Questions about Discover and updates

[jglen490]

Thanks for checking this. I changed mine also. So now I really can just go to konsole to execute updates when notices come in.

[Qqmike]

Discover working this morning.

6 updates -- it appears that Discover worked correctly without problems this morning.

I checked the result against Muon (View > History and Check for Updates) and the CLI commands (sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade), and everything looks good.

[Qqmike]

Ha! Discover NOT working this morning (as per the OP)!

[chimak111]

According to the people participating in this video, Discover is fine for installing software but not for updates.

[Qqmike]

I didn't watch the vid but believe your conclusion of it. They will no doubt fix this in due time. Not a problem for me and you, as the guys above have said:
Ctrl-Alt-ESC and kill Discover
then
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
then
Done!

But ...
for other most people, they need a fix. I got the spousal unit here to use K 18.04.1, installed dual-boot on her laptop, she loves it and has said adios to Win 10, but she is not technically inclined and definitely not ready for the prime time of the about key stroke plays.

[KbntLvr]

To turn off Discover's automatic updating of your system (over which YOU are the boss, with no apologies to anyone), do this:

Launch Discover -> Wait for Discover to finish its automatic checking for updates, which it will always do after being launched -> Click "Settings" in the bottom left corner of that main page -> Click the little drop-down-menu button in the upper right corner of the resulting "Settings" page -> Click "Software Sources" on that button's drop-down menu -> Enter the administrator password in the resulting dialog that pops up -> Press the Enter key -> Click the "Updates" tab on the resulting "Software Sources" pop-up -> See the "Automatic Updates" section of that pop-up and let your preferences be gloriously known to the system -> Click the "Close" button in the bottom right corner of that pop-up -> Close Discover -> Cross your fingers and hope for the best

Will it work? Your guess is as good as mine. Remember: This is Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time and Full-of-Surprises DISCOVER that we're talking about.

[GreyGeek]

If you WERE using Discover, and not some other repository manager like Muon, then that will turn off Discover updates. However, you will then have to open a Konsole (most likely daily) and issue "sudo apt update & apt full-upgrade".

IF you have both Discover and Muon (or Synaptic) installed, they BOTH affect the /etc/apt sources files and removing the update checkbox in one will remove it in the other, and visa-versa, because they both reference the same config file. IF you do not like Discover then your best approach is to install muon and purge Discover (sudo apt purge plasma-discover plasma-discover-common), and set muon to check for updates daily.

[claydoh]

Muon itself does not have any automated update checking. It used it use separate companion programs muon-updater and muon-notifier, but that has now been replaced by Plasma Discover.

And the Software Sources editor in Muon, Discover, and Synaptic is actually a separate specific utility called.....Software Sources, which you can search for and run from the Kmenu or Krunner, if you want. This has nothing to do with whatever package manager, updater, or software store used, and itself does not need any sort of GUI software manager to be present. The default automatic checking for and install of security updates (only) is performed, even if you do not have any gui tools, unless you modify the settings in the Software Sources (software-properties-kde).

[Qqmike]

claydoh: Muon itself does not have any automated update checking. It used it use separate companion programs muon-updater and muon-notifier, but that has now been replaced by Plasma Discover.

Based on what you have said above in this thread, I suspected as much, which is why I asked the question. I'll re-install plasma-discover and use it to notify, then if it freezes, I will kill it and do the manual route. I do hope they can fix this. Strange thing is that sometimes Discover will work to fetch the updates and install them; and sometimes it simply freezes up. Thanks.

[claydoh]

As this freezing issue was fixed in neon some time back, I imagine once Kubuntu is able get fresher versions of Plasma, et al to the PPAs, this should be remedied.

[KbntLvr]

Addendum

Here is the original post:

- https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post419179

Here is the addendum to that post:

The behavior that ensued, the next day, after I turned off the default automatic updating of the system, is this:

- The update-notifier icon in the system tray popped up to tell me that there were updates to install (and did NOT begin automatically to install any of them, the way it did when the default automatic updating of the system was in place the day before)
- Left clicking once on that icon presented a popup that said "5 packages to update," and that had a button below that that said "Update." The button's tooltip said "Launches the software to perform the update"
- Clicking on that "Update" button--when I was damn good and ready--launched Discover to CHECK for updates
- Discover had another button at its top that said "Update All," that I needed to click manually to actually install the updates
- When I clicked "Update All," Discover asked me for the administrator password. Wow! That's almost normal! Then, it actually installed the updates and said "The system is up to date," in Discover's title bar. Wow!

Therefore, it appears that the system will check for updates (daily, if you set "daily"), let you know when there are updates, and require that you manually click an Update button (or two) to install the updates when you're ready.

I imagine that, instead of clicking on that icon popup's "Update" button to launch the default Discover program, I could have just independently launched Muon Package Manager and clicked on its own "Check for Updates" button to get the process going, completely bypassing the Full-of-Surprises Discover program.

[claydoh]

I imagine that, instead of clicking on that icon popup's "Update" button to launch the default Discover program, I could have just independently launched Muon Package Manager and clicked on its own "Check for Updates" button to get the process going, completely bypassing the Full-of-Surprises Discover program.

Sure, as well as at least four other methods to do this

[Qqmike]

Here, Discover seems to be working correctly to notify about updates and to manage the installation of the updates, on both my desktop and the laptop. No problems ... strange! Maybe it's working now, for me at least. We'll see. Had 19 updates today, including grub and the kernel.

[chimak111]

Discover is included in Lubuntu Cosmic. I'll try keeping a VM clone updated using Discover.

[chimak111]

I've started updating both Kubuntu and Lubuntu Cosmic using Discover. The only precaution I take is to first run sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get dist-upgrade immediately before running Discover. If there are any packages being held back, I'll wait a day or so to see if things are resolved.