[RESOLVED] Rolling Upgrade Behavior...Command Line versus "Updates - Discover" GUI

[TheSupremeVizier]

I have been told not to use the Updates GUI. Instead, I now perform the following:

$ sudo apt update  
$ sudo apt list --upgradable
$ sudo apt full-upgrade  
$ sudo apt autoremove

I have noticed that there are some "packages" that are seen inside the Updates GUI that do not get installed by the command line operations because of "phasing" or some other reason. I assume that "phasing" implies that these packages are either being tested elsewhere and are awaiting approval, or they are part of a larger package and they are waiting on the rest of a subset of that larger package. Is this true? If not, please educate me. Why do I ask? Because (1) there is a package called "org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-575-64-03" that remains uninstalled (and I have an Nvidia GPU), and (2) the "Candy icons" never get installed by the aforementioned command line executions.

Thank you very much in advance.

[Snowhog]

What are phased updates, and why does Ubuntu use them?

And if one really wants too, you can turn off phased updates.

How do I turn off phased updates?

If you’re sure that you want to disable phased updates, reverting to the old behavior, you can change apt’s configuration by creating a file in /etc/apt/apt.conf.d called 99-Phased-Updates (if /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99-Phased-Updates doesn’t already exist). In the file, simply add the following lines:

Update-Manager::Always-Include-Phased-Updates true;
APT::Get::Always-Include-Phased-Updates true;

[TheSupremeVizier]

Thank you for the excellent link, Snowhog. Can you explain why the "Candy icons" are not updated? Are they also "phased"?

[Snowhog]

What are "Candy icons"? If they haven't been installed, they won't get installed by the commands you show above, unless it is a dependency of another already installed package/application that itself was being updated.

[TheSupremeVizier]

What are "Candy icons"? Well, I'm not sure. I'm apparently running a "Sweet" Global Theme according to Settings > Appearance > Global Theme. When I look at the "Updates" GUI and "click on "Candy icons", this results in a "More Information..." button. It also displays "Update from: KNewStuff (https:/api.kde-look.org/ocs/v1/)". When I click on the "More Information..." button, a lot of information is displayed, but the gist of it is in the first line where it states "Sweet gradient icon theme originally created to fit my Sweet theme".

[claydoh]

Theme items come from the KDE Store, not from the Ubuntu package repos, so apt doesn't have anything to do with these items at all. Phasing only involves Ubuntu packaging

Here, as it is a bit unclear what you are seeing, a picture may be worth dozens of words.......

[TheSupremeVizier]

Ask and you shall receive. Is the "org.freedesktop.Platform.GL.nvidia-575-53-03" package undergoing "phasing" while the "Candy icons" and "Breeze GTK theme" are both from the KDE Store?

[claydoh]

Yes, addons are from the KDE store.

The other two are flatpaks so would not be involved in Ubuntu's phasing. You would only see phased packages listed (if any) when using apt on the commandline. Discover would not show this at all. They would just appear in the list of updates in Discover when they are available.

Apt does not manage KDE Store items or flatpks/snap, it only handles native Ubuntu deb packages. Discover handles all of these types under one roof.

If you click on any of these items, it should offer more information.

[TheSupremeVizier]

Thanks, claydoh. I've modified the subject line to "resolved".