(Original author redacted - this is not particularly about them)
Comments like that feel quite snarky for a couple of reasons:
There are several “HowTo Update the best way” threads (might give pause for thought)
The official documentation (I’m taking the Wiki and User Guide as such) don’t have any special concerns regarding this
There is no on the nose “Hey, you are using a rolling release distro now - you need to be aware of the following” - neither after download nor after first boot.
If everyone is expected to find out everything by themselves - don’t be suprised when they (have to) do the hard way. I’m sure many years ago you went trough similar situations that gave you the experience from which you are speaking now.
Others didn’t (yet). No reason to be smug. Especially as Linux itself is alot more stable nowadays and those learning experiences are much further in between.
(I for one have basically been using Manjaro as if it were Kubuntu for 3 Years now. Never once had an issue.)
Making those hard earned years of experience more accessible to less experienced users would be much appreciated though
What are all the wiki pages, posts, etc. for then? For people who are actually interested in learning there is plenty (all) the info at their fingertips. How else will you learn than by yourself? Or you can pay for some linux classes if that’s what you’re into.
Oh, really? Did you go over archwiki’s System maintenance and other related pages? (Don’t say it doesn’t apply or whatever when using 95% of their packages.)
Ah right, it’s not enough to have announcements, wiki pages and million posts regarding this. Well, I would gladly stand beside every lazy human being and give them one on the nose and tell them what they need to be aware of.
Offence is never given, it’s always taken. If you don’t want to take responsibility for your own system, then maybe you should use Windows instead. Or, heck, ChromeOS.
Eh, like there have never been problems with updates with Windows either, or some maintenance to do from time to time… Right? (/sarcasm)
Usually, normies send it to the local repair shop when something goes wrong though.
Or people suck it up and does whatever is needed to make it work again (or simply reinstall the OS). It is somehow more acceptable to have broken updates on Windows than on Manjaro (or any Linux-based OSes in fact, like many people having some issues when upgrading Ubuntu, Linux Mint or Fedora from versions to versions every 6-24 months for example) somehow, despite having paid to use the damn OS. On Linux, it has to be always perfect all the time, or “the distro is crap” and we hop to another one until it breaks one day. lol
I assumed those belong to KDE5, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
While packages of the same name without the 5 at the end do also exist - a lot of those listed above seem to be dependencies of skanlite or themes/styles.
Is that an issue caused by my updating while logged in or to be expected?
Can somebody connect the dots for me?
Did you just take offence with my post? Then maybe take your own advice and some responsibility for your attitude
I am not offended nor did I mean to. Just pointing out how things could work better if conversation is to happen on a good faith basis.
Defend it from what? Some inoffensive text? Or the idea that something could be improved?
Because - you know - nothing is so good that it couldn’t be improved still.
You might be right about that. Personally I think information should be easily findable and digestable and not at all a fan of the “it was hard to create, so it should be hard to understand” mindset.
At least that’s my approach as a professional software engineer.
Btw. I totally intend to improve the documentation with some of what I learned.
Sure thing. Thanks for confirming my suspicion. I was just confused, as skanlite is a KDE application and I somehow expected those to have moved to QT6 alongside plasma.
Actually, no. But I have always had my eyes open, and I’ve also studied operating systems. I’ve also read many books, and I did already have some (proprietary) UNIX experience by the time I first installed GNU/Linux.
I’ve also never really been a Windows user — my only experiences with Windows on a computer I had paid for with my own money were about 6 months with DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0 before I switched to OS/2 on my very first computer, and 2 years with Windows NT 4.0. And I never really liked Windows.
So I was a very happy camper when I discovered GNU/Linux in 1999, because I had already been longing for a UNIX system for many years.
The thing is that this could be addressed by what I was suggesting: Having a clear statement what the Manjaro way of doing things is in a easily found (or pointed to) place that in turn links to further resources on how to do them.
With Linux being as easy to use as it is today and taking to the forums before you have issues not being the norm for most software peoples expectations might be different and from an UX point of view should be set accordingly.
Heavily tongue in cheek: If people not knowing these things is a problem for you, the thing to do would be solve it yourself and not expect others to make your life easier.
(Or simply ignore them. Not enabling that laziness is fine too! Especially if you think the solution is easily found even without prior Manjaro experience.)
I’ve got a .pacnew for /etc/pacman.conf left to resolve. The differences are a removal of “SigLevel = PackageRequired” from all the databases. Arch’s pacman.conf documentation doesn’t even mention that level of signing. Has that been removed or does it still do something?
It also could be a non-default setting on my system, couldn’t it?
Just trying to make sure it’s not something I set using some GUI and might not want removed.
I couldn’t find a Wiki-page like that. Can you point me to the page that’s clear and blunt about that? As I said I’d like to contribute in regards to this.
Sure. But it’s not. Just the opposite: It’s a setting that’s gone in the .pacnew.
That’s what I’m doing. In order to do it I need to understand what the setting is about though. So I can make that mental connection and decide. But documentation isn’t being helpful…
We went over this already. Read few posts back, again.
You have it in the first few lines of the file itself: Oops, it’s a bit lower in the [options] section:
# By default, pacman accepts packages signed by keys that its local keyring
# trusts (see pacman-key and its man page), as well as unsigned packages.
SigLevel = Required DatabaseOptional
LocalFileSigLevel = Optional
#RemoteFileSigLevel = Required
You also have it in the exact documentation you linked:
One can set signature checking globally, or per repository. If SigLevel is set globally in the [options] section, all packages installed with pacman -S will require signing. With the LocalFileSigLevel setting from the default pacman.conf, any packages you build, and install with pacman -U, will not need to be signed using makepkg.
Yeah. We were at the point where it might be something put there by me.
That a global siglevel exists doesn’t help decide wether I still want database specific ones to be there.
Best approach is to read posts 1 and 2 of the update announcement, before updating. That is where potential issues and required manual intervention steps are set out.
If the update thread is only a few hours old, it’s better to wait a while. An update in the first 24 hours is only for people who can help themselves
There is no solid rule indicating when Stable branch is snapped from testing. It can be anything from one to four weeks. The packages on stable branch are the default repositories used by Manjaro systems to provide updates and downloads to the general user base. The best indication will be to watch the Testing Announcement thread to follow possible issues with specific software or hardware.
There is no… “Hey, you are using a rolling release distro now - you need to be aware of the following”
manjaro-hello - A tool providing access to documentation and support for new Manjaro users.
There are several “HowTo Update the best way” threads
Edit:- Marking the previous post as the solution, before this thread meanders into an unwieldly rant of conflicting opinion. Naturally, feel free to change the status quo if you have anything particularly useful to add.
You are provided with all the info you need: old conf file and a new one.
