this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

What?! No! How could this have been Linux's "killer feature"?

Am I taking crazy pills? It really matters to you that you can use a single command to upgrade your system?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

I actually like Flatpaks... I use dpkg/apt-get for system packages that cannot be installed in userspace, and flatpaks for desktop apps / games. Many distro's have unified ways to update them anyway (at least VanillaOS has)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

To still sorta replicate that, I just set up a script at /usr/local/bin/update for it:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

sudo emaint sync -a &&
sudo emerge -utDU @world &&
sudo emerge -c;
flatpak --user update;
doom upgrade &&
doom sync &&
doom purge
[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The solution is using a distro that has support for containers (flatpaks preferably) but doesn't force them on you, so far I haven't found a single use case in which they're truly needed on desktop so apt update still does everything for me.

There's some software that I compile myself (emulators), it cannot be upgraded with a packet manager but that has always been the case.

I use Linux MX but there are other distros with the same approach. It also makes it really easy to see if you're installing them because flatpak is a separated repository from non-container apps (I think it's also updated by the package manager but I haven't tried so far).

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

On Arch Linux I've migrated away from Flatpaks, so I only use AUR and official repos.

Oh boy my updates speed increased like 3 to 5 times. Flatpak is slow as fuck.

Also my ISP is slow as fuck.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Check out Nix, which goes in the opposite direction. There isn't really a distinction between the system and applications.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is why I really like KDE Plasma's discover. It's got integrations with apt, snap, Flatpack, and rpm, and that's only the ones I've tried so far.

I don't really use discover itself to manage my packages, cause for some reason I prefer to do it with the cli tools, but it is a great update notifier.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Except it doesn't always work. I've seen it stuck and loading updates forever a few times, while a simple flatpak update command did the job with zero issues.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is one of the reasons i don't use flatpaks, snaps etc. I get everything either from the official repos or from the aur. Except balena etcher as it is the only thing i was unable to install via my aur helper and i couldn't be bothered to look into why as balena is not that important to me.

It is the ONLY package that isn't updated with my update command as i installed it via appimage

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I use fedora as well and I just update through the GUI. It's more stable that way and waiting until I turn off my computer for them to apply is not a big deal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

No need to overcomplicate things, just write a small shell script or even just an alias. I use this daily:

alias get-rekt="sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y && flatpak update -y && flatpak remove --unused --delete-data -y"

adjust accordingly for Fedora and/or snaps. Obviously doesn't work for appimages or manually compiled stuff which should be a last resort if there's no other sensible way to install stuff.

edit: voyager shat the bed with the code block but you get the point

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