[SOLVED] Why so many video updates?

[kenj70]

I assume any new update file containing "mesa" is likely a video driver update. I swear there are a dozen updates of video related files every day. Why do the developers whittle on these files on a daily basis? My last post before I retired was as the release coordinator at a government software project. Seems to me that there ought to be a stable release of software at some point. On the one hand, I am grateful for the constant development of this software but don't these people ever take a break? On the other hand, I have never had one of these updates brick my system. Kudos! Now take a break!

-=Ken=-

[Snowhog]

Well, as you (should) know, "KDE neon is a rapidly updated software repository." Updates frequently and often.

[claydoh]

Mesa comes from Ubuntu, and not Neon, and Ubuntu 18.04 does not have constant Mesa updates, being an LTS. so my guess is you added an extra graphics PPA that is doing constant mesa updates, like the oibaf or padoka PPAs

The oibaf PPA updates every time Mesa git has a change

* all packages are automatically built twice a day, when there are upstream changes

If you did not add such a PPA, I do not know what might be going on. You might want to post the list of updates you are seeing, which may help us see what is going on.

sudo apt update

followed by

apt list --upgradable

this will show extra package version info that might be helpful.

My Neon system died a day ago, and I definitely was NOT getting constant mesa or graphics related updates of any sort, only the normal Ubuntu security fixes and official Plasma, Frameworks, and Application official releases when they come out every few weeks or so. And of course any packaging bug fixes Neon may also put out. Just a few things every few days usually, outside of new versions of Plasma et al

[kenj70]

As listed in my signature the video card is an NVIDIA GeForce GT 710. The driver version is 390.116.

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#5454FF][B]~[/B][/COLOR]$ apt list --upgradeable
Listing... Done
[COLOR=#18B218]libegl-mesa0[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]libegl1-mesa[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]libgbm1[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]libgl1-mesa-dri[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]libgl1-mesa-glx[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]libglapi-mesa[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]libgles2-mesa[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]libglx-mesa0[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]libwayland-egl1-mesa[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]libxatracker2[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]mesa-va-drivers[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[COLOR=#18B218]mesa-vdpau-drivers[/COLOR]/bionic 19.3~git1910281930.d29874~oibaf~b amd64 [upgradable from: 19.3~git1910280730.412bad~oibaf~b]
[/FONT]

[QUOTE=claydoh;431524]
My Neon system died a day ago, and I definitely was NOT getting constant mesa or graphics related updates of any sort, only the normal Ubuntu security fixes and official Plasma, Frameworks, and Application official releases when they come out every few weeks or so. And of course any packaging bug fixes Neon may also put out. Just a few things every few days usually, outside of new versions of Plasma et al[/QUOTE]
I had thought about switching to Kubuntu but it appears that the updates are solely due to the graphics card.

-- Can't get the dang quote to work right manually

-=Ken=-

[claydoh]

The updates are solely due to the oibaf PPA you added, which by design is supposed to get updates extremely often.This PPA does not provide any Nvidia drivers at all,
and as I understand it, the proprietary Nvidia drivers do not need or use Mesa (it has its own built-in stuff for that) so the PPA is probably useless on your system.
Free,open source drivers, such as those for AMD, intel, and Nouveau do need mesa.

[kenj70]

OK, I have been boning up on PPAs and such. The "oibaf" PPA is unfamiliar to me. When you first mentioned it I didn't know what you meant. I don't know why this particular PPA is installed unless it was some effort many months ago to get something working properly. I have a number of PPAs on my system and some of them are no longer used. I looked them up on Synaptic Package Manager Origin page. Is it as simple as removing the PPA in Synaptic PM? I don't need to shoot myself in the foot.

-=Ken=-

[claydoh]

the safest and easiest method is to use the ppa-purge command. This will revert the mesa packages back to the stock ones as well as remove the PPA entry. Just removing the PPA entry is probably fine, but you will be stuck with whatever mesa packages that were in the PPA. Of course this probably won't affect you, so it should not be a problem, but it very likely will probably be an issue if you upgrade to a new version of Kubuntu some time later on, or of there are any future mesa updates from Ubuntu.

sudo ppa-purge ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

[kenj70]

Thank you claydoh. You have come through again! I purged the oibaf PPA, rebooted and all is well. I am looking forward to a much more reasonable software update schedule.

-=Ken=-

[kenj70]

Aaaaah... no updates today! This is great. Thanks again!

-=Ken=-