Will it be safe to update to Gnome 41 when it's released?

Desktop Environments Gnome
1

Greetings lovely community,

For context, I’m aware that new Gnome releases tend to break things like themes, extensions, etc., but that is not what I am seeking advice on today. I’m specifically referring to the package gdm-prime which is from the AUR ( link here ) that I have installed, which currently sits at v40.0-1. I have this package on my system as per the EndeavourOS wiki as seen here: https://discovery.endeavouros.com/nvidia/optimus-manager-for-nvidia/2021/03/

I have an Acer Aspire E5-576G, which has hybrid Intel/Nvida MX150 graphics, so the EndeavourOS wiki advised that to be able to switch between integrated graphics and dedicated graphics, I would need the ‘gdm-prime’ package from the AUR, since the one in the main Arch repos is not patched to support optimus manager.

As it stands now my system runs perfectly, no issues, but it does make me wonder with the imminent release of Gnome 41 later this month, I assume the gdm-prime package will be updated to v41, and I am wondering if the AUR package of gdm-prime will need to be updated as well in order for my system to still run perfectly? I’d like to avoid the scenario of updating to Gnome 41 when it’s released only to be unable to login to my system because the GDM package I use from the AUR is out of date or something like that. I hope I was able to make sense of my question to you all and look forward to any replies to put my mind at peace.

Worst case scenario, I just don’t update to Gnome 41 for a couple days/weeks till the AUR package gets updated, which I’m sure would probably be the safest way to go. But what do I know! This is my first time going through a Gnome release update on an Arch system, so I just want to make sure I prepare myself as best I can. I don’t need to update right away to the latest release, I’d rather have a working system first! :wink:

Edit: If it’s at all needed, here is my inxi output:

