I have a script I run daily (named daily) that makes a timeshift backup, checks for updates from pacman, then checks for updates from the AUR. I'm very fond of it :]
To be honest, it's just what I've been using since I switched to Cachy half a year ago. There was no conscious decision made between yay or paru.
I think Go and Rust are both great languages, but there are apparently some speed benefits from using rust/paru. That's not anything I can factually confirm, just what I've heard.
I doubt that speed in a package manager would depend greatly on programming language choice.
A package manager downloads the repository index, evaluates your current environment, decides what packages you need and then downloads them.
You may get minor speed improvements due to a more performing programming language, but we're talking about milliseconds differences in a process that likely takes several minutes. I wouldn't take that into account when choosing across options.
Indeed speed can greatly vary across package managers, but that mainly depends on implementation; as such you may have a package manager implemented in a slower language that is faster than one implemented in a faster language.
If I have to choose a package manager, I wouldn't even consider speed and rather evaluate functionality. I don't know paru, I imagine it allows doing what yay allows doing and as such I'd be satisfied with either of them.
I do sudo pacman -Syu as a ritual each time when I start my computer or laptop. Like, the very first thing after the system is booted. So far so good, been doing that for 7 years.
I don’t understand why Syncthing is still not version 2 on Fedora. Did I do something wrong? Did the repo changed? Apart from that, I agree, I really like Fedora on systems where I don’t want to mess with the system. But I do want to mess with my systems, that’s the point of Linux for me now :)
I didn't even know syncthing 2 was released. As a service type of software I don't really care too much for new features, I want it to be stable.
Judging from this thread it wasn't really stable until a couple months ago: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/syncthing-2-0-august-2025/24758/30
I guess I'm fine with that. Software for which I need the latest release I wouldn't install from package manager anyway.
I used to mess a lot on my Linux system, now I just want it to work and not have to change anything. Still on default plasma config after years, I guess I just mess with my vim config and little else.
I can say about the stability, as I use Syncthing extensively and the version 2 since day one. It had the database issue, perhaps upon migration, which lead the program to crash on my Raspberry Pi 2B with 1 GB RAM. At some point I noticed the issue, removed the database and let it rebuilt it cleanly, which did the job and fixed the issue. Plus, I made a swap partition just in case. Haven’t seen any other issues after that. That was DietPi distro, based on Debian.
I had no issues like that on Arch, but my Arch desktops, laptops, and servers are more powerful, perhaps they handled the migration better. I expect that this was some bug that was fixed later. Fedora still syncs, but I wonder when would they update the repo, or if that’s me that wasn’t attentive somewhere and I need to change the repo. Maybe they follow the topic closer.
As far as I can see it has not been updated and someone is working on it. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2355938
Why does it matter for you to have version 2.0 anyway? As far as I understand it is interoperable with previous versions. At least, I didn't have any problems until now.
For me, it's about reducing the amount of time the "update available" icon shows up in the system tray, because its very presence bothers me. Maybe there's something cool and new. Maybe it fixes a severe security problem. If it's for programs I'm not using right now, then the update can be applied right now. Otherwise it's going to have to wait until I'm done. And bother me.
Yes, I could turn updates off and never see it, but that seems like a bad plan in the long run.
Can't you update it all regardless of whether you're using it because the Linux file system leaves the old file intact and just writes a new file and updates the pointer so anything still using the old file carries on as if nothing happened and just gets the update the next time you run it?
This is true. But then I'm not using the latest version while I still have an active session, and that can lead to weird behaviour or errors after the fact.
Case in point, I once received an Xorg update that I allowed to install, but didn't restart the computer properly until much, much later.
By then I'd forgotten about the update, so when I restarted and started having graphics problems, I was mystified.
I've also forgotten how that all panned out, but in the same situation I'd roll back to a previous Timeshift snapshot and work the system forward again until I find the culprit or things are stable, so I assume that's what I did back then.
Yeah, that's fair. It might be possible to get incompatible versions between two different tools that interact with each other, if say one shuts down and then starts up with the new version but the other doesn't shut down and stays on the old.
My home PC, about once a week, or whenever I have to install new software. My work PC, about once a month because the nvidia driver takes fucking ages to update because of DKMS.
As for the servers under my professional care... it depends. Most of the servers that I made run Debian that I update three times a year whenever the downtime is acceptable for the university (spring break, late summer, early december) or if a CVE needs fixing (e.g. xz-utils). One internet-facing server that I inherited still runs Ubuntu 16.04 because some teachers can't possibly live without some legacy software and will throw a tantrum if upgrading is even mentioned -- that one gets zero updates, and I got the dean's promise in writing that I wouldn't be held responsible for it.
