This is part question part feedback for the project. I just installed Fedora for the first time. Clicking around in the GUI I discovered the Software tool and the settings for automatic updates.
I am confused about this menu. Does checking “automatic” enable automatic updates? The small text says that it checks for and download updates. But does it also install them? Or do I still need to perform a manual action to install the updates. If that is true, then I’m confused about the setting “Automatic Update Notifications”. The small text here says “Notify when updates have been automatically installed”. This implies that the previous check box does install the updates, not just download them. But I’m not sure. The language here should make this more clear.
Next, when I internet search “Fedora automatic updates”, I find this page. This page doesn’t mention the graphical Software tool at all. Instead it mentions the command line tool dnf-automatic. Are these the same thing? If not, which one should I use? What happens if I enable automatic updates in both ways? That page should explain this and compare to the graphical Software tool.
Or rather: not in Fedora Workstation, except for Flatpak apps.
I agree this is way too confusing. I’ll flag this for our design team.
GNOME Software manages multiple types of updates: Fedora OS updates via RPM (Fedora Workstation and most other Fedora variants) or rpm-ostree (Fedora atomic variants like Silverblue/Kinoite), fwupd firmware updates, and Flatpak updates.
What you’re thinking of are the RPM updates, which never get installed automatically. Those will happen when you select the “install updates” button on the power off dialog. (But note that’s a little buggy currently. Should be fixed pretty soon now.)
GNOME Software actually does automatically install Flatpak updates, though. But I don’t remember it notifying me about doing so.
We actually did automatically install updates in the background 15 years ago or thereabouts, before GNOME Software even existed. That didn’t last very long. Too many bug reports of RPM database corruption caused because users would power off their computers during an update which they didn’t know was in progress. Was not a good idea!
It seems that currently GNOME Software’s automatic updates work best with Fedora Atomic, since it installs Flatpaks automatically, as well as deploys any new available OSTree images in the background. Basically no user interaction needed to keep the system up to date.
