I’m using EOS for a few months now and basically almost every day is something to update. I just hit update on welcome screen everyday, insert sudo password and wait update to finish. Until now I didn’t had any problems with it but I’m wondering if I need to pay attention to anything before I update and after update is finished?
And another question, every update I see some orphaned and out of date packages. Those package are from an app that is not longer supported and I need it. Is anything wrong if I have orphaned packages?
Yes. Absolutely, it’s your system to maintain. Endeavour is NOT a distro you can just click and update and never look at, nor will it ever be. There’s several other buttons in the welcome center to help with other varying system maintenance practices as well, all of which you should be aware of how they work before using them.
You’re not really hurting anything by having orphaned packages except your SSD and the electricity it takes to keep an updated package that does nothing. You can’t have an “orphaned package” AND “need it.” To be an orphaned package specifically means nothing on your computer needs it for anything. If it is actually needed by something, you should change it from --asexplicit to --asdeps so your system knows it’s not orphaned.
About first part… What I have to do before install upgrades??
About orphaned packages, What you mean by hurting “SSD and electricity”? I need that package for work but is not maintained anymore. I’m speaking about “prepros-bin” package
This has no maintainer so the AUR calls it orphan because the previous maintainer has stopped working on that package. There are security risks if a new maintainer picks it up. Otherwise it will be removed from the AUR entirely at some point.
Updating daily will lower the chance that something needs manual intervention for sure.
In your case, the most important thing is to read the text that the update displays. You are looking for a couple of things that you will learn to spot pretty quickly:
An error message that something went wrong.
A message from a package that it requires some manual action
Both of these things are quite rare.
First, lets understand what those things mean:
When an AUR package is marked out-of-date it means that the software has been updated upstream and the maintainer has not updated the package yet. As long as something doesn’t stay out-of-date for a long time, this isn’t a major issue unless there is a critical security update.
When an AUR package is orphaned, it means it no longer has a maintainer. You need to watch these packages very carefully. If they suddenly get picked up by another maintainer, make sure you review the diffs as literally anyone can adopt an orphaned AUR package and do anything they want with it.
When a repo package is orphaned, it just means that it was installed by a dependency and is no longer needed. This is harmless but it is good to clean them occasionally just so you aren’t carrying a bunch packages you don’t need.
Thanx for detailed info. I admit that after install I started to exploring other things and I forgot about maintenance I’m coming from windows where upgrades are mandatory and is usually is not done manually.
It is an AUR package, it isn’t in the repository. However, if you want to install it after it is removed from AUR, you can always either install it manually or grab a copy of the PKGBUILD.
That being said, it may not be removed from AUR if another maintainer picks it up.
Keep in mind, it probably won’t work forever if it doesn’t get updated. Eventually the libraries on your system may progress past what that application supports.
I’m coming from windows where upgrades are mandatory and is usually is not done manually.