Slow Update Checks on Silverblue or other Atomic Desktops?

Is anyone else experiencing really slow update checks?

I’m using Fedora Silverblue 41 and the main issue I am having is that update checks:

  1. take a long time
  2. download so much data
  3. have the interface refresh after the update check completes (double loads)

To be clear it seems to be the update check phase that is slow, not the download or apply phases.

Is there a way to set a better update server location or improve this situation?

Hello, as a new user on this subject, I asked this question and gave feedback on this issue. This is definitely not a situation that suits Fedora and we must insist on fixing it. Fedora is actually a distribution that has enough infrastructure to even create its own store; we should demand these.

Hi and welcome to :fedora: .

From your description, I presume you’re using GNOME Software for managing upgrades.

Given that you’re on an atomic version of Fedora, it means that with each update of the system, if available, the latest version of the current tree is being downloaded. Then some other processes, such as performing the deployment of the current tree are involved, which might explain why it seems that an upgrade takes longer than, say, running an upgrade on traditional systems.

I have just performed an upgrade (via command line) on a Silverblue machine, and the average download speed reported was about 4MB/s, which is probably a decent speed provided by some local mirror.

So, in order for you to check if the issue is just a network or mirror speed limitation, or rather if it has to do with GNOME Software, you might want to run the next upgrade from the command line (via rpm-ostree upgrade), and compare it with the time it takes to perform a similar upgrade via GNOME Software. Have a look also at the detailed information you’re receiving from the rpm-ostree upgrade command, and try to associate it with the specific stages of updates via GNOME Software.

It has to be mentioned that an update via GNOME Software doesn’t only perform the update of the OSTree, but also the update of GUI apps (and their runtimes) installed as Flatpaks (which, again, are bigger in size than traditional RPM packages).

4 Likes

Thanks for the detailed info.

I have come to the conclusion that it’s the Gnome GUI aspect that is the slow part as running the command ‘sudo rpm-ostree upgrade’ is so much faster.

I now use a shellscript for this and avoid the interface.

Hopefully Fedora fix this in the year or so.

2 Likes

I think the gui is slow since it checks flatpaks and rpm-ostree updates and since running rpm-ostree update from terminal it runs only rpm-ostree checks not flatpaks

The GUI is made to get all updates in single click and usually work on background