How can a SUSE newbie check updates in Cinnamon?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Installations of both Leap and Tumbleweed with KDE notified me of updates. I just installed Tumbleweed with Cinnamon, and don’t see anything serving the function of an ‘update manager’ Linux Mint type notifier in the panel.

I can live without this, but wonder how best to check for updates. There’s zypper inr , zypper lp, zypper patch, etc. I installed kde3-kupdateapplet (likely by mistake), and suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that I can’t make it show up in Cinnamon. Finally, I can click ‘Online Update’ in Yast.

I’m pretty new at openSUSE, as should be obvious from this thread. I know I have a lot of reading to do, but would like to keep my system savely patched and up to date in the meantime. Any tips will be appreciated!

2

Take care, Leap is different from Tumbleweed here. The updater applet (no matter which one) is in fact useless for Tumbleweed. While you ask this for Tumbleweed, do not try to use any update applet, but wait for an explanation from a Tumbleweed user.

3

I had such hard time before. But I finally got some sense on Tumbleweed after a lot of reading.

As for now, I know the best way to update Tumbleweed is to run following command through command line,

$ sudo zypper dup

where dup is the abbreviation for dist-upgrade. You can check this by,

$ sudo zypper --help

This is the recommend way at present. You can check discussions on mailing-list [1].

Before sometime this year, the recommanded command was,

$ sudo zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change

where --no-allow-vendor-change means do not allow packages to change vendors. But this is not necessary now because the option is set in zypp.conf [2].

You can find some other hints here [3].

[1] https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2016-12/msg00326.html
[2] https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2017-07/msg00172.html
[3] https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Tumbleweed_upgrade

I do not use Leap, so the recommendation should come from some other users.

Have fun :slight_smile:

4

Thanks very much for the replies, hcvv and cnzhx … and cnzhx, thank you for the valuable links to past discussions. I see that I’m not alone in feeling confused. I’ll do some more research, and return to this thread if I have follow-ups.

5

This is a slight simplification.

There are no updates for Tumbleweed. Hence updater applications are inappropriate and could (probably will) break your installation.

A regular distribution release (e.g. OpenSUSE Leap 42.3 or SuSE 5.4) is designed to be stable for its lifetime and while supported will receive patches to fix bugs and important recommended updates to packages that missed the release date, etc. These updates (both security/essential and recommended can only be applied to their design release. They are dependent on consistent package naming and version numbering. The definitive name of a Linux release is found in “*/etc/os-release”.

Each release of Tumbleweed *(e.g. opensuse:tumbleweed:20170810") is a distinct entity and is intended to be upgraded to the next version, in a similar manner as upgrading from Leap-42.2 to Leap-42.3. This is because the packaging and versioning is generally inconsistent between releases, and any attempted manual updating of individual packages requires a deal of care and knowledge.

6

I am very glad to help. I am helped a lot in this forum. This is a warm community to me :slight_smile:

Besides, eng-int’s summary on the characteristic of TW is very informative yet concise:

It points out the key feature of TW, which is every snapshot of TW is meant to be a new release/product. If you are going to add repositories other than the packman repo, please be extreme careful and make note on changes. Just an advice from my experience. Actually, I try to avoid additional repos all the time :smiley:

7

After studying the links offered by cnzhx in an earlier thread, as well as:

https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory/2016-12/msg00330.html

my impression is:

  • zypper up
    can be safely done anytime. - zypper dup
    syncs a user’s Tumbleweed installation with the contents of the latest available Tumbleweed rolling release, and isn’t guaranteed not to break things - zypper dup
    now performs the same function as zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change - Tumbleweed won’t tell me to update or upgrade, at least not with the Cinnamon desktop. I must run zypper dup or zypper up.

Am I warm? Lukewarm? Way off? Missing something essential?

Thanks once again for all tips and feedback. I have Tumbleweed up and running on a second SSD, but haven’t yet decided to make it my daily driver.

8

My KDE desktop on TW definitely gives me notifications that there are TW updates. “zypper up” could definitely break an application, it is not fool-proof.

9

NOT in Tumbleweed. But for Leap, yes.

zypper dup syncs a user’s Tumbleweed installation with the contents of the latest available Tumbleweed rolling release, and isn’t guaranteed not to break things

Actually, zypper dup performs a distribution upgrade. Each Tumbleweed release is a new distribution. Therefore, you only use zypper dup, you do not use zypper up in TW.

zypper dup in Leap also performs a distribution “upgrade”, but unless you change the repos to a higher version, will instead actually “upgrade” your installed system from the same release (ie: 42.2 to 42.2, or 42.3 to 42.3) to the same release, but will switch your changed packages back to the openSUSE repos. Used that way, it can sometimes break things or even terribly break things, according to your install.

