Plasma: using Discover for updates: Flatpak platform updates?

littlebitjumpy

I need some education. I saw the news here in the Forum that Solus SC needs to be pulled (because we love our volunteer devs), with the advantage of smooth GUI updates for flatpak installs. So I switched from command-line eopkg updates to using Discover, just to save steps. I haven't installed many flatpaks, but I want to keep the ones I have up-to-date.

Then I started seeing updates tagged as from Flathub for items that look like core functions, not anything I installed myself, like KDE Application Platform and Freedesktop Platform. I have been excluding those updates, on the assumption that I don't want Discover/Flathub interfering with my happy curated Solus OS.

Question #1: Should I be installing these Flathub platform updates after all? Are they just part of the flatpak ecosystem?

Question #2: Does it make more sense to go back to CLI eopkg updates, and use Discover only for its Flathub "source"?

Thanks for helping a Solus comrade who loves Linux without being an expert technical user.

Staudey

littlebitjumpy Question #1: Should I be installing these Flathub platform updates after all? Are they just part of the flatpak ecosystem?

Those are just the flatpak runtimes. They don't affect the base system, and yes, you should update them as part of the flatpak ecosystem.

littlebitjumpy Question #2: Does it make more sense to go back to CLI eopkg updates, and use Discover only for its Flathub "source"?

That's entirely up to you. As far as I know Discover is supported now, so you should be fine updating both system packages and flatpaks using it

brent

littlebitjumpy Does it make more sense to go back to CLI eopkg updates

it really is the most bulletproof and effective way to update. without question my answer to you would be yes.

MikeK61

I use discover for weeks now for all updates it works as it should.
I never had issues with sc but discover has its advantages.

WetGeek

brent without question my answer to you would be yes.

So would mine. It was a pleasant surprise, though, that Discover offered to update the firmware in my DELL computers. It listed those just like an outdated package, and did the updates without any further fuss. For ordinary weekly Solus updates, though, I agree 100%. Eopkg is easy to learn, and easier to use.

joluveba

WetGeek Discover offered to update the firmware in my DELL computers.

Wow! Remember what the actual firmware update was? Maybe a BIOS update?

A few days ago I was using my daughter's laptop (Windows 10), wherein I had installed the MyAsus app. MyAsus gave me the option to update the BIOS, just push the OK option, so easy, nothing else. I thought, it would be great to have something like that in Linux.

brent

joluveba I thought, it would be great to have something like that in Linux.

gnome-software does that too but I know what you are saying: a standalone app. I agree Like a frontend to fwupd or something like that.

WetGeek

brent gnome-software does that too

Indeed. I used that on my Xfce laptop.

WetGeek

There were acually more than one, but I'm sure that the BIOS/UEFI was one of them. I've forgotten the names by now, though.

johano

fwupd is a nice development for Linux

Here is a GUI for fwupd

https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.Firmware

https://gitlab.gnome.org/World/gnome-firmware

I'ts a front-end for fwupd, although fwupd is straightforward to use from the terminal.

From notes previously taken:

Output from tldr fwupdmgr

Update device firmware, including UEFI, using fwupd.

More information: 🌏 https://fwupd.org

Display all devices detected by fwupd:

fwupdmgr get-devices

Download the latest firmware metadata from LVFS:

fwupdmgr refresh

List the updates available for devices on your system:

fwupdmgr get-updates

Install firmware updates:

fwupdmgr update

TraceyC

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