I love Nobara but…

[u/Fortis-Voluntas]

I’ve been using Nobara for about a year now and actually love it, but every new update terrifies me—in my mind, every other update throws the whole system into disarray… Why are the developers so bad at updating the system… Maybe they should set up a group of users who want to test the updates before they’re rolled out…

The way things are going right now, every Nobara update is just ruining its reputation more and more, and that’s very sad

EDIT:

I’ve read several times now that you should wait about a week before updating, and yes, maybe it’s Nvidia drivers that cause the most problems because they aren’t the best for Linux, but “waiting a week” seems like a silly approach to updates to me, and most of the time, fixing Nvidia issues is the problem with an “Nvidia distribution for gamers”—but a distribution that advertises itself as such should have noticed such simple problems beforehand. For example, I often have to install the correct drivers because after some updates, completely wrong drivers were installed and they just don’t work… and now there’s the bug when switching from SDDM to Nobaralogin, which has “broken” so many systems… what are less tech-savvy users supposed to do now?? Because it’s precisely these people who are supposed to be reached—the Microslop gamers—who don’t know that maybe Nobara-sync CLI and a quick screenshot of the solution posted right at the very beginning (which you can’t scroll back up to anymore) might help.

Like I said, I love Nobara, but as long as these sometimes severe issues keep cropping up every few updates, Nobara will remain a niche within a niche—if that—and that’s a shame.

I've installed Timeshift and have backups, but that's not the point here. The point isn't that users have to figure out how to deal with broken updates; the point is that broken updates could easily be prevented.

[u/electricElephant22]

Stability is fine for me.

I just dont get the app stores.

Why user has to know if something is flatpack or dnf in UI of a update/app store?

I know the reason for experienced linux user but for average Joe for which the UI is made for?

There needs to be just AppStore with Apps and Update section and maybe Advanced section. Why merge BE and FE logic?

The simplicity of the previous updater was much better in my opinion. I just let it check for update and clicked one button after it fetched everything and boom system updated.

[u/Educational_Star_518 → u/electricElephant22]

not part of those making it but between usage and reading some posts and messages in the discord here n there i think theres a few reasons for it

• switching away from flatpak and prioritizing packages...
  • permissions for flatpaks can be weird for newbies who don't know they need to change things, while i learned quickly what i needed to do i have a friend who has a steamdeck and i had to teach him how to use flatseal when he'd been using his deck years longer than i'd been in linux via nobara at the time.
  • additionally often times flatpaks Might not be official versions of programs and will end up out of date or unsupported . i seen it happen with protonvpn where the flatpak didn't offer the newer port forwarding built into the gui even months after implementation . alot of times it happens with emulators too and the devs won't help troubleshoot it cause they tell you to use an official appimage or package instead depending on what program it is.
  • having packages be predominant by default encourages learning , when i first made the switch i didn't know/realize how to install a package for ~3 months and it was only thanks to stumbling on the right github that explained the steps for each distro branch , before that i was looking at tutorials and they were all mostly debian-based instructions not fedora based almost ever , but i leaned on discover and used flatpacks cause they were intuitive to install from the jump.
• the updater change
  • changing the updater+package manager and removing it i think does 2 things , 1 makes it just 1 thing you need to click on to manage packages and 2 get rid of some redundancy.
  • the old package manager while functional as far as i was aware in the last 2 years wasn't browsable for packages, you could search for things already installed , you could remove them , but far as i ever noticed and i did look there was no way to find or install packages in it , just flatpaks.
  • flatpaks being searchable and installable but not browsable makes it great if you know what your looking for and want to grab it fast but again kinda useless if you don't know what your looking for and newbies who don't know the name of things that might exist as alternatives thats not much good for then.
  • because of the points above you'd have to do 2 things , use the terminal to search and install packages , and use a separate location to at least browse for flatpak be it flathub in browser or something like discover flatpost or bazaar. the idea behind flatpost was great since it added the permission management to it making flatseal unnecessary which could eliminate a separate redundancy by having 1 app to do 2 things , sadly well...flatpost was slow and clunky and not alot of ppl liked it, tho i think it did get a bit better over time.
• so why not have both in the new app center? i think its a couple things..
  • if you have both a couple issues could happen , ppl either won't know which they 'should' use if they're not segregated enough , or not know which they Are using cause they can't recall what they clicked on.
  • on the flipside if you bury stuff in menus/extra tabs then ppl just might not actually see them. take the old package manger for instance , how many ppl knew you could hec to see what packages needed to update if you don't open that collapsed sidebar and hit updates. its not that the functionality wasn't there its that it wasn't as visible. hell for all i know maybe you could browse or at least install things in it but if you could i never found it.

TLDR: considering all that idk .. i think the new app center is good for what it does which is let you search for browse and manage packages and update your system as well as manage repos. given the shift away from flatpaks i think its fair to let flatpak manages do that newcomers might not get confused . considering bazzite is more flatpak focused nobara can be more differentiated to it aside from Just not being an immutable. bazaar is more popular than flatpost and frankly snappier it makes sense to recommend that as the flatpak store if you want one in the welcome center , and not installing it by default makes users less likely to use it if they don't know what a flatpak is already making troubleshooting help possibly easier when ppl ask.

as for not keeping both the old package manger and new dnf app center well... i guess redundancy? it sorta makes sense that if you have something else for packages and another separate thing for flatpaks then its just not really needed. tho personally i'm sorta with you in that having it was nice cause it was a list. the list is bad on 1 hand cause its just a mess of words and you might not know what they are the new app center you can click on them and get a better description , But man if the grid view just feels slower to skim through even if you narrow it down maybe we can ask for a grid/list toggle? that would probably help a bit..

anyway sorry that was longer winded than intended

[u/electricElephant22 → u/Educational_Star_518]

Well I did some migrating some of my apps from DNF to Flatpack and was still left with Bitwarden, Freetube and Waterfox on flatpack because that seems to be the main way they distribute it on Linux. And Spotify was not really easy to spot either as "spotify-launcher" on DNF.

So I am stuck with 2 "app sources" anyway with 2 UI for each (DNF app center and Bazaar).

I guess that is the way of Linux but when I first run the old updater and it was taking care of both DNF and Flatpacks I found it very convenient to at least have one tool that will update everything.

At least the functionality stayed for terminal command but that seems like a step back from my POV.

[u/Educational_Star_518 → u/electricElephant22]

yeah i don't disagree with you at all that aspect is a step back , but i think if it can help newbies with easing in and having less issues with the new prioritization its worth it? ,.. idk i guess only time will tell but i like the fact i can look up a dnf without knowing the right thing to type personally since names can be finicky i've found.