KDE Discover gets update to prevent you breaking your Linux system

Quoting: RoosterWait..

Why is this whole comment sections basically a continuation of the previous thread, instead of discussing the actual topic which has nothing to do with the CLI and is a GUI only move to prevent new users from bricking their DE, which I would say is very objectively a good move.

If someone thinks that this was a bad move from KDE, I would love to hear their arguments.

Hehe, good point - but that's how things go with those kind of topics...

As for Discover - I first had to look up what it actually is. Never ever used it before. (No, not too fresh with Linux, on the contrary; 28 years and counting). But I agree that it seems a reasonable move.

I don't really understand the outrage. What even is the use-case for a package manager to totally uninstall essential packages upon install of an unrelated package? I can get behind being able to tell the package manager to uninstall essential packages when told to do so explicitly, but installing regular application software should never make massive alterations to the foundational parts of my system to begin with. Having especially the graphical package managers protect you from accidental system breakage is nothing but a good thing.

Honestly, some of this complaining in this thread could easily be applied to --no-preserve-root or even the concept of sudo. Why is 'rm' trying to slow me down from deleting my entire root folder? Why do I need to input my password to modify system files? They are trying to turn my OS into a padded cell! Back in the good old days I could punch in arbitrary values into arbitrary memory locations and the computer stepped out of my way!

Honestly, I am totally behind Liam on this. The complaints on this issue reek of elitism and I see no value in making desktop Linux more fragile to breakage or more obscure to make some tinkerers feel better about themselves. And I say that as a tinkerer myself: I am quite willing to bet that I run a more exotic setup than many of the people that are now up in arms about how their right to tinker is somehow being trampled on. You are still perfectly able to uninstall your display managers and bootloaders even after the apt patches if you really want, just try to realize that this is an exotic use-case and 99.9% of people would only do so by accident and thus there should be some level of safety to prevent that. Even Formula 1 cars come with safety features.

For a graphical package manager frontend, that makes perfect sense as those are targeted towards to less experienced users. As long as there still is a way to decide to remove those packages in CLI, i'm fine with it tbh. i don't like that the option is removed in APT, but i think it's now a flag that has to be passed on invokation? Given that you should rarely need that, thats kind of still ok, albeit too much idiot-proofing in an area where idiots should not be doing stuff ^^

Quoting: Pit

Quoting: Glog78OpenSuse i would call as mainstream but when was the last time someone adviced OpenSuse somewhere for a beginner? Even during 7 pages of this discussion you and me are probably the only two who talk about OpenSuse / Suse so far. Being able to do so on the terminal is a step forward. But i guess we are far from "newbie" friendly even at this point.

Strange. You request safety features like snapshots, being able to boot those and roll back, and yet say the distro that implements all that by default is not for new users....

Quoting: denyasis** Oh, I missed that part in your post. If you count OpenSuse as "mainstream". It has full system snapshot by default, courtesy of BTRFS. Reboot, pick the old snapshot in GRUB and good to go! (Ok... you need a terminal command to finish the rollback, you know, altering the file system and all).

;) it is related to the fact that a user needs to go down to the Terminal as it seems to use BTRFS Snapshots to go back. In this case it's not usable for a "beginner".

Quoting: RoosterWait..

Why is this whole comment sections basically a continuation of the previous thread, instead of discussing the actual topic which has nothing to do with the CLI and is a GUI only move to prevent new users from bricking their DE, which I would say is very objectively a good move.

If someone thinks that this was a bad move from KDE, I would love to hear their arguments.

From -> https://pointieststick.com/2021/11/19/this-week-in-kde-most-of-gnome-shell-in-the-overview-effect/ -> "Discover now prevents you from doing anything that would uninstall Plasma in the process, which is probably not what you were intending to do (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24):"

So KDE Discover now prevents you to deinstall kde plasma but you can go on and deinstall xfce or gnome which might used on a second user of this pc ? (Linus usecase ->) He doesn't liked dolphin as far as i got it and used another filemanager which can be in this scenario still be deinstalled ...


Last edited by Glog78 on 21 November 2021 at 11:08 am UTC

Quoting: SamsaiI don't really understand the outrage. What even is the use-case for a package manager to totally uninstall essential packages upon install of an unrelated package? I can get behind being able to tell the package manager to uninstall essential packages when told to do so explicitly, but installing regular application software should never make massive alterations to the foundational parts of my system to begin with. Having especially the graphical package managers protect you from accidental system breakage is nothing but a good thing.

Honestly, some of this complaining in this thread could easily be applied to --no-preserve-root or even the concept of sudo. Why is 'rm' trying to slow me down from deleting my entire root folder? Why do I need to input my password to modify system files? They are trying to turn my OS into a padded cell! Back in the good old days I could punch in arbitrary values into arbitrary memory locations and the computer stepped out of my way!