The big virtualization server still runs ESXi 6 because the university didn't want to pay for a lifetime license when it was available, doesn't want to pay for a subscription now, and doesn't want the downtime required to fully migrate to Proxmox VE. So it gets no updates. Plus it has a bad SSL cert and I need Chromium's thisisunsafe to bypass the error.
I inherited a lot of Ubuntu servers at the university, too. But I am not directly responsible which makes life easier; I am just managing it.
Interestingly, they agreed to monthly updates with possible restarts and they are fine with it, because I keep the servers healthy. And: We even plan to move from VMWare hypervisor to Proxmox VE as well, but we can do it in stages without big downtimes.
There is one CentOS server carefully isolated which cannot be updated anymore. Moving it to Rocky would introduce a big downtime and redoing a lot of custom config. Luckily the user-facing server of that cluster is running a current Rocky Linux.
The things, I established so far, are running stable Debian. Nice to see Proxmox VE being based on Debian. (:
It is interesting that you are in a similar boat, but with a different outcome. I hope that your colleguas will reconsider some day.
Note that at least on Debian, the unattended-upgrades package only, by default, does security updates. While those are the most important ones, if you want various bugfixes and such, you probably do want to at least occasionally do an update yourself.
On my laptop with LMDE, which is basically Debian, I've configured it to update everything. The only thing left out are flatpaks which I update when I remember.
every week more or less, it's basically just as often as I remember. oh and whenever I have to update a program for security reasons, like a system wide patch or a new browser release, that sorta thing.
using opensuse tumbleweed btw
I have a bash alias
alias update='flatpak update ; flatpak remove --unused ; emerge --sync -a ; emerge --ask --verbose --update --deep --changed-use --keep-going --with-bdeps=y --backtrack=500 @world ; emerge --depclean ; eclean-dist -d'
Which i run like update && shutdown -P now
And usually in the morning i do another update to check if it missed anything
Run the main update before i sleep computer shuts down when done and when i wake up i check what i missed
If you have a flake.lock you can update it, start rebuilding (nixos-rebuild boot) and if it's not done before shutdown you can just run that same command after the next boot and it will continue where it left of (minus a few packages it has to rebuild again).
My pc always updates to the latest lock whenever it is running, when I update my Nixos repository my pc will eventually follow without doing anything. The only thing to watch out for is changed configurations or build errors but for that you just have to check the logs every once in a while or set up some way to be notified of the failing rebuild command.
For my Manjaro systems, I usually check the forums and after I see a new stable update is posted I'll do an update in the next few days. Sometimes I'll check between the big updates for things like browsers or other occasional high priority updates that get posted between the big updates, but usually only if I'm having a problem or have some other reason to do this.
as someone who is a dev by trade I update/backup on fridays because I think it's funny.
It's always funny, until that one day where it isn't
PC-LOAD-LETTER, wtf does that mean?!
e: You guys are making me feel old for not getting this reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Space
For those that don't know:
PC = Printer Cartridge (the place where you put ink or paper for it to use)
Letter = 8 1/2 x 11 inch letter sized paper, which is similar to A4
So the message means to load letter sized paper in the printer cartridge, because the sensor says it is empty.
PC in this context stands for Paper Cassette, an old HP term for the paper tray.
It means you need more paper.
Just a few weeks (months?) ago:
Queue having to redo all my previous work to get the integrated graphics card and the dedicated graphics card playing well with each other
A lost fedditor?
And then, inevitably:
but "yay" already does that
Yay ; flatpak update
topgrade
Yeah I just have an alias called update that runs all of the update commands, as well as a few other things
*paru
I have a script I run daily (named
daily) that makes a timeshift backup, checks for updates from pacman, then checks for updates from the AUR. I'm very fond of it :]Does paru -Syu not also include pacman, or do you just prefer to do pacman first?
I have never heard of paru until this very moment. I will look into it, thanks!
Heck yeah! I hope it helps simplify things!
This might be the first time my limited Linux knowledge has been helpful to an internet stranger. Feels good.
I’ve been using
yayfor years, and it is sufficient. First time I’ve heard of paru.Other than being written in rust, how does paru improve the experience of AUR wrapping?
Googling it, it just seems like yay but in rust and it shows PKGBUILD by default. Still cool to find alternative tools though
To be honest, it's just what I've been using since I switched to Cachy half a year ago. There was no conscious decision made between yay or paru.
I think Go and Rust are both great languages, but there are apparently some speed benefits from using rust/paru. That's not anything I can factually confirm, just what I've heard.
