Hi. Sorry for my English: this post was also written with the help of google.
I’m thinking to migrate from Debian world (Linux Mint) to Opensuse and my choice would be for Tumbleweed XFCE. This DE is “mandatory”, because some PCs I have are old and KDE is too heavy. And, above all, because I like XFCE! I’m trying Opensuse XFCE from some days and almost everything seems to be fine.
My problem (perhaps the first of many to come): it seems that in Opensuse Tumbleweed XFCE there is no way to have a periodic check (via cron or otherwise) for the availability of updates (system AND installed packages) with a notification or similar (not mail, something online) when any are available. I don’t want an automatic update (I want to have the last click on the operations), just a warning when there are updates. It seems really strange to me that this service isn’t present in opensuse xfce, while I’ve always found it in all the other distributions I’ve tried (Debian, Arch or Opensuse kde with Discover). It’s probably me who can’t find it (I hope!). I have considered the possibility of a simple bash script that periodically launches “sudo zypper pchk” “sudo zypper lu” “sudo zypper lp” or similar with a notification on the screen in case of updates available, but I have not found documentation about return codes returned by zypper. But I hope there is something better than a custom script!
Any suggestions are very welcome. Thanks in advance.
Roberto, from Italy.
Welcome to the forum and openSUSE, Roberto.
I use XFCE on openSUSE since more than 15 yrs ago and I am very satisfied. So my recommendation to you is go ahead and use it too!
There was until very recently an “updater daemon” that did what you ask for. This has since some weeks ago been removed. Perhaps it is possible (and fun?) to find the repo and adapt the code for your own use. But perhaps it is just easier to manually run zypper dup as root every now and then?
Good luck!
You really don’t need a tool to inform you of updates on a rolling distro. There are pretty much always updates available, so just run zypper dup a few times a week and enjoy!
@wromack Hi, my English is also bad. So I hope, with the help of Google, to be understandable. I use slowroll, tumbleweed and leap 15.6 in vm virtualbox. All 3 are in KDE and XFCE. So 6 installations. On very old hardware (15 years) I use slowroll XFCE and I customized the installations with gnome-software which also adds packagekit independently. However, I always prefer to do the classic “zypper dup”. HI
I also would like to extend a warm welcome to you as well!
Much like you, I also came over from using primarily Debian based distros where an update manager was always a staple. Since my time here, I have found it to be a feature that I ended up not missing.
As @VariableStar has already mentioned, you can try reviving the old updater daemon if you find you cannot go without such a thing. But also, as @Lyle_JP has also stated, simply running zypper dup or zypper patch on a daily basis will pretty much take care of all update/upgrade related needs. There are literally updates almost every day here, and unlike with Arch, you can trust that everything has been tested to a degree that there won’t be any “live hand grenades” among them(barring your own custom configurations being incompatible).
I would also like to add that every time there is a new snapshot released, there is a post made here to the forums with a link to all upgrades contained on said snapshot, so that you may review them before applying them. You can also customize what zypper will pull by editing the zypper config file, as well as changing settings within Yast. Speaking of Yast, you can also have the option to do all your updates straight from the Yast gui, instead of the command line as well.
That is very amusing to hear exactly now when update is practically blocked by the missing python-PyQt6.
That is rather bad advice on Tumbleweed.
That is very amusing to hear exactly now when update is practically blocked by the missing
python-PyQt6.
You mean this?: Upgrading to libQt6Gui6-6.7.0 seems lead to a maze of dependency issues, anyone else?
Hardly what I would call a live hand grenade when zypper paints a giant sign that says: “Pull pin and will explode,” or, “There are no good options.”
That is rather bad advice on Tumbleweed.
Oh? Do tell?
One way to check if a new tumbleweed snapshot was released is to use RSS feeds, you can see on the forum that every time a new one is published a post is created and you can have an RSS feed just for that
https://forums.opensuse.org/u/dimstar/activity.rss
Alternatively you can directly follow the RSS feed of the mailing list who is not limited to new snapshot released
https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/factory@lists.opensuse.org/feed/
I personally use the later and have configured my RSS application to show a desktop notification for every post starting with New Tumbleweed snapshot
Another useful link is OpenQA https://openqa.opensuse.org/ , every snapshot is tested before being published and you can see here if the test are going well or not or if the snapshot is approved for publication.
Thank you all.
Be right: in a rolling release updates are frequent, probably even every day, so an “update available” notification is not very useful.
I would like only confirmation that in Tumbleweed “zypper dup” is sufficient to update EVERYTHING (system, patches, packages installed from the repos) in one shot. Thanks again.
I do not know what you call “system”. Tumbleweed does not normally use patches (there was a single known exception recently when patch was issued for xz vulnerability). zypper works with packages and “zypper dup” is sufficient to match packages on your system with the content of the repositories you defined. zypper does not handle any software delivery methods beyond that (flatpaks, snaps, appimages or like).
Writing “everything” in all caps does not really help in understanding what it means to you.
Yes. zypper dup is enough.
@wromack hi. I had 2 flatpaks before replacing them with packages included in tw. In that case I typed “sudo zypper dup && flatpak update"
Thanks for asking this!
I was a dedicated SuSE Linux user many years ago, before there was 'open’SuSE, and recently when I came back to it I was more than a little confused, expecting there to be some sort of GUI update notification or something available through YAST. I usually prefer to use the CLI tools for updating apt-based distros (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) but I have little to no experience with zypper as most of my SuSE experience far predates that particular tool. Guess it’s time to get re-familiarized!
Oh? Do tell?
From what I know YAST skips system packages
Just to clarify, I was throwing this idea out as an option and not a recommendation due to OP implying they would prefer a gui like option.
…Just pointing out that this was an option, not necessarily a good option.
Really? It shouldn’t as long as the factory repos(especially the factory) is enabled. But it could very well be the case as I have only used Yast to upgrade very specific packages, and never a full system upgrade.
@40476 yes I would concur 
@Android_Gynous using openSUSE:Factory skips any testing via openQA, it can also disappear as its the staging area. End of the day, it’s your system, manage/use as you see fit…
using openSUSE:Factory skips any testing via openQA, it can also disappear as its the staging area. End of the day, it’s your system, manage/use as you see fit…
So in other words, untested packages are tossed in to factory and Yast provides no buffer?
Did not know. Glad I didn’t try doing system package upgrades from there then.
@Android_Gynous Well ‘tossed in’ is a bit of a misnomer, it’s where all of the Tumbleweed packages go for staging from their respective development repositories and very volatile. It all depends on what those packages are and what ring they are designated for or not for leaf packages… then collected up and released as a new snapshot when the Release Manager pushes the ‘good to go’ button…