You have recently introduced offline updates and in your blog post you asked for opinions on this to be shared here. So that's what I'll do.

Personally I have to say that I consider offline updates a step backwards. I always though that it is a great advantage of Linux systems that they can update without requiring a reboot.

Now I do understand that updating on a running system can cause issues and therefore I think having the ability to use offline updates instead is great. Maybe this should even be the default, but I really wished I could opt-out of this and thereby going back to the old update mechanism.
(I know I can update via the terminal in order to get back to the old behavior, but imo this should be an option in Discover)

Are these for all updates coming from Neon repos, or just the ones that need this? Plasma upgrades make sense, for sure.

Curiously, my two systems rebooted twice in the process.

I like the concept, personally, I can and do use the terminal, but having this somehow optional would be great, as I do so much love not being able to log off or restart from the desktop with every other Plasma related update. I already miss this option

Really, this feels like windows! Especially, because there was not only one reboot but two.
So for me this feels absolutely ungood. The update behaviour of windows was one part that brought me to linux over 15 years ago. Now I have bad feelings, that this behaviour will come to my most loved Desktop. While on my main machine this is more a minor annoyance, i have still some older machines without a SSD so they need quite long to start up. These Offline Updates force me to wait more than 5 Minutes for the updates to finish. Please rethink this decission. In 15 Years I only once managed to brick a machine with an Online Update....

Code: Select all

kwriteconfig5 --file discoverrc --group Software --key UseOfflineUpdates --type bool false

I'm being told discover might grow a gui option for this somewhere since you asked for it.

What I hate about windows, that when you want to turn on computer at the airport and want to quickly send an email, you suddenly realize you have to wait until it installs and configures updates. I feel same with recent offline updates in plasma desktop, although it is much faster It is useful feature for kernel updates, etc, but most of the time it is enough just to logoff/logon at most, without doing full system reset (two resets actually).

Although I see it is a good feature for most of non-power users, but many others would prefer to restart application what needs to be restarted, instead of rebooting whole pc. Hopefully option to disable this feature is added soon to the GUI.

apachelogger wrote:

Code: Select all

kwriteconfig5 --file discoverrc --group Software --key UseOfflineUpdates --type bool false

I'm being told discover might grow a gui option for this somewhere since you asked for it.

Thanx! Having an option was always the KDE way!

apachelogger wrote:

Code: Select all

kwriteconfig5 --file discoverrc --group Software --key UseOfflineUpdates --type bool false

I'm being told discover might grow a gui option for this somewhere since you asked for it.

Are all updates installed via Discover to be offline, or just the ones that benefit from it? It seems a bit overboard to have offline updates for normal application software.

Every application that is part of the system (i.e. installed as a deb) is a system update.

If you update konsole and it changes the ABI of the konsole kpart that breaks dolphin's embedded terminal. "application" doesn't really mean anything from a programming perspective.

So *all* updates will be offline then, including ones that do not really require it, such as a video editor, office suite, or web browser?

claydoh wrote:So *all* updates will be offline then,

No. Non-system software does not. Namely: third party extensions from the KDE store (icon packs, themes and the like), snaps, flatpaks, and appimages.

claydoh wrote: including ones that do not really require it such as a video editor, office suite, or web browser?

There is no such thing as a piece of system software that doesn't require it. You would think a video editor exists in an isolated bubble but it does not when it is installed as system software. e.g. kdenlive: kdenlive is a video editor, kdenlive uses kio for file io, kio is using plugins to implement that, any 2 of the 3 can break their runtime compatibility necessitating a software restart. When it's installed as a flatpak or snap it becomes an entirely different story though.

I get that, but having to reboot to upgrade to a new version of, say, Libreoffice or something similar is a bit overkill.
There will be much howling, to be sure.
I like and heartily approve of the concept and process, just not the all-or-nothing aspects of it.

apachelogger wrote:

Code: Select all

kwriteconfig5 --file discoverrc --group Software --key UseOfflineUpdates --type bool false

I'm being told discover might grow a gui option for this somewhere since you asked for it.

Thanks for this, but I think it should be obvious that many users will have a problem with restarting with every freaking update. I mean, this has been always a selling point for Linux, isn't it? Instead of fixing the problems of online updates by restarting services or whatever is necessary, KDE takes the windows way of solving everything by restarting.

Honestly I only had problem with updates in the past (5+ years using Kubuntu/KDE Neon) with KDE and KDE-related packages (Dolphin, Konsole, Klipper, etc). I've never experience any issues with non-KDE related programs. At least nothing major that could justify this annoyance.

And anyway, wouldn't X Session restart (logoff, logon) be enough in most cases?

claydoh wrote:I get that, but having to reboot to upgrade to a new version of, say, Libreoffice or something similar is a bit overkill.
There will be much howling, to be sure.
I like and heartily approve of the concept and process, just not the all-or-nothing aspects of it.

Since switching to Bitwarden from LastPass I have to do 3 separate logins to BW with each reboot; 1 for cli, 1 for BW in Chrome (Beta), and 1 for a ChromeBeta tab. On top of that KDE Neon takes about 3-4 minutes to reboot these days. New Discovery update seems to require a restart each time. To avoid that I just run my old script, updt.sh from Konsole:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
# Does the same thing as update manager
# Updated 2021-04-09 @ 13:02:37 MDT by rob@sigma-changed apt-get to apt, changed upgrade to full-upgrade
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade && sudo apt dist-upgrade


2 steps forward and 3 steps back. Good to have choices.

blue_bullet wrote:

claydoh wrote:I get that, but having to reboot to upgrade to a new version of, say, Libreoffice or something similar is a bit overkill.
There will be much howling, to be sure.
I like and heartily approve of the concept and process, just not the all-or-nothing aspects of it.

Since switching to Bitwarden from LastPass I have to do 3 separate logins to BW with each reboot; 1 for cli, 1 for BW in Chrome (Beta), and 1 for a ChromeBeta tab. On top of that KDE Neon takes about 3-4 minutes to reboot these days. New Discovery update seems to require a restart each time. To avoid that I just run my old script, updt.sh from Konsole:

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash
# Does the same thing as update manager
# Updated 2021-04-09 @ 13:02:37 MDT by rob@sigma-changed apt-get to apt, changed upgrade to full-upgrade
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade && sudo apt dist-upgrade


2 steps forward and 3 steps back. Good to have choices.

Yup, as mentioned in info from my links, offline updates are only relevant for Discover, or pkcon if using specific options. Normal command line updating is not effected.

Hi,

personally I though that something was broken or a rootkit type of virus got it. I was reconsidering reinstalling the o.s. and creating a support ticket/post for help thing.

I even though that maybe kde neon or the dev team got "bought"/forked/etc by some microsoft team/philosophy. It just got me a really bad feeling of things going downhill.

I agree with many of the above post, this looks/feels too much like windows and seems old and antiquated way of doing things in 2021.
I though that linux didn't "need" update reboots. Nightmares coming to mind from my windows tek support days in the 1990s