As I was telling you the other day, KDE neon has implemented ” offline updates ” … and they are a real pain in the ass . But they can be disabled very easily, so let’s get to it …
… But not without first warning that ” “, ” “, ” offline updates offline updates offline updates ” or whatever you want to call them, is not a quirk of KDE neon, but is a standard feature proposed by freedesktop. org (the organization that “works for the interoperability and sharing of the core technology of Linux desktop environments”) that have already implemented GNOME-based distributions such as Fedora, with the goal of making the process more stable and secure.
So, keep in that if you disable offline updates, you do so mind at your own risk and against the decision of the distribution developers, in this case KDE neon, but also -if you get to this input in a while – from anyone else adopting this approach, which could potentially all be based on the KDE desktop environment and tools.
Personally, I have been updating the strip for years normally and the few times I have had a problem, I have solved it quickly by restarting by hand and, at most, completing the update by console. And it could continue to do so, as offline updates have only been rolled out to Discover at the moment , the KDE app store, , and not to the per-terminal package manager.
In fact, this is how I have always updated the system on Linux, by terminal. I believe that there is no more reliable and complete way to do it -for the amount of information it includes- and KDE neon is no exception . But I have to admit, as critical as I have been to Discover , that the app has made a world of difference in the last couple of years and I’ve gotten used to just clicking it, entering my password, and letting it go.
What I don’t see myself getting used to is the tedious double reboot that offline updates have brought with them and that I talk about more in the first link of the article. As an example, the other day KDE neon updated the latest version of KDE Frameworks and I had to be watching the boot screen with the update process for five minutes. Thanks but no. Those five minutes I can continue working and if I find a problem, I can do it.
But enough of rolls. How do I disable offline updates in Discover?
Edit the file (requires permissions):
/etc/xdg/discoverrc
And change the preference:
UseOfflineUpdates=true
from «true» a «false».
Save the file and if you had Discover open, close it for the changes to take effect. And remember: it never hurts to reboot after receiving a system update that updates important files… but with a spare time.