[scott@endeavourOS ~]$ inxi -Fxxxza --no-host
System:
  Kernel: 5.14.6-arch1-1 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 11.1.0 
  parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-linux 
  root=UUID=2c6a8f39-939c-47a4-9d95-dabf69e6f5c6 rw nvidia-drm.modeset=1 
  quiet loglevel=3 nowatchdog 
  Desktop: GNOME 40.4 tk: GTK 3.24.30 wm: gnome-shell dm: GDM 40.0 
  Distro: EndeavourOS base: Arch Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Acer product: Aspire E5-576G v: V1.32 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: KBL model: Ironman_SK v: V1.32 serial: <filter> UEFI: Insyde v: 1.32 
  date: 10/24/2017 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT1 charge: 16.9 Wh (100.0%) condition: 16.9/62.2 Wh (27.2%) 
  volts: 12.7 min: 11.1 model: PANASONIC AS16B5J type: Li-ion 
  serial: <filter> status: Full 
CPU:
  Info: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-8250U bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Kaby Lake note: check family: 6 model-id: 8E (142) stepping: A (10) 
  microcode: EA cache: L2: 6 MiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 28808 
  Speed: 800 MHz min/max: 400/3400 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 800 2: 800 
  3: 800 4: 800 5: 800 6: 800 7: 800 8: 800 
  Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX disabled 
  Type: l1tf 
  mitigation: PTE Inversion; VMX: conditional cache flushes, SMT vulnerable 
  Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT vulnerable 
  Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
  Type: spec_store_bypass 
  mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
  Type: spectre_v1 
  mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Full generic retpoline, IBPB: conditional, 
  IBRS_FW, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
  Type: srbds mitigation: Microcode 
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 620 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915 
  v: kernel bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:5917 class-ID: 0300 
  Device-2: NVIDIA GP108M [GeForce MX150] vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI 
  driver: nvidia v: 470.63.01 alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm bus-ID: 01:00.0 
  chip-ID: 10de:1d10 class-ID: 0302 
  Device-3: Chicony HD WebCam type: USB driver: uvcvideo bus-ID: 1-7:4 
  chip-ID: 04f2:b571 class-ID: 0e02 
  Display: x11 server: X.org 1.20.13 compositor: gnome-shell driver: 
  loaded: modesetting,nvidia resolution: <missing: xdpyinfo> 
  OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce MX150/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.63.01 
  direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel alternate: snd_soc_skl bus-ID: 00:1f.3 
  chip-ID: 8086:9d71 class-ID: 0403 
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.14.6-arch1-1 running: yes 
  Sound Server-2: JACK v: 1.9.19 running: no 
  Sound Server-3: PulseAudio v: 15.0 running: yes 
  Sound Server-4: PipeWire v: 0.3.35 running: yes 
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168NGW [Stone Peak] driver: iwlwifi 
  v: kernel port: 4000 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 8086:24fb class-ID: 0280 
  IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: r8168 v: 8.049.02-NAPI modules: r8169 
  port: 3000 bus-ID: 04:00.1 chip-ID: 10ec:8168 class-ID: 0200 
  IF: enp4s0f1 state: down mac: <filter> 
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Wireless-AC 3168 Bluetooth type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8 
  bus-ID: 1-5:3 chip-ID: 8087:0aa7 class-ID: e001 
  Report: rfkill ID: hci0 rfk-id: 0 state: up address: see --recommends 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 238.47 GiB used: 138.92 GiB (58.3%) 
  SMART Message: Unable to run smartctl. Root privileges required. 
  ID-1: /dev/sda maj-min: 8:0 vendor: SK Hynix model: HFS256G39TND-N210A 
  size: 238.47 GiB block-size: physical: 4096 B logical: 512 B 
  speed: 6.0 Gb/s rotation: SSD serial: <filter> rev: 1P10 scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / raw-size: 237.97 GiB size: 233.17 GiB (97.99%) 
  used: 138.92 GiB (59.6%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 maj-min: 8:2 
  ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 512 MiB size: 511 MiB (99.80%) 
  used: 296 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1 maj-min: 8:1 
Swap:
  Kernel: swappiness: 60 (default) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 512 MiB used: 1.5 MiB (0.3%) priority: -2 
  file: /swapfile 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 59.0 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 53 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 303 Uptime: 1d 9h 23m wakeups: 1 Memory: 15.51 GiB 
  used: 5.68 GiB (36.6%) Init: systemd v: 249 tool: systemctl Compilers: 
  gcc: 11.1.0 Packages: pacman: 1258 lib: 293 flatpak: 0 Shell: Bash v: 5.1.8 
  running-in: tilix inxi: 3.3.05
2

That’s impossible to say with any degree of certainty. Does GDM 3.38 work with GNOME 40? Does that mean that GDM 40 will work with GNOME 41?

However, given that the one patch that makes it different to the repo’s GDM is fairly straightforward and isolated, I’d say the package will be updated fairly quickly anyway.

You can cross-reference the commit dates against GDM release dates to see how long it normally takes the maintainer to update against the latest GDM.

Finally - technically, no updates are “safe”, which is why you should have a backup.

2 Likes
3

I’m gonna hold you to this! But in all seriousness, thanks for giving me a bit of peace of mind, since I have been a little bit worried about this. I’ll have to keep my eye on it for now I think and wait and see with your cross-reference idea.

Daily Timeshift backup, and daily borg backups via Pika Backup, so at least if anything happens, I won’t lose much, if anything thankfully :wink:

By the way, I just ran a yay update real quick to update eos-hooks and was also greeted with a Flagged Out of Date message for gdm-prime and libgdm-prime, so I guess this means the maintainer is alerted that they know it needs to be updated?

:: Searching databases for updates...
:: Searching AUR for updates...
 -> Flagged Out Of Date AUR Packages:  gdm-prime  libgdm-prime  minecraft-launcher  spotify
 there is nothing to do
[scott@endeavourOS ~]$
4

I think most people use some form of Dash to Dock or Dash to Plank or something similar to put a persistent application dock on their desktop. It looks like a few of the main functions used to managed the docks have changed, so it’s likely that those types of extensions will break until developers can release an updated versions.

