2d ago

question please: is there anything similar to the update manager that mint uses but for other distros??

i have been using linux mint and i enjoy the automatic updates feature of course!! it makes it easier to update flatpaks and packages! great, but, i also remember i was a user of ubuntu (xfce) and it had the same software but it was kind of weird because it only updated packages i think so.

is there any software or apps that you can download on other distros that do the same thing that linux mint does in regards to updates?? that it updates flatpaks and packages and everything. thank you very much, that would make my system more stable and up to date.

16 comments

Both KDE Discover and Gnome Software offer similar functionality. You should also be able to use them without their respective shells.

This can easily be solved by bundling all update commands into a single command. I have an alias for this, that updates everything with just a command called update. There is no need for an extra software. But you have to figure out the commands and options to do this correctly. For my operating system EndeavourOS, I have this:

alias update='eos-update --yay ; flatpak update ; flatpak uninstall --unused ; rustup self update ; rustup update'
then run it with:

update
... which updates the system, the AUR, Flatpak and my Rust environment. You don't need to rely on any third party software to update your system.

bauh, it has support for Debian and Arch packages (including AUR), Appimages, Flatpaks, Snaps and web apps.
- Seems cool, but it's unfortunate that the project doesn't seem healthy. Last commit was 5 months ago. Furthermore, its maintainer has even explicitly mentioned that the future of its project is uncertain. At least, we gotta give them credits for being transparent.
  
  That's a shame, I rather like bauh

Different software management systems can interact with Flatpak. I think the KDE package manager can, and the Gnome package manager too, if you install the plugin.
- Yeah, I think it depends on how the distro decides to implement it, can't remember now but I think e. g. in Fedora KDE you need to tick a box somewhere in Discover's (KDE's updater) settings (and then it's Fedora's own Flatpak repo?). In Bazzite which I'm using atm it's Flatpaks all the way down anyway 😸
  It's also quite nice in KDE that you can do Flatpak permissions etc in System Settings.

If you dont mind using the terminal, there is topgrade which can update many different kinds of packages with a single command (topgrade).
You can also build mintinstall (linux mints updater/store) on ubuntu.
- topgrade is great. Distros such as bazzite use it for all of their updates, under the hood anyway.
  
  yep very underrated piece of software, its so fast and reliable compared to like packagekit

Cockpit has an update manager built in and has the ability to setup dnf automatic

Several distros have those kinds of utilities built in.
Synaptics Package Manager comes preinstalled in lots of Debian derivatives.
Manjaro, Bazzite, and Endeavour have their own bespoke update managers. (Others do, as well, but those are the three non-Debians I've used most recently.)
- Just a heads-up: Synaptic doesn't come preinstalled on Debian or Ubuntu anymore.
  It's 25 years old software, and tends to behave weirdly when you try to uninstall multiple packages.

Ubuntu's software updater updates both deb packages and snaps. To my knowledge it doesn't do flatpaks, though, as Ubuntu officially doesn't support them.
- You can install a flatpak plugin for the GNOME software center and use that to update everything. It does debs, snaps, firmware and flatpaks for me on my work laptop.

OpenSUSE has GUI software updates via GNOME package updater or KDE discovery center, but also has GUI Yast software manager independent of DE

16 comments