takes a noticeable amount of storage if you only use a couple of flatpaks, cause all the dependencies are used for a single package, once you start using flatpaks as the main mean of installing “applications”, the space required start to decrease because the dependencies are shared between multiple apps

LeFantome,

Using EndeavourOS ( Arch ) and all four of those are the same versions in the regular repositories.

I agree that Flatpak is a solution to outdated packages. My preference is to use a distribution that does not have that problem to begin with.

Gamey,

It depends on the distro I am on, if I use Debian or a derivative I usually prefer the Flatpak but on Fedora I only go with the Flatpak if I run into issues or the rare outdated package because I don’t need them, I would certainly miss Flatpaks if they didn’t exist tho!

ProtonBadger,

I enjoy that extra stability and separation between system and apps, especially as I use a rolling distro as a gamer. Hearing talk about Flatpak I disliked it for the same reasons, but I decided to try it out after Steam Native bugged due to a system library update. I enjoy it now also because it feels good that installing apps don't get a root password and scatter files everywhere they please in the system.

On servers it's different ofcourse, Flatpak is basically for desktop apps. Snap is also designed for text mode stuff, servers and IoT devices but there's the problem with it being controlled by one company.

namingthingsiseasy,

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.

If this actually were Linux’s killer feature, then Linux would have had a much higher market share by now.

Make no mistake, this is my favourite feature of Linux as well, and I have never used a snap/flatpack/appimage in my entire life. But it doesn’t have the kind of broader public appeal that you seem to be suggesting.

Gamey,

It’s not really lost ether tho, just add a simple bash alias and you are ready!

IuseArchbtw,
@IuseArchbtw@feddit.de avatar

alias upgrade=“sudo pacman -Syu && yay -Syu && sudo flatpak upgrade”

burrito,

&& snap refresh

andruid,

I think a lot of people just won’t endorse snap as long as it’s backend is proprietary

vox,
@vox@sopuli.xyz avatar

snaps are terribly, terribly slow, especially if you still have a mechanical drive.

LeFantome,

What you suggest works for Arch distros only of course. Actually, yay -Syu will do the pacman stuff for you first anyway so you can skip that.

If you are using EndevourOS, check out eos-update. I just discovered it. It is basically the same thing but it will automatically handle keyring updates and db.lck issues if you have ever run into those. Basically, it is what yay should be.

Another EndevourOS gem is eos-shifttime. It will set your system to whatever pacman would have done on a specific date. You can use it to roll-back to a specific date. Or, if it has been forever since you upgraded, it lets you upgrade more incrementally than catching up all at once. Pretty cool. I guess you could also mimic the Manjaro experience by always upgrading to whatever was in the Arch repositories 3 weeks ago.

IuseArchbtw,
@IuseArchbtw@feddit.de avatar

Of course those commands only work for arch-based distros, but it is completely possible to adapt them to fedora or debian-based distros

zwekihoyy,

yeah like other people have rec’d, I just wrote a script for installing/removing/upgrading/searching all the package managers I have. this was used as a tongue in cheek jab and has never truly been a brag.

Gamey,

You don’t really need much of a script, a relatively simple bash alias should do the trick and for new users the GUIs are a better solution anyway and those still update all apps.

thanksforallthefish,

I use BAUH as a GUI “update everything in one click” does repos, aur, flatpak, snaps, appimages. Paru is CLI option for repo, aur and flatpak. I dunno if it does snaps never checked.

Helmic,

Wait, paru can handle flatpaks?

Discover5164,

you could use topgrade to update, and it will generally update with every package manager available.

Gamey,

The GUIs do that in a even easier way for new users and experienced people can always just add a simple bash alias, a universal command never existed anyway because we have various different package managers on different distros so I don’t see any lost feature whatsoever tbh

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