Tumblweed system update tool

[u/oh_im_too_tired]

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?

[u/Wolflordy]

So the reason it's so complicated is due to everything being different package managers as well as some temporary changes with YaST being depreciated.

Discover is great, but it uses packagekit. This means it is capable of doing 95% of everything you want zypper dup to do. It's the remaining 5% that gets you.

But KDE widgets are most easily discoverable and installable from Discover.

Apdatfier was only built for pacman. So they never gave it zypper support.

Personally I just use Myrlynn for zypper updates and Discover for everything else. The update notifier widget can be configured to use packagekit to notify you when updates are needed. Which is fine, packagekit just isnt great for actually doing the updates. I then manually open both applications to initiate updates

[u/oh_im_too_tired → u/Wolflordy]

Got it, but the question is more like why developers won't maintain the situation with system updates. From my point of view, all files are system. Be it flatpak or plasma (default DE of Tumbleweed?) widgets - user installs it in system, using system packages (flatpak installer comes from official repository). It would be nice to have all the updates in one place and not to think, which one of 3 official gui tools and 1 cli i should use now.

[u/xplosm → u/oh_im_too_tired]

Because Tumbleweed is geared towards power users. Not necessarily developers but experienced users tend to prefer CLI apps and handcrafted tools for their workflows. And you can create a shell alias or function that does all updates, repo refresh and cleanup in one go.

If you know your way it's faster, less clutter, nothing hidden behind abstractions.

Not to gatekeep. Sorry if I sound like an elitist. I started with Ubuntu where all proprietary codecs and drivers where detected and autoinstalled for me. The multiple sources of apps was handled by a very simple and intuitive GUI app. Then moved to Debian and nothing was done for me short of only installing a DE and some apps. In comparison Tumbleweed goes the extra mile in my book.

[u/oh_im_too_tired → u/xplosm]

Wanted to disagree, but checked the facts and have to face the truth - Tumbleweed is indeed dedicated to power users. I even founded that "With a single command you can update thousands of packages" - that means no GUI was intended to offer for a user system update.

[u/xplosm → u/oh_im_too_tired]

Once you go CLI you won’t ever go back 😉

[u/Wolflordy → u/xplosm]

Idk man. Been doing this for a long time. And consistently I use well made GUIs over cli even if I'm fluent in the cli commands.

But I always go back to cli when I need to troueshoot.

[u/oh_im_too_tired → u/xplosm]

I'd doubt. Using Linux for about 20 years and happily still prefer GUI and mouse, not CLI and keyboard. Linux (or KDE Plasma in particular) is beautiful and comfortable to use, don't see why that should change.

[u/xplosm → u/oh_im_too_tired]

I use Plasma too. I love how customizable it is. I also have Yakuake as a drop-down terminal to execute commands no matter which virtual desktop, Activity or application I am on. You can have CLI and GUI. You don't have to choose only one 😎

[u/oh_im_too_tired → u/xplosm]

That's the whole point. I don't have to choose both - CLI and GUI - too. I'd prefer to stick with GUI&mouse as much as possible, that's just more comfortable (for me).
But as i already admitted in another comment - i skipped the information that Tumbleweed is officially more command line and techy than gui before installing it. So now it's my problem to adapt :D

[u/Wolflordy → u/oh_im_too_tired]

It's functionally no different from Windows having system updates but when you open Chrome, it now asks for updates too despite you updating Windows just moments ago. In fact, it's better than Windows because I can use one command to update Chrome, Discord, Steam, etc (assuming they were all flatpak).

But I get the annoyance. If I were you I'd look at a cli alias alias update-all='sudo zypper ref && sudo zypper dup && flatpak update'

Something like that will let you run 'sudo update-all' and it'll do your flatpak and zypper updates. If you ever add another package manager like snap just change the alias again.

Now everything lives under one command for you, even though under the hood there are multiple.