Discover always shows updates as being 0 bytes

Desktop Environments Plasma
1

For a while now Discover shows any updates as being 0 bytes in size and displays an error message to this effect. However it will quite happily download and install these packages as normal. Does anyone else get this? When I first started using Plasma with Endeavour it never used to do this, but at some point something must have changed.

Thanks for any help.

2

A background question:

  • what does terminal command sudo pacman -Syu show?
1 Like
3

Discover is not made for Arch systems

2 Likes
4

I’ve always had problems with KDE Discover, I only use it to let me know I have updates.

I never use it to update or install software, I always use a terminal to update my system and install software.

sudo pacman -Syu

1 Like
5

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I’ve tried it and pacman always shows the correct file sizes. It’s just I was sure there was a time when Discover did the same thing.

6

You should never use discover to install or update packages on an Arch-based distro.

It uses packagekit, which doesn’t support any manual intervention which is sometimes needed for updates.

You can absolutely break your system using packagekit on Arch-based distros. If you want to use dicover to manage flatpaks, that will work fine, but never use them for repo package management.

5 Likes
7

OK, thanks, I’ll stick to pacman. The only reason I use Discover is because it works without having to keep entering the password. Which is also likely the best reason not to use it :slight_smile:

3 Likes
8

While I think using pacman is the best solution, if you would prefer a GUI solution there are several which are made to work with Arch-based distros.

  • bauh - A basic graphical package manager which supports repo, aur, appimage, snap and flatpak packages.
  • octopi - A graphical package manager which supports both repo and aur packages.
  • pamac-aur - A fully featured graphical package manager that supports both repo and aur packages.
  • pamac-all - The same as pamac-aur except it also adds support for snap and flatpak.

With either of the pamac options you should be aware that they target Manjaro’s repos and release schedule and as a result are sometimes broken on distros which use the Arch repos.

There are also some which use packagekit and should be avoided for installing/removing/updating repo packages:

  • discover
  • gnome-software
  • apper
4 Likes
9

And a psudo GUI solution not mentioned - I personally just go right to the archlinux.org/packages or aur.archlinux.org/packages to check things out.

10

This topic was automatically closed 2 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.