I’m on Tumbleweed. I just launched the system and the first thing I tried was to refresh the Zypper repos. I got this error:
~> sudo zypper refresh
[sudo] password for root:
PackageKit is blocking zypper. This happens if you have an updater applet or other software
management application using PackageKit running.
We can ask PackageKit to interrupt the current action as soon as possible, but it depends on
PackageKit how fast it will respond to this request.
Ask PackageKit to quit? [yes/no] (no): no
System management is locked by the application with pid 2648 (/usr/libexec/packagekitd).
Close this application before trying again.
I guess that’s an intermittent issue. I’m new to Linux and new to openSUSE and until today I have not heard about PackageKit.
But something bothers me in the documentation:
In general, it is recommended to allow packagekit to handle system maintenance and software package updates since it contains background operations to ensure stable delivery with minimal interruptions. For this reason, newcomers to Tumbleweed should continue to use their respective software managers (Discover for Plasma, Gnome Software for Gnome) until there is an absolute need for manual intervention and/or greater understanding.
Elsewhere, when I was still researching which distro to choose and before installing Tumbleweed, I read that I should always use only zypper dup, never to use GNOME’s Software updates or anything else (unless it’s Flatpak). GNOME does display pending updates at times, but I ignore them. So how is it actually?
It’s a choice. PackageKit is going to warn you about new updates and do the updates for you via Discover or Software Updates, but in case of conflict or issues, it’ll just throw an error and give up. You’ll then need to use zypper. This is why power users tend to advise to always prefer zypper anyway. The risk for them to forget to update is very limited.
If you know you’ll think about running zypper from time to time to update and prefer this way of doing things, then disabling PackageKit as the doc you linked suggests is a good idea. Note that e.g. Discover will still be useful to handle Flatpak.
When you first boot its normal that zypper is blocked by packagekit checking for updates. Just let it run and do your zypper stuff later. It usually only runs for a few minutes
I have always been advised by the “greybeards” in the openSUSE community to always use zypper dup with Tumbleweed. This is because doing so ensures your package environment is always in line with what was release on openQA, ensuring you are covered by that quality check. The language is in this link is probably confusing and should be corrected; its probably more accurate for openSUSE Leap.
I would recommend removing PackageKit and always using zypper dup with Tumbleweed, and that’s what I do.
Honestly, I find that PackageKit is more annoying for system updates. Especially if you get regular driver updates and there are agreements that need to be confirmed, it can show them so slowly that an update can outright fail. I only use zypper for system updates because the “–auto-agree-with-licenses” flag can be used to prevent this issue. Honestly, I find that zypper handles system updates with a speed that rivals using Discover or GNOME Software. It makes finding conflicts and resolving them a lot easier too. I still use my software store to manage Flatpaks, as that is a good use for the store.
If you feel comfortable with the idea, use YaST to remove PackageKit, it will make updating via command line so much easier. Just make sure to leave the Flatpak management alone, no, I am not at all speaking from experience ROFL.
If you feel comfortable with the idea, use YaST to remove PackageKit, it will make updating via command line so much easier. Just make sure to leave the Flatpak management alone, no, I am not at all speaking from experience ROFL.
YaST has many different components, which part are we talking about? Re removing PackageKit but leaving Flatpak support, can you provide more specific instructions for a noob? :)
I discovered Bazaar today and plan to install it to manage Flatpaks instead of GNOME Software. I’m not afraid of CLI either.
YaST Software, is where you can install or uninstall any software packages. GNOME Software is actually pretty competent when it comes to handling Flatpaks, but if you want Bazaar, that software store is actually decent as well. I find it to be more customizable than GNOME Software.
