Just installed default live KDE desktop and just wondering what happened to eos-update-notifier?
Things sure change fast with EOS and what is annoying is the wiki doesn’t reflect what is happening or the forums for that matter. They seem outdated or is it just me being born in 1969.
My understanding is it will still get bug fixes but won’t be actively developed much beyond that. The Discourse search feature isn’t great in my opinion, but if you do some digging you can probably find a few discussions here in the forum about it because I remember it coming up a few times.
Anyway, it is still available in the repo, it’s just not installed by default anymore.
❯ pacman -Ss eos-update-notifier
endeavouros/eos-update-notifier 24.7.1-1
Software update notifier and 'news for you' for EndeavourOS users.
If you’d like to install it you can just use Pacman.
I’ve found that the eos-update-notifier, while still useful to some, I see no need anymore. I prefer doing yay once or twice a week and all is good (sometimes daily). No need for a notifier, especially in a rolling release such as EOS/Arch. IMHO.
when I was new the Notifier was a great Linus (Peanuts) security blanket but I know I would have to let it go and learn how to do this stuff myself. besides that notifier had it’s own awful terminal and some other duplicate program so in the end I didn’t miss it at all. Having it use default programs that are different than your default programs got weird.
I don’t know anything more than what has been posted in the forum about it. The impression I get is the developer is choosing to focus on other things. Removing it from the default installation may be a way of gracefully phasing it out.
Last year there was a poll to gauge community interest in continuing to support the app.
The results from the poll were mostly in favor of continuing to maintain it, although there was an ensuing discussion regarding how it may not be that useful to get a notification when an update is available on a rolling release distro like EndeavourOS, since updates are constantly available at all times.
Later the developer mentioned a few times that the update notifier is not really needed due to this same reason, for example in these threads:
More recently they explained the application will continue to get bug fixes, but isn’t being actively developed beyond that.
Like I said I don’t really know more about it than what is posted in the forum, but it seems like future development effort may focus on other apps instead of this one. That said, there is nothing wrong with the app (it’s not broken or anything), and can still be installed from the repo for those who want to keep using it.
I just don’t see the point for an update notifier in Arch or Arch-based distros. There are updates available all the time. Particularly in KDE. You could do yay or pacman -Syu several times a day and seems something is always available. The update notifier would be pestering you all the time.
I don’t mind the notifier but I chose to start using arch-update I can choose when it will notify me in either hours, days, week, months. It also does other awesome things from Git page:
An update notifier & applier for Arch Linux that assists you with important pre / post update tasks and that includes a clickeable systray applet for an easy integration with any panel on any Desktop Environment / Window Manager.
Optional support for AUR / Flatpak packages and desktop notifications.
Arch-Update is designed to follow usual system maintenance steps, as described in the Arch Wiki.
Features:
Includes a clickeable systray applet that dynamically changes to act as an update notifier & applier. Easy to integrate with any panel on any Desktop Environment & Window Manager.
Automatic check and listing of every packages available for update.
Offers to display the latest Arch Linux news before applying updates.
Automatic check and listing of orphan packages and offers to remove them.
Automatic check for old and / or uninstalled cached packages and offers to remove them.
Lists and helps you processing pacnew & pacsave files.
Automatic check for pending kernel updates requiring a reboot to be applied and offers to do so if there’s one.
Automatic check for services requiring a post upgrade restart and offers to do so if there are.
Support for sudo, doas & run0.
Optional support for AUR packages (through yay or paru).
Optional support for Flatpak packages.
Optional support for desktop notifications on new available updates.
I just don’t see the need for any updater at all. An update is almost always available. I just run yay twice a day. Once after my first coffee in the morning and once again after work. Takes 5 seconds.
I totally agree I just had to update whenever I sat down, but after reading the “How to run a stress free EOS”
I don’t need to worry about updates all that much like I used to because I left windows several years ago because of the update issues and I don’t feel like rebooting all that often. I got to much Youtube content to view.
We have nothing to do with arch-update. That is not an EndeavourOS tool. And as pointed out its not really needed on ARCH systems as there are always updates. I would rather the team focus on more useful tools.
I was a serial updater at one time. In another thread, someone suggested using sudo pacman -Syu && yay -Yc && sudo paccache -r. I periodically open a terminal and up-arrow through my bash_history, whenever I think about it, perhaps once a week or so.
