Gnome software resets downloads

So for example I press install on flathub Firefox and then I go back and search for something else and then go back to Firefox is shows install button again and when I press it it downloads again starting from 0%. But then this happened with steam and I didn’t hit install button again and steam still got installed in the end, but another app I pressed install on after steam didn’t get installed. What I am concerned is can I restart? Will gnome software leave pieces of downloads on my system? And if I accidentally close gnome software after pressing install what should I do to make sure it doesn’t semi-install and break something, or leave some undownloaded packages? This is especially annoying when it downloads system updates, because it is extremely slow and inconsistent but I am scared to restart the system

Ok so now I’m really scared because Firefox suddenly appeared so I assume gnome downloaded and I have a Firefox install running in terminal so will that break my system

When installing that way it sometimes takes a while for the install to complete since it must download a significant package – often several MB or even several hundred MB when installing a flatpak. The install continues in the background with no info I have found about the status.

You should always only have one instance of a single app installed since there may be conflicts. Shutting down firefox which was initially installed by rpm and opening the other may (or may not) be an issue. The conflict often occurs with the configs and cache that firefox leaves in your system (home directory) especially when the flatpak version and the rpm version are different.

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You should NEVER restart while an update or install is in progress. There is a severe risk of the issues you noted above.

Gnome software does not really seem to give a usable status/progress indication, unlike when running updates or installs with dnf in a terminal window which gives a text screen status of downloads, install/update, and completion.

But the issue with using terminal is with flatpaks I don’t know what to write in to package name and it gives multiple versions of apps and I don’t know which one to install

The terminal should never show multiple versions of the same app. There are cases where both the i686 and the x86_64 versions are available but those are different even when the name otherwise seems the same. Even gnome software should show those as discrete and not show multiple versions of the same packages.

There is a package ‘flatpak’ that is used to manage the flatpaks installed. Using it is similar to using dnf for the rpms, and both do require that you know a little more about your system than is revealed with the gnome-software app.

Yes so I used flatpak command so for example google Firefox or ffmpeg in flatpak it will show a bunch of versions

Theoretically you should only install the latest version of a discrete package.

Also, theoretically you should only install the rpm version of any packages that are available as such, since doing so makes keeping things up to date and using only the versions that have been tested and approved for use with fedora easy.

In most cases the flatpaks are for use where an rpm package is not available for use from the fedora repos.

The flatpak command is for managing (installing, updating, removing) different packages that have been installed as flatpaks, and must be used independently of other package maintenance tools such as dnf.

Yeah but I’m using silverblue

Most rpm packages can be installed on silverblue with ostree-rpm.

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Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of silverblue

Not by design. It uses the ostree tools and layers the rpms in.

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I thought you are only supposed to layer important stuff that is not available in flatpaks like drivers. Otherwise I’d just use normal fedora without having to care about restarting the system each time an rpm package updates

It’s your system and you’re free to use either method. I have a mix of rpm-ostree, flatpak, and container toolbox stuff in my Kinoite and it’s been just fine.

I was going to add that if it was not acceptable to do so then they would not have provided the tools for that action.

Your machine, your choice on how to manage it.

If you only use flatpaks then you are dependent upon the flatpak maintainer for the quality of the package and how well it plays with other packages as well as keeping it up to date. Flatpaks are not managed nor quality tested by fedora.

If you use the fedora repo then you can be assured that it has been tested and is secure and does not interfere with other packages.

There is a Fedora flatpak repository repo and we do support flatpak in our build system, for what it’s worth, that is supported out of box by Fedora, but yeah, it’s not going to generally have the same level of QA that RPMs will. The RPMs are also dependent on the maintainer, too, and they do frankly sometimes go stale as well. Flathub and RPMFusion are both “third party” and not technically “supported” but in practice, I’ve never seen anyone strictly denied community help over using either of them as sources.

Flatpak are less likely to interfere with other system packages than RPMs, by design, for what it’s worth. There are some, albeit very few, exceptions to that (ie, Flatseal).

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may I also ask what about auto-updates? They are on by default in GNOME software and it provides no indication that there are some in progress. So I would assume more than half people would have a high chance of rebooting while GNOME software is automatically installing softare.

I believe the packagekit method (gnome software) is to download the updates and perform the actual upgrade during the shutdown process.

Yes, to me it appears that those who are in a hurry to do a shutdown/power off and do not wait for the update to complete and the machine to power off or restart normally are at risk. There have been some who manually hit the power button and caused system damage during that update.

This is definitely one of the things that Kinoite and Silverblue handle better.

Okay so now gnome software was stuck at 80% of downloading something, and now the page doesn’t even load so I can’t even press cancel. No pages load at all in fact. So what do I do to avoid breaking my system?