Discover fails to update ... again

[steve7233]

I used the terminal, and it updated just fine. It seems today's update gives Discover problems. For some reason, Discover thinks there are a bunch of unmet dependencies, but the terminal had no issues and only had to update one file, as it is just a codec update, so the dependencies are already on my system. I have seen this several times over the past several versions of Kubuntu and on several computers, but the terminal can update just fine. Is there something strange about the way Kubuntu looks for dependencies, or maybe it's a KDE and or plasma thing that just affects Discover once in a while?

[Snowhog]

Discover IS NOT a package manager. It doesn't do everything that apt does. Relying on it as a package manager is a fools errand.

[steve7233]

Discover IS NOT a package manager. It doesn't do everything that apt does. Relying on it as a package manager is a fools errand.

So I should not use its update utility? I will just use the terminal from now on and use Discover to read what is in the updates.

[Snowhog]

So I should not use its update utility?

"I" would so 'no'; do all your package management from the command line:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

Any updates that Discover notifies about, apt will see as well.

When Muon Package Manager was finally laid to rest, an actual Package Manager was no longer being included in the distribution ISOs for Kubuntu (to the best of my knowledge). Many of us, after installing Kubuntu, will install Synaptic Package Manager.

[claydoh]

I use Discover to install updates daily, whenever I see a notification actually. I usually start my day checking for updates on the command line, but if Discover has beaten me to it, I will use that, since it also updates my flatpaks and KDE theme items. I have had absolutely zero issues in the past year doing this on both my PC and travel laptop that were related to Discover, though my 24.04 drive died fairly recently and I haven't bothered to replace it, so this is mostly on the current Plasma 6 releases.

Dependency errors in Discover ARE errors from apt at the time you refreshed and updated. Sometimes the issue is fleeting -- a local Ubuntu apt mirror or a PPA is still updating or lagging behind for a bit, things like that keeping things out of sync momentarily.

Discover, Synaptic, and Muon all use Apt under the hood, and these errors are what apt is reporting.

Seeing a error in the GUI does warrant checking with apt, for sure.


tl;dr: I, as a two decade long Kubuntu user who greatly prefers to use the command line for most package management tasks, do support and recommend using discover for installing updates if one desires, and for its use as an app store.

[steve7233]

I use a terminal with:
Sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
What is the difference between upgrade and full-upgrade?

[claydoh]

As a reference:
https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages...an8/apt.8.html
See the tl;dr since I made this too long.



Basically, apt upgrade is the proper method for most people, despite what us old timers may say.
As the man page states, apt full-upgrade allows for package removals, if necessary, while apt upgrade does not.
Normal installations are fine using upgrade since the system is built around this and won't need to have something removed/replaced, but anyone playing around with addon repos that provide significant upgrades might want to remove something, to replace it with something else. Say the Kubuntu-backports PPA on a non-LTS release, or running a pre-release version of *buntu. Or Debian Experimental. KDE neon requires it.

Even users of PPAs *should* be OK to use plain upgrade, but you never know.
If some major upgrade of a package from a PPA required a removal, using upgrade will just skip installing or upgrading that thing altogether, and probably not provide an error or warning as it is doing what it is supposed to do. But in the long run this could cause some things to break down the road on modified systems.

On the other hand, running full-upgrade and a packaging glitch or similar problem might cause important things to get removed if one does not pay attention. This shouldn't happen with regular upgrade so it is safer.

But, using full-upgrade is safe and won't do anything to a generic more vanilla install either, at least in theory.

In the now fairly distant past past, apt acted very differently, and Ubuntu's usage required the use of full-upgrade, while Debian used regular upgrade.
Debian changed how apt worked, and now in most cases upgrade is preferred.

tl;dr
Just use apt upgrade
If one is torn and has added PPAs that provide large amounts of upgraded packages:
just use full-upgrade and don't worry or think about it too much but always inspect what apt suggest to remove.

clear as mud

[steve7233]

Yep, clear as mud!

[jglen490]

Yep, that's why I go for "full-upgrade". It does no harm, and may do some good. But, your choice - this is Linux after all.

[jasoncollege24]

Discover IS NOT a package manager. It doesn't do everything that apt does. Relying on it as a package manager is a fools errand.

I know this is a bit of an old topic, but I wanted to chime in here to say that I'll have to disagree with some of this. It's true that Discover is not specifically a package manager, but it is meant to be a front end for apt, snapd, and flatpak (when installed.) Discover is designed to be a user friendly GUI alternative to using the command line tools for updates, but it is not perfect.

I noticed no commands were specified for updating snaps and flatpaks in this post, so here are some commands you can use to get your packages updated from the command line.

For deb packages:
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

If you see a message about packages that are no longer needed, with advice to use sudo apt autoremove to clear them out, check to ensure you don't actually need them, before removing them. I've found rare cases where this prompt was incorrect (such as needing one of the earlier kernels after a botched kernel update)

For snap:
sudo snap refresh

for flatpak
flatpak update --assumeyes

some flatpaks might be installed as root, so the above command can be used with sudo to apply those updates. Without the "--assumeyes" flag, flatpak will prompt you for each and every flatpak update.

I generally use a bash script that includes all of these, which I run once a day.