1 Like
5

@MrToddarama Literally the first thing I mentioned :rofl: (but I do appreciate your help nonetheless!)

6

if you install gdm , you will have a mini gnome :slight_smile:

gnome-shell works on that point too :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

Doh! - my bad … somehow scanned past the part of your very first sentence when I read your post … nothing to see here… move along. :wink:

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8

I had a feeling someone was going to mention extensions, so that’s why I made it my first point. Thanks for proving my theory right :stuck_out_tongue:

Some extensions will be working once Gnome 41 hits, which is nice, but typically it takes a good 1-3 months for the vast majority of Gnome extensions to be updated depending on the maintainers availability and how much work they have to redo to get the extension which was working before to work yet again. I understand burn out can be a thing as well for some Gnome extension devs, which is obvious Gnome could benefit from an extensions API, but that’s far from a reality unfortunately. If I was one of the Gnome guys, I’d try to incorporate all the most used/popular extensions into Gnome, but I understand that would just require more work for the devs.

9

Gnome no want/like extensions . They want their idea of DE no your. :pray: community think different :vulcan_salute:. that my opinion

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10

General users want have a coahesive looking desktop…al will play naturally :grin:

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11

Using GNOME is never safe :rofl:

6 Likes
12

And that’s why friends never let friends GNOME.
Actually, there is certain to be a point where something doesn’t work/breaks/etc. Always safest to wait a couple of days.

3 Likes
13

I update about once a week, sometimes twice when I know it’s a minor update that I know won’t cause issues. But for major updates, I can try to force myself not to update for a week or two, but after about two weeks I’m going to be driving myself mad from not being up to date that I’ll want to update ASAP after two weeks of holding off updating. Yes, I am aware I may have a problem :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
14

I would simply wait until Fedora 35 is released. Fedora always releases about a month after Gnome drops. By this time 99% of the issues are ironed out. The speed at which Arch has gooten Gnome in the past has varied depending on the release. So for Arch my recommendation with Gnome is wait a month to update after it drops, unless you don’t mind dealing with bugs.

1 Like
15

Good advice, thank you! I think what I may end up trying is, running EndeavourOS Gnome 41 in a Boxes VM when it does get released, and see what bugs/issues I find if any. And just monitor that progress for a week or two or more. I can file any bug reports of things I’ve noticed and in the meantime my main system would still be working just fine. Like I mentioned originally, my biggest concern was if gdm-prime would be updated and working in time of or soon after the release of Gnome 41. All the other little bugs and extensions breaking I can usually handle with no problem. But my hope is that this ends up being a relatively painless and smooth update, fingers crossed! :crossed_fingers:

1 Like
16

I remember when you first arrived we kind of spoke about this.

The reality is twice a year - GNOME breaks on Arch. If you don’t have interest in dealing with GNOME breaking -

Don’t update.

Expect it to break.

Or, do like the vast majority of us - don’t run GNOME.

3 Likes
17

This is a very specific question! But are there any other users besides myself here using Gnome (currently still on v40 btw), Xorg, and running the patched gdm-prime package from the AUR in order to have your Nvidia/Intel setup work with optimus-manager? And if so have you updated yet to Gnome 41?

I’m still a bit unsure if I should go ahead and update or if I should wait. I’ve left a comment on the gdm-prime AUR page and also sent the maintainer a brief email, but I’ve not gotten any responses back.

Just wondering if there’s any other users in my similar situation that may have already updated. Feel free to let me know!

18

I updated from 40 to 41 but was in a vm. No issue … but you got hybrid so … :man_shrugging:

Edit: Have no fear Gnome is here! :sweat_smile:

1 Like
19

I’m considering taking the chance/risk to update. I am fully backed up with everything, so if it goes south, I still have my files at least :sweat_smile:

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20

I have upgraded two machines to G41 without issue … but one is straight nVidia and the other AMD, so not sure if gdm-prime will give you any grief or not… there is one sure way to find out…

1 Like