Is it okay to keep outdated software?

I have heard a lot of arch users say its best not to keep outdated software(software that is not being managed by the developer for a couple months and i was wondering if it applied to manjaro as well

Welcome to the forum!

Getting to your question, all software contains bugs, and if a developer abandons a certain software project, then chances are that holding on to that abandoned software leaves your system vulnerable to some exploit. I’m not saying that this is the case, but it could be.

Furthermore, due to the nature of Manjaro (and Arch upstream) as a rolling-release distribution, it is important that the whole system be on par with the latest versions of everything, and especially so shared libraries. If an abandoned software project uses an incompatible version of one or multiple shared libraries, then this software will no longer work in an updated Manjaro system.

This, in turn, then leads to the question whether you can get by without updating your system, but the answer to that is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, yes, you can continue using your outdated system, but at the same time, your system could contain vulnerabilities, and if it’s too old, then you won’t be able to update it to the latest release of everything anymore due to changes in packaging. You will then most likely also not be able to install any isolated software packages anymore, because they will have been compiled for the latest releases of the shared libraries, et al. And furthermore, the Manjaro developers will not support systems that haven’t been kept up-to-date.

So, in conclusion, it is always best to keep your system fully updated. And when it comes to packages that have been abandoned, Manjaro will remove those from its repositories, but the package will not automatically be removed from your system if it’s already installed. So there’s a certain sense of responsibility involved in running a Manjaro system.

3 Likes

Define, please. Does not compute. Software is always managed by the developer.

They’re right.

Yes.

3 Likes

Thanks but is there a way to find outdated software on my system

You dropped this:

:question:

Please use proper puncuation to differentiate between a statement and a question.

If you don’t know which software is outdated, why would you ask if it’s alright to keep it?

I have a feeling you’re not telling us everything. What prompted this question?

When a Manjaro package is flagged as unmaintained, it’ll be removed from the Manjaro repositories, but chances are that it’ll then still exist in the AUR, and if you use an AUR helper like yay or an AUR-aware package manager like pamac, it’ll ask you whether it must build the package from the AUR, whereas it used to be a regular Manjaro package. That should give you a clue. :man_shrugging:

Rather than outdated, you may rather mean unmaintained.

Using unmaintained software can be risky, as @Aragorn explained.
Although, a software does not receive modifications in several months does not necessarily means it is unmaintained. There may only not need any. It depends on the software and the visible activity of its developers.

2 Likes

I wanted to install a custom picom fork but i noticed it had not been updated in 3 years and i have heard a lot of arch users talk about keeping outdated software , so i brought up the question but after getting answers i was wondering if there was a way to find outdated software

and that sums it up

Yes, that is what I meant. It was my dyslexia kicking in, and I have now corrected that in my post above. :wink:

Thanks for spotting it. :slight_smile:

Thanks for answering my questions
but that should be all

Which is…?

Either way, something that hasn’t been touched in three years may not work at all. Have you tried it? Is it in the AUR (Arch User Repository)?

We shouldn’t have to play 20 Questions to figure out what you really are asking.

Please see:

Don’t. You’d be asking for trouble.

1 Like

yes the software is in the AUR under the name “picom-jonaburg-git”

sorry about that ill make sure to give more information and read the forum rules

There was a commit 29 days ago and the AUR package was updated on April 9th.

4 Likes

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