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?
🎶That’s why i don’t like and use flatpaks, snaps and appimages 🎶
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.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or a derivative I usually prefer the Flatpak but on Fedora I only go with the Flatpak if I run into issues or the rare outdated package because I don’t need them, I would certainly miss Flatpaks if they didn’t exist tho!
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.
Damn, that sounds like a really annoying issue, good luck finding a solution!
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 ;)
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.
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.
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.
It’s not really lost ether tho, just add a simple bash alias and you are ready!
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.
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.
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
I can still do that, because I understood that problem when it arose.
I’ve used Linux since the 90s and I’ve never installed a flat pack or snap or whatever. They’re not required.
This. And it usually is open source, if you don’t want to install a flatpak or docker image, you can always compile it yourself, and if you feel generous, you package it up as an .rpm, .dep, or whatever your distro of choice wants and create a download for it. I also have not (yet) encountered a project i wanted to install that didn’t either provide packages or at the very least detailed instructions if I want to just install that locally.
In Mint you can install flatpaks from the software manager and those get updated by the update manager. So it’s all still one click.
#! /bin/sh #update_everything_in_one_command.sh set -e apt update apt upgrade -y flatpak update -y$ sudo update_everything_in_one_command
Tada!
echo -e "\nalias upgrade='sudo update_everything_in_one_command.sh'" >> ~/.bashrc
Your mileage may vary, but it’s still possible to install some distros without those nonsensical containerised “package managers”, or to at least remove them after installation. It unfortunately takes an increasing amount of effort, especially in distros that are actively trying to push their flavour of containerised package manager. (Totally not looking at Ubuntu and Snap)
What is working in our favour here is the fragmentation, which will prevent, or at least slow down a too widespread adoption of those systems.
alias upgrade=“sudo pacman -Syu && yay -Syu && sudo flatpak upgrade”
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.
Of course those commands only work for arch-based distros, but it is completely possible to adapt them to fedora or debian-based distros
