Friday 9 September 2022

Re: Upgrade Notifications for Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio

Hi Matthias! Great to hear from you!

On Friday, September 9, 2022 8:31:32 AM PDT Matthias Klumpp wrote:
> Hi everyone!
>
> 1) PackageKit should remove unused stuff automatically during regular
> upgrades on APT-based systems (the backend is configured that way
> already)

Definitely a good step.

> 2) AppStream supports a way to not only signal that a new OS release
> is available, but also provide a basic changelog. What it does not
> (and can not (yet?) provide is specific instructions as to *how* to
> jump to a new release, as that is very distribution specific. See
> https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/sect-Metadata-OS.html
> 3) PackageKit is theoretically able to upgrade a system, see
> https://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/gtk-doc/Transaction.html#Tra
> nsaction.UpgradeSystem - we would preferably implement this via the
> offline-upgrades
> mechanism nowadays though. The specific mechanism to jump between
> distro releases once existed in the PackageKit APT backend, but was
> removed ages ago because it was very buggy and needed a rewrite
> anyway.

I think we're in the clear on this piece now. I was able to package distro-
release-notifier from Harald Sitter et al (https://invent.kde.org/system/
distro-release-notifier
) which uses the existing backend of Ubuntu's update-
notifier. This means that it doesn't have to use appstream and launches the
proper do-release-upgrade GUI frontend. I have tested it in 20.04 and it works
properly, so I intend to get this into Ubuntu Studio (and discuss it further
with Kubuntu so they don't end up in this situation again).

--
Erich Eickmeyer
Project Leader - Ubuntu Studio
Member - Ubuntu Community Council