Linux

Alias update="sudo apt full-upgrade && flatpak update"

Fixed it for you

There has always been the option of installing software from source. The package manager won't update anything installed from source.

You don't have to use Flatpak, Snap or AppImage if you don't want to. If you use the package manager to install everything, it will update everything.

In Mint you can install flatpaks from the software manager and those get updated by the update manager. So it's all still one click.

If you use a graphical tool like gnome software, it will update everything with one click on a button

Don't generalize whatever distro you're running as "Linux", especially when we're talking package management.

I’ve used Linux since the 90s and I’ve never installed a flat pack or snap or whatever. They’re not required.

Well, doesn't that depend on your package manager? With pacman I can add a custom hook after install to update all flatpaks. I'm sure it could also be done for all snaps and AppImages if I would use any of those.

Isn't there a similar hooking mechanism in apt or yum?

IMHO the killer feature of linux is that you aren't getting shit straight into your mouth every day by some corporation that decices to squeeze more cash money out of you.

And as others have pointed out most gui applications update all sources automatically.

alias update='sudo pacman -Syu && flatpak update' or just use one of the trillion GUI app stores like pamac, discover, or gnome's thing whatever they call it.

alias upgrade="sudo pacman -Syu && yay -Syu && sudo flatpak upgrade"

I can't really relate? At least on my desktop. The software manager integrates with Flatpaks and upgrades them at the same time.

For most apps I'm going to prefer the usual way of doing things. But there are some apps that I actually kinda prefer as Flatpaks. Like Calibre I'm happy to install as a Flatpak. The updates are faster and it doesn't add a whole host of dependencies that only it uses to my system.

#! /bin/sh
#update_everything_in_one_command.sh
set -e
apt update
apt upgrade -y
flatpak update -y

$ sudo update_everything_in_one_command

Tada!

Every problem can be solved by adding another layer of abstraction.

Depends. Unless you're on Ubuntu or Elementary, Flatpak and Snap are optional. When I'm on Arch, btw, I don't bother with any of those and just use the AUR with a helper like yay.

But I find the convenience of Flathub too good to pass up on other distros. I have been using Linux long enough to remember when the only options if your distro didn't ship something were to compile from source or to use a sketchy installer script, because Flatpak didn't exist. And as others mentioned, if you're using a full desktop environment, it likely can update everything at once via the GUI.

You're using Linux. It took me about an hour to create a script that will upgrade all packages, Snaps, and flatpaks, complete with flavor text. The fact that I could do that, with total control over how and when to run those updates, is still a killer feature to me.

What I think the biggest problem with the traditional package managers is that (1) they don't isolate packages from each other (when you install a program files are placed in many random places, like /usr/bin, /usr/lib etc) and (2) you can't have multiple versions of the same package installed at the same time.

This creates a lot of work for package maintainers who need to constantly keep packages up to date as dependencies are updated.

Also, because of this, every distro is essentially an insane dependency tree where changing even one small core package could break everything.

Because of this, backwards compatibility on Linux is terrible. If you need to run an older application which depends on older packages, your only choice is to download an older distro.

This is what snap and flatpak try to solve. I think they are not great solutions, because they ended up being an extra package manager next to the traditional package managers. Until we see a distro that uses flatpak or something similar exclusively, the problem is not solved.

Silverblue here with automatic updates enabled, I do not care anymore, it just works.

A few years ago we were able to upgrade everything (OS and Apps) using a single command. I remember this was something we boasted about when talking to Windows and Mac fans. It was such an amazing feature. Something that users of proprietary systems hadn’t even heard about. We had this on desktops before things like Apple’s App Store and Play Store were a thing.

If this actually were Linux's killer feature, then Linux would have had a much higher market share by now.

Make no mistake, this is my favourite feature of Linux as well, and I have never used a snap/flatpack/appimage in my entire life. But it doesn't have the kind of broader public appeal that you seem to be suggesting.

GUI interfaces like discover or gnome software will update all

Honestly, at this point I'd like to get rid of all this sandboxing stuff altogether.

You can just use Topgrade and it'll update your entire system, including everything from your oh-my-$shell, pip, flatpak, snap etc

alright where's that XCKD, imma make another package distribution method to 'unify all the methods'

I just wrote a script to do all my updates in one go:

sudo dnf upgrade -y --refresh
sudo dnf check
sudo dnf autoremove

flatpak update -y --force-remove
flatpak remove --unused --delete-data -y

pip-review --user --auto --continue-on-fail

cargo install-update -a

sudo fwupdmgr get-devices
sudo fwupdmgr refresh --force
sudo fwupdmgr get-updates
sudo fwupdmgr update

You can use the great topgrade!

#nano /etc/systemd/system/flatpak-update.service

[Unit]
Description=Update Flatpak
After=network-online.target
Wants=network-online.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/flatpak update --noninteractive --assumeyes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

#nano /etc/systemd/system/flatpak-update.timer

[Unit]
Description=Update Flatpak

[Timer]
OnBootSec=2m
OnActiveSec=2m
OnUnitInactiveSec=24h
OnUnitActiveSec=24h
AccuracySec=1h
RandomizedDelaySec=10m

[Install]
WantedBy=timers.target

#systemctl daemon-reload

#systemctl enable --now flatpak-update.timer

The GUIs do that in a even easier way for new users and experienced people can always just add a simple bash alias, a universal command never existed anyway because we have various different package managers on different distros so I don't see any lost feature whatsoever tbh

I don't use flatpak. But if your distro does, I imagine it should be pretty easy for them to provide a higher level program that updates both types of packages at once. I think this isn't a big problem.

arch repos + aur got you covered

Your single command is just an "&&" away

no.
it's open source.

Well, one way to address this would be to have a little hook that triggers when you do a full system upgrade, and it updates your flatpaks.

also flatpaks are still centralized thanks to flatpak itself, same for snaps, nix, cargo and similar package managers. It's not like you have to update every single app by yourself, like for AppImages and apps on windows or macos for example.

Yes we did. I miss the old system.

Also I don't like my laptop rebooting in my backpack to install updates, after I've tried to shut it down.

Use a distribution with a large package library that is kept up to date and there is noting to miss.

Ubuntu is starting to push Snaps. So, that is becoming an unavoidable reality for Ubuntu users. For the most part though, Flatpaks remain optional for most distros.

The problem that Flatpaks solve is that the distro provided packages are out-of-date. If they are not, there is no real reason to prefer Flatpak.