I have 3 machines I’ve switched to Linux: an old laptop with Mint, and my primary laptop and PC runing Ubuntu Studio. I use Protonvpn on all 3.

Today I had my app manager on Mint and Discover on Ubuntu showing new updates. I installed Mint’s first, via the manager and Proton was an update. It mentioned it would uninstall a few proton things so I figured it had to uninstall them in order to install the new update. Protonvpn stopped working after, it looked uninstalled but my killswitch was still active (so no internet at all and no access to open the vpn app). I had to find out how to kill the network processes via ncmli (good new info to learn!) and do a roundabout uninstall through a process I found in an old Proton post as just uninstalling it with normal commands didn’t work, restart the laptop then reinstall Protonvpn.

So on my laptop and PC, I updated via terminal instead, using sudo apt update/upgrade. All smooth and no issues.

Was my Mint problem a one-off glitch or is there a real difference when updating via update manager vs the terminal?

Edit: Thanks guys, seems the general consensus is yes, but some of ya’s say no haha. I knew going into the question that having Mint screw up with manager and Ubuntu Studio work with terminal opens a lot of os possibilities beyond simply manager vs terminal.

Next Proton update, I’m going to try the terminal on Mint instead of manager, and the manager on my Ubuntu Studio laptop instead of terminal and see if anything screws up.

  • ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org
    9·
    15 hours ago

    there is. if the updater gui integrates with packagekit and systemd, it can start an offline update that reboots your system and installs the updates while nothing else is running.

    kind of like on windows, except that this is one of the things where windows made the right call. complex software does not handle it well if its program libraries and assets are being replaced by newer ones that the running version cannot understand.

    its still kind of a new thing, not all distros make use of it yet, but Fedora does, and it’s not a Fedora custom solution but something that most distros can have.

    automatic filesystem snapshots and rollback can be integrated to this too, and then bye bye to updates breaking the whole system.