this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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you should only need to reboot when updating the kernel. Why are you rebooting? Is it because the system is unresponsive?
I'm using the KDE version and updates come in automatically through Discover. They almost always announce in the system tray that a reboot is required.
You also don't have to reboot when Discover says to. It's just saying that the updates won't take effect until you reboot. It could probably be worded better, for sure.
I think that installing new versions often means that particular services need to be restarted. Rather than implement logic to restart relevant services, it probably just says "fuck it, reboot".
Eh, no. It only downloads the packages, then asks you to reboot and installs the new packages during the boot process. This means you get a clean system afterward in which no pre-update binaries are being run anymore. It just comes at the price that you need a full reboot for something that usually needs a session relogin at worst.
On the other hand you rather have to put a gun to the average GUI user's head to get them to reboot ever, otherwise the computer will sit there for months on end until finally they shut it down once and it can finally apply updates.
Honestly that little reboot icon in the sys tray is sort of like a loaded gun pointed at me
This is exactly my issue, Just as I can't deal with unread notifications, I can't live with a pending update icon just sitting there.
Right click the up arrow > configure icons tray > second tab > reboot notification > disabled.
So you don't want to hear about the arch box I leave hot and live for two months at a time?
It's because it has offline updates enabled in Discover settings, its not a distro thing rather that Gnome and KDE have that in their software centers as a setting, and Fedora enables it by default, but it can be disabled.
It's to make your system more stable because no packages get moved or updated during a running system causing unexpected behavior, and you also don't have to reboot when it tells you, it's more just a reminder that updates are waiting to be applied when you do, they could really word that better.
Interesting, I assumed I'd have to live with it... Would changing that setting be a bad idea?
Not a bad idea really, if you update tons of stuff without rebooting if you have it disabled sometimes weird stuff can happen, but its not very common and usually not very bad at all. I'd leave it on if you want that extra little bit of stability, but if its just a regular every day use computer I think either way is fine.
Well that was easy. Thank you very much, I may stick to Fedora for a while longer!
For anyone wondering, just edit
/etc/xdg/discoverrcand change the flag to "false".Edit: looks like it can also be changed with a checkbox in system settings > software updates.
sigh... i hate to say it but do your updates via command line because it will actually tell you if you need a reboot. As said above, it should only be for Kernel updates, and even then it will tell you that it will switch kernels next reboot and keep running on the current one.
Most desktop applications for doing updates ask you to reboot not because its needed, but because they are being "safe" or not running with the same user rights as you are in the terminal.
Why does no other distro do that though? I've tried a bunch before and this is the first time I get that notification sitting there taunting me.
Hrm. Skim ahead if you already know some of this... So say you have a running program XYZ that loads libUseful.so to do useful things. Now you run some updates and libUseful.so gets replaced with the new version. Because of how files on Unix work, the old version still exists on the disk until XYZ closes it, but any new program will load the new version. So things generally "just work" when the system is updated in place, but on the rare occasion causes weird problems. Fedora (from the GUI) chooses to run updates during reboot to prevent the rare, weird problems. If you update from the command line, it just does them in place. Kernel updates always require a reboot to apply though.
Ubuntu does this all the time and so does Debian. I rarely open a terminal on a machine that's been running for a while that doesn't show the "a reboot is required to apply updates" blurb on login.
After applying an update you need to make sure anything using the unmatched code is replaced by the patched code. A reliable way to do that is a reboot. Actually a reboot is pretty much the only reliable way to do that.
So I am not surprised that a distribution targeting end users asks for a reboot.
It has been a while since I have used Fedora but this is not unique to that distro. Arch will also tell you to reboot if the kernel, systemd, and a few other packages are updated. I rarely do it right away though.
Do you have offline updates enabled in the Discover settings by any chance?