Upgrade to Freedom! The Switch from Windows 10
The end of Windows 10 support in October 2025 presents a great opportunity for the Linux community to collectively help users transition their still-function...
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Not completely but kind of, all those poweroff, reboot etc. tied to systemd, though I believe this is mostly related to polkit run out of time.
that's right, but as I remember the error was talking about being unable to launch that KDE-specufic countdown overlay. journalctl has shown such an error for every time I tried to stop the session in any of the ways.
Normally updates don't change a thing on Linux since the system runs on RAM.
that's not how I understand the system is working. could you elaborate?
Oh, I meant a running system. Usually you would only need to reboot if you want to use the new kernel right away after an update. For most of the programs, you don't even need to restart them if they're already running. However, if you restart them they will run as the newer updated version.
Usually you would only need to reboot if you want to use the new kernel right away after an update.
and the new version of all the software that is still running with the old version.
For most of the programs, you don't even need to restart them if they're already running.
how? won't they keep being the old version?
However, if you restart them they will run as the newer updated version.
oh, yeah, we agree on that. but my point is that in my experience, a lot of software gets very confused if some libs it would use or resource files have changed after they were started. often that's also the reason why holding back a package's version makes trouble over time (because certain other packages can't be updated either), or same with using custom repos that have a different release schedule or maybe are not even in sync with your distro
and the new version of all the software that is still running with the old version.
That's why it's recommended to reboot after a major update, and usually there is a notification for that. But there is usually no need to rush the reboot if you work on something.
If one needs a certain release of a program I guess using the AppImage version would be the best.
but that's where it becomes more serious: when basic functions of the system fail, silently. when you can't even reboot without a terminal, because the reboot dialog crashes
It actually doesn't crash, it just cannot show the requirement of the root password in a dialog. I think this can be