I doubt that speed in a package manager would depend greatly on programming language choice. A package manager downloads the repository index, evaluates your current environment, decides what packages you need and then downloads them. You may get minor speed improvements due to a more performing programming language, but we're talking about milliseconds differences in a process that likely takes several minutes. I wouldn't take that into account when choosing across options. Indeed speed can greatly vary across package managers, but that mainly depends on implementation; as such you may have a package manager implemented in a slower language that is faster than one implemented in a faster language.
If I have to choose a package manager, I wouldn't even consider speed and rather evaluate functionality. I don't know paru, I imagine it allows doing what yay allows doing and as such I'd be satisfied with either of them.
I like typing yay and getting updates.
whenever something is broken
You update your broken system to fix it.
I update my working system to brake it.
we are not the same
We might be the same
Update my mesa drivers mid-game? Yea fuck it why not
When I am bored. A few times per month in winter. Once or twice per summer.
We are still talking about updates, right?
Yes, why?
Just to be sure
Are you sure?
not really...
I do
sudo pacman -Syuas a ritual each time when I start my computer or laptop. Like, the very first thing after the system is booted. So far so good, been doing that for 7 years.alias p="sudo pacman -Syu"
$ p $ p $ p
I had this too, but I use
ctrl + rall the time (withfzf), and really have no need for that many aliases.Used to have this, now I just
sudo dnf updatemy life is more relaxed.I don’t understand why Syncthing is still not version 2 on Fedora. Did I do something wrong? Did the repo changed? Apart from that, I agree, I really like Fedora on systems where I don’t want to mess with the system. But I do want to mess with my systems, that’s the point of Linux for me now :)
I didn't even know syncthing 2 was released. As a service type of software I don't really care too much for new features, I want it to be stable. Judging from this thread it wasn't really stable until a couple months ago: https://forum.syncthing.net/t/syncthing-2-0-august-2025/24758/30
I guess I'm fine with that. Software for which I need the latest release I wouldn't install from package manager anyway.
I used to mess a lot on my Linux system, now I just want it to work and not have to change anything. Still on default plasma config after years, I guess I just mess with my vim config and little else.
I can say about the stability, as I use Syncthing extensively and the version 2 since day one. It had the database issue, perhaps upon migration, which lead the program to crash on my Raspberry Pi 2B with 1 GB RAM. At some point I noticed the issue, removed the database and let it rebuilt it cleanly, which did the job and fixed the issue. Plus, I made a swap partition just in case. Haven’t seen any other issues after that. That was DietPi distro, based on Debian.
I had no issues like that on Arch, but my Arch desktops, laptops, and servers are more powerful, perhaps they handled the migration better. I expect that this was some bug that was fixed later. Fedora still syncs, but I wonder when would they update the repo, or if that’s me that wasn’t attentive somewhere and I need to change the repo. Maybe they follow the topic closer.
As far as I can see it has not been updated and someone is working on it. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2355938 Why does it matter for you to have version 2.0 anyway? As far as I understand it is interoperable with previous versions. At least, I didn't have any problems until now.
Once a day
Once a yay
yay every day
My Debian trixie desktop system rotates /var/log/apt/history once a month. So over the past year:
25 upgrades in 12 months. So about twice a month on average on that one.
At most once per day. Sometimes I can go three weeks without remembering to upgrade
For me, it's about reducing the amount of time the "update available" icon shows up in the system tray, because its very presence bothers me. Maybe there's something cool and new. Maybe it fixes a severe security problem. If it's for programs I'm not using right now, then the update can be applied right now. Otherwise it's going to have to wait until I'm done. And bother me.
Yes, I could turn updates off and never see it, but that seems like a bad plan in the long run.
Can't you update it all regardless of whether you're using it because the Linux file system leaves the old file intact and just writes a new file and updates the pointer so anything still using the old file carries on as if nothing happened and just gets the update the next time you run it?
This is true. But then I'm not using the latest version while I still have an active session, and that can lead to weird behaviour or errors after the fact.
Case in point, I once received an Xorg update that I allowed to install, but didn't restart the computer properly until much, much later.
By then I'd forgotten about the update, so when I restarted and started having graphics problems, I was mystified.
I've also forgotten how that all panned out, but in the same situation I'd roll back to a previous Timeshift snapshot and work the system forward again until I find the culprit or things are stable, so I assume that's what I did back then.
Yeah, that's fair. It might be possible to get incompatible versions between two different tools that interact with each other, if say one shuts down and then starts up with the new version but the other doesn't shut down and stays on the old.
My home PC, about once a week, or whenever I have to install new software. My work PC, about once a month because the nvidia driver takes fucking ages to update because of DKMS.
