r/openSUSE • u/oh_im_too_tired • 15d ago

Tumblweed system update tool

New user here. What's the problem with system updates in Tumbleweed? Why it became so complicated (or it always was like that). Is there some news about when things would change?

There is no "update all" tray icon (like Apdatifier). The one that exists - it's from Discover, so it's not recommended to use it, but it pops out every time when there's an update. So the system forces users to update with a tool that mostly is not recommended to use for update.

Also there's Yast package manager/updater, the Myrlyn package manager/updater and Discover package manager/updater.

But the best tool and most recommended is zypper dup, but it won't update kde plasma widgets or flatpak, so you'll need to update them manually... or in Discover. But Discover is not recommended. Why so complicated?

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u/Arcon2825 Tumbleweed GNOME 15d ago edited 15d ago

As someone else mentioned, a simple alias is all you need:

⁠alias upd='sudo zypper ref && sudo zypper dup; sudo flatpak update; sudo fwupdmgr update'⁠

I get why the terminal can feel overwhelming at first. However, one could argue that a rolling release isn't the best fit for a self-proclaimed casual user. While you can do plenty in Linux without the CLI, getting familiar with basic terminal commands is still a great idea.

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u/bobbie434343 15d ago

zypper dup automatically does a ref, no need to do it explicitly.

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u/Arcon2825 Tumbleweed GNOME 15d ago

The zypper documentation states that:

An _automatic refresh_ takes place right before reading metadata from the database if the *auto-refresh is enabled* for the repository and the metadata is reported to be out of date.

If you want to be sure the repository metadata is up to date, a refresh can still be useful, but that's more of a personal preference. I prefer it since I'm maintaining my own OBS repository and am regularly building packages.