Software update notifications

Ask Fedora
1

The Gnome Software application’s settings are set to automatically check for and download updates, and to notify when the updates have been automatically installed, as shown in the screenshot below.

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There are a couple overlapping entangled concepts, so for the sake of being on the same page, I will attempt to untangle the concepts by making a couple distinguishments.

State 1: Gnome Software has not been opened by the user
State 2: Gnome Software has been opened by the user

When Gnome Software is in State 2, it shows notifications when updates are available for download, as shown in the screenshot below. But the user still needs to click on download and then click on install the updates.

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If Gnome Software is in State 1, it doesn’t display any notifications whenever updates are available. If a user hypothetically never opens the Gnome Software (and never runs the sudo dnf update command in the terminal), they would never know that there are any updates available to download and install.

How is the Gnome Software supposed to work in State 1? Is there a way to make it display notifications to the user whenever updates are available to download or have been downloaded?

2

It should do so (a) if it has been 2 weeks since the last update, or (b) if any available update is marked Urgent priority (which is generally only used for Firefox updates and particularly critical security issues). If it’s been more than 2 weeks and you haven’t seen any notification, that’s a bug.

To check the last update time:

$ gsettings get org.gnome.software install-timestamp
int64 1726363777
$ date --date='@1726363777'
Sat Sep 14 08:29:37 PM CDT 2024

Other settings to check:

$ gsettings get org.gnome.software download-updates
true
$ gsettings get org.gnome.software download-updates-notify
true

If they’re both true, and it’s been more than two weeks since your last update, and you’re not seeing any notification, then there’s a bug. But I bet you’re probably just not waiting the two weeks. :slight_smile:

3 Likes
3

@catanzaro Both settings are true, but I haven’t waited two weeks. I will wait it out and then confirm back here. Thank you for clarifying how this works, it’s good to know!