As for the servers under my professional care... it depends. Most of the servers that I made run Debian that I update three times a year whenever the downtime is acceptable for the university (spring break, late summer, early december) or if a CVE needs fixing (e.g. xz-utils). One internet-facing server that I inherited still runs Ubuntu 16.04 because some teachers can't possibly live without some legacy software and will throw a tantrum if upgrading is even mentioned -- that one gets zero updates, and I got the dean's promise in writing that I wouldn't be held responsible for it.
The big virtualization server still runs ESXi 6 because the university didn't want to pay for a lifetime license when it was available, doesn't want to pay for a subscription now, and doesn't want the downtime required to fully migrate to Proxmox VE. So it gets no updates. Plus it has a bad SSL cert and I need Chromium's
thisisunsafeto bypass the error.It's fucking rough out here.
I inherited a lot of Ubuntu servers at the university, too. But I am not directly responsible which makes life easier; I am just managing it.
Interestingly, they agreed to monthly updates with possible restarts and they are fine with it, because I keep the servers healthy. And: We even plan to move from VMWare hypervisor to Proxmox VE as well, but we can do it in stages without big downtimes.
There is one CentOS server carefully isolated which cannot be updated anymore. Moving it to Rocky would introduce a big downtime and redoing a lot of custom config. Luckily the user-facing server of that cluster is running a current Rocky Linux.
The things, I established so far, are running stable Debian. Nice to see Proxmox VE being based on Debian. (:
It is interesting that you are in a similar boat, but with a different outcome. I hope that your colleguas will reconsider some day.
I've set up unattended upgrades and forgot about updates, until I get a mail saying they happened.
Note that at least on Debian, the
unattended-upgradespackage only, by default, does security updates. While those are the most important ones, if you want various bugfixes and such, you probably do want to at least occasionally do an update yourself.On my laptop with LMDE, which is basically Debian, I've configured it to update everything. The only thing left out are flatpaks which I update when I remember.
every week more or less, it's basically just as often as I remember. oh and whenever I have to update a program for security reasons, like a system wide patch or a new browser release, that sorta thing. using opensuse tumbleweed btw
Once a week usually, or when I have to reboot anyway.
I do the same, then you have these days: "Ok, I'll run a quick update before reboot... Updating qt-webengine?, nooooooo"
Fedora Silverblue (actually bluebuild building my own OS)
practically only if there's a new release of a software I want to install (which zeroes out to approx all 2 months)
Every 1-2 weeks, depends on how often I remember
If I’m bored and done with everything and can peacefully restart
I have a bash alias
alias update='flatpak update ; flatpak remove --unused ; emerge --sync -a ; emerge --ask --verbose --update --deep --changed-use --keep-going --with-bdeps=y --backtrack=500 @world ; emerge --depclean ; eclean-dist -d'Which i run likeupdate && shutdown -P nowAnd usually in the morning i do anotherupdateto check if it missed anythingRun the main update before i sleep computer shuts down when done and when i wake up i check what i missed
Does the job every time 😎
every 5 minutes sounds about right
paru -Syu; poweroffmost eveningsSometimes I let a Gentoo lapse on upgrades, just for the extra fun.
You can just do it in parts though?
If you have a flake.lock you can update it, start rebuilding (nixos-rebuild boot) and if it's not done before shutdown you can just run that same command after the next boot and it will continue where it left of (minus a few packages it has to rebuild again).
My pc always updates to the latest lock whenever it is running, when I update my Nixos repository my pc will eventually follow without doing anything. The only thing to watch out for is changed configurations or build errors but for that you just have to check the logs every once in a while or set up some way to be notified of the failing rebuild command.
Holy shit I had no idea about this. Thank you so much!
sundays
sudo pacman -Sybau
maybe once every three or more months
Opensuse aeon - I don't do anything. Package manager handles everything
Usually once whenever I'm on it I'll pull up a terminal and type "yay"
I use Apdatifier for KDE and it checks every 180 minutes. If there are updates, I update.
xbps-install -Su usually when a regular xbps-install fails due to cert issues every few months
i run
sudo xbps-install -Suwhenever i remember to, andflatpak updatewhenever there's a new Krita versionFor my Manjaro systems, I usually check the forums and after I see a new stable update is posted I'll do an update in the next few days. Sometimes I'll check between the big updates for things like browsers or other occasional high priority updates that get posted between the big updates, but usually only if I'm having a problem or have some other reason to do this.
I update my Arch desktop about once a week, laptop with Mint probably about once a month and server with OMV a few times a week.
I think its been a month or two lol. Unless I wanna download something new I tend to just stick with whatever I have atm.
Every few days—I seem to have endless libraries that have constant updates.
When I feel like it 😅 might be a couple of times a day I'm fixing the system, or it might be a month since last time 🤷
Daily, I use Arch by the way