Thus, unless you are trying to repair a seriously broken system, or want to upgrade from 42.2 to 42.3, you generally do not use zypper dup in Leap.

zypper dup now performs the same function as zypper dup --no-allow-vendor-change

Only in Tumbleweed. It has been set, in Tumbleweed only, to use the --no-allow-vendor-change switch by default. In Leap, you will still have to specify that parameter when needed.

Tumbleweed won’t tell me to update or upgrade, at least not with the Cinnamon desktop. I must run zypper dup or zypper up.

It is not Tumbleweed that won’t tell you, it is the Software Updater that will not tell you. This is by design, since the updater does not run the mandatory zypper dup.

And, again, in Tumbleweed, use ONLY zypper dup, NOT zypper up.

10

The above post is an extensive explanation, thanks. :good:

My explanation about the default --no-allow-vendor-changewas only added because I advised zypper dup without it and wanted to prevent posts that told me that I was wrong and had to add the --no-allow-vendor-chang from people that missed the introduction of that rather knew phenomenon. I should have added that that default is only for TW, but it was in a TW thread and I wanted to keep it short.

11

My bare metal Tumbleweed install was with the Cinnamon desktop, so I didn’t see the KDE update mentioned by xorbe. However, I do see it with Tumbleweed running KDE in VirtualBox, after selecting the standard KDE install from the Tumbleweed DVD.

For me, that begs a question: if zypper dup is the way to go with Tumbleweed, then is that what the KDE update icon is checking? Or is it reporting what’s available through zypper up?

12

As you could have read in post#2 above

The updater applet (no matter which one) is in fact useless for Tumbleweed

And that is mentioned in several other threads about TW and updating.

13

I saw and remember your second post in this thread, Henk, but please consider my bewilderment as a newcomer to Tumbleweed:

  • The KDE desktop is a standard install with the Tumbleweed DVD. I had to work to get Cinnamon in, but not KDE.
  • The standard KDE Tumbleweed install adds the KDE desktop notifier referred to by Xorbe in post #8.
  • Once up and running, the desktop notifier informs the user of needed updates.

Yet – from what I gather here – the user is supposed to ignore what the straight-from-the-figurative-openSUSE-factory system says to do, and instead know enough to run zypper dup.

That’s unusual!

14

You may mean something else than what “bare metal” actually means, which is to install on physical hardware with nothing else on it beforehand. In other words, a normal install.

If on the other hand you might have meant installing Cinnamon as the original Desktop,
I’ve found two current unresolved bugs (both reported)

  • The background is a grey overlay and can’t be modified to anything else.
  • The Downloads and Documents folders are not automatically created. If you’re adding Cinnamon to a system which has another Desktop installed, this won’t be noticed because the other Desktop will have created these folders. If you overlook this and for instance download something using a Web Browser, you’ll have a problem since files by default are saved to Downloads.

TSU

15

I do not know if it is unusual, but it is as you say.

It has btw nothing to do with which desktop you use (or if you use a desktop at all).

And yes, running TW requires a bit more insight in what the differences between it and the “normal” distribution (nowadays Leap 42.x) are. And going with that, maybe a bit more knowledge about repos, packages, vendor stickyness, patch, update, distribution update, etc. then many Leap users have.

And when you are disturbed by that applet, switch it off, throw it away, de-install it.
I am not runing TW, but Leap and I do not have it installed together with the Packagekit software behind it. Not because it is useless as on TW, but because I do not need it or allow it to function on my systems and t he applet is annoying my users.

I use YaST/zypper. That is one important reason why I use openSUSE.

But each shold decide for himself.

16

For TSU, to clarify: I experimented with separate installs of Tumbleweed with both KDE and Cinnamon, then installed it on a partition of its own on an SSD. I’ve never configured a given install to let me choose between two desktops at start up, and haven’t had the gray overlay problem you describe.

Henk: bottom line, I guess: now I know it’s zypper dup!

17

Yes…

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Hi Tuner,
there are emails that notify you about new snapshots on the factory mailing list [0]. If you want to subscribe , just email “opensuse-factory+subscribe@opensuse.org”. Be warned, there is a lot going on and (depending on your interest) might be useless for you. If you do it, I highly recommend to have a subfolder in your inbox and have those emails moved there automatically. More information on mailings lists can be found in the wiki [1]

welcome to openSUSE!
merk

[0] - https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-factory
[1] - https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Mailing_lists_subscription

19

Thank you, merk!