So I get that GNOME Software is basically a DNF/Flatpak front-end on Fedora, but why is it that even after I’ve run the following command lines, I’m still seeing available updates within GNOME Software?
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh
flatpak update
As a second question, why is it that updates via GNOME Software often require a reboot, whereas updates via DNF generally don’t? Is it just that Fedora doesn’t tell you a reboot is necessary when you update via the terminal (as Ubuntu does)?
And lastly, why is it that GNOME Software updates that do require a reboot also perform installation after the reboot–as opposed to DNF updates that seem to do it all at the time of the update?
No it is not dnf gui front end it is a different method of upgrade
Because it was a choice of the developers of gnome software team and gnome devs
And they implemented that restart thing and it is good to restart while upgrade
Dnf don’t need except some patches for kernel and very few system components
Because it was made in such a way to run for home and server as well with a relabel system upgrade without restart as system often restart.
It goes to a special state where it can do update kernel to system components easily without any worry and thn rebooted to the all new updated components that is the way of doing in the gnome software but in dnf it is not the case it does thing in the runing system and it do it efficiently.
Now come to the part that why you are asking that much if you don’t understand or confused i can safely say use any method that you like everything works.
It is not a dnf frontend, it uses packagekit. dnf and packagekit do not share caches/metadata so they can be out of sync from time to time. To refresh the packagekit metadata, try: pkcon refresh force.
For a discussion around updates being required by Gnome software:
That’s very interesting. I guess I was thrown off because when I run pkcon backend-details, I was assuming that “dnf” being the PackageKit backend meant that it was somehow running the dnf program directly–and therefore caching the same data. Good info!
I’m no expert… But I recommend that you delete gnome-software, and don’t do updates for it.
I know the gnome team that introduce a ‘store for apps’, and even update their system.
They mean well, but I doubt they’re really necessary…
Actually you can do everything using DNF… And get rid of 350 Mib of gnome-software, it just consumes your resources.
Maybe someone will come along and say they can’t get rid of it… Don’t believe it, it’s safe.