Honestly, I am totally behind Liam on this. The complaints on this issue reek of elitism and I see no value in making desktop Linux more fragile to breakage or more obscure to make some tinkerers feel better about themselves. And I say that as a tinkerer myself: I am quite willing to bet that I run a more exotic setup than many of the people that are now up in arms about how their right to tinker is somehow being trampled on. You are still perfectly able to uninstall your display managers and bootloaders even after the apt patches if you really want, just try to realize that this is an exotic use-case and 99.9% of people would only do so by accident and thus there should be some level of safety to prevent that. Even Formula 1 cars come with safety features.

Hi Samsai -> you are a programmer. I didn't check the implementation but from my current understanding of the issue ... either this protection should cry on nearly every installed program , cause from a user standpoint they can be essential or it does cry only on very few situations which leaves alot of loopholes and scenarios which makes it no real protection.

I really remember the times when suse's (aka suse 6.x times) default editor was vim or emacs (i don't remember which of both) and i never heard of them and wasn't able to even edit a file. So who defines and what is an essential package ? I gave an example for some questions earlier to think of why none of this solutions technically makes sense (imho) but rather complicate the way even people who have an understanding can help.


Last edited by Glog78 on 21 November 2021 at 11:09 am UTC

Quoting: Glog78;) it is related to the fact that a user needs to go down to the Terminal as it seems to use BTRFS Snapshots to go back. In this case it's not usable for a "beginner".

So you'd prefer a graphical tool? Like in the case you've accidentally removed your X server?


But it allows you to (ro) boot from the (working) snapshot, fire up the browser and look up how to proceed. You could also just use YaST (X or ncurses) to restore changed files, but if you've badly messed up things a rollback is probably better - for which indeed command line is needed (AFAIK).

But probably we get OT here....

Quoting: Glog78Hi Samsai -> you are a programmer. I didn't check the implementation but from my current understanding of the issue ... either this protection should cry on nearly every installed program , cause from a user standpoint the can be essential or it does cry only on very few situations which leaves alot of loopholes and scenarios which makes it no real protection.

So, is your argument that we shouldn't accept any solution that is less than perfect? I think you'll find that suddenly life becomes very very difficult if you start rejecting solutions simply because they are not total solutions. The world runs on compromises, and computers and their software are by themselves a massive pile of compromises built on compromises.

Sure, some users may consider certain packages essential which others would not. However, I think we can establish a fairly agreeable layering, where we designate software that is foundational and without which the normal operation of the system becomes difficult or impossible. In that grouping we can include things like bootloaders, display managers, desktop environments, init systems, package management tools and the core dependencies of the previously mentioned items. After all, I think it's common sense that some user-level application getting accidentally removed is a less of a hassle than your system not booting or entirely losing your graphical environment.

Quoting: Pit

Quoting: Glog78;) it is related to the fact that a user needs to go down to the Terminal as it seems to use BTRFS Snapshots to go back. In this case it's not usable for a "beginner".

So you'd prefer a graphical tool? Like in the case you've accidentally removed your X server?


But it allows you to (ro) boot from the (working) snapshot, fire up the browser and look up how to proceed. You could also just use YaST (X or ncurses) to restore changed files, but if you've badly messed up things a rollback is probably better - for which indeed command line is needed (AFAIK).

But probably we get OT here....

Nope i prefer a failsafe solution (like F5 on windows) or (androids system rescue) to be able at any point with just a button press to recover the system. Thats the idea ... boot your system with f5 -> get a selection of snapshots you can go back to -> win. I guess that would cover up 95% of the beginner mistakes or distribution problems if we can also really split userdata from systemdata (xdg standard and so on).

Quoting: Samsai

Quoting: Glog78Hi Samsai -> you are a programmer. I didn't check the implementation but from my current understanding of the issue ... either this protection should cry on nearly every installed program , cause from a user standpoint the can be essential or it does cry only on very few situations which leaves alot of loopholes and scenarios which makes it no real protection.

So, is your argument that we shouldn't accept any solution that is less than perfect? I think you'll find that suddenly life becomes very very difficult if you start rejecting solutions simply because they are not total solutions. The world runs on compromises, and computers and their software are by themselves a massive pile of compromises built on compromises.

Sure, some users may consider certain packages essential which others would not. However, I think we can establish a fairly agreeable layering, where we designate software that is foundational and without which the normal operation of the system becomes difficult or impossible. In that grouping we can include things like bootloaders, display managers, desktop environments, init systems, package management tools and the core dependencies of the previously mentioned items. After all, I think it's common sense that some user-level application getting accidentally removed is a less of a hassle than your system not booting or entirely losing your graphical environment.

I think we should discuss those solutions not agree to them by default or hype them. All what we have currently presented is in my eyes just "acitvism" which in the end we all might more suffer than win.