I have a stupid question. I remember reading at some point somewhere that under KDE Neon I shouldn't use apt for upgrades, but only pkcon... I just don't remember why, so could somebody explain that to me? I really appreciate apt's explaining the process step by step and meaningful information if there are some problems (and I don't like pkcon's minimalism and unintelligible messages when there is an error), I would love switch to apt, but I don't dare to, scared that at some point I would break the system...

Cheers!

https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/m ... on_use_it/ has an explanation

viewtopic.php?f=309&t=174074&hilit=pkcon#p452841

Pkcon is the command line interface to Packagekit, which is what Discover (and Gnome Software) uses under the hood.
Packagekit/Discover/Pkcon uses a distro's native packaging system to do the work. In the case of Neon, this would be apt. In Manjaro, using pkcon would be using pacman.

So there is no danger per se, but you do have to use it correctly. In Ubuntu based distros, apt is set up somewhat differently than it is in Debian, so the proper formats to use would be

Code: Select all

  sudo apt update

and

Code: Select all

    sudo apt full-upgrade

In Debian, the usage would be sudo apt upgrade. People unfamiliar with Ubuntu based systems were using this format to update, and due to the differences in how each command option works, not all updates get installed in some instances. Early on, this was a very common problem, as many people were using the Debian method, and not getting fully updated.

Neon decided to push the use of Pkcon to help reduce this user error. They even patched things so that if you try to run apt incorrectly, it will give you a message instead of running.

Pkcon is a good choice to use, as the same command is used no matter the distro or packaging system.

Using apt if also fine, and usually preferable if there are errors or issues, as the native packaging tools will give better messaging to help troubleshoot, and pkcon can hide a fair bit of this.

Thank you very much... On my other two computers (under Kubuntu) I'm always installing updates by typing "sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade", so no problem there (funny thing is that before switching to Neon, I had been using Q4OS which is a Debian-based distro, and I was installing the updates in the same way, not by "apt upgrade")...

So I think I'll be switching to apt also on my KDE Neon device without fear... I really like the apt's way of explaining step by step what it is doing in complement of the progress bar... The progress bar of pkcon which sometimes freezes for long periods is always scaring me, whereas under apt for example the fact that I see that it is running e.g. update-initramfs calms me down, as it's normal that this process is taking a while (especially if I hadn't uninstalled old kernels for some time).

Thanks once again!

kde-locutus wrote:I'm always installing updates by typing "sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade", so no problem there

I doubt it is an issue (or it would be extremely unlikely to cause problems atm), but I imagine the old apt-get dist-upgrade may eventually stray from what the modern, more correct apt full-upgrade does, so i recommend using that, just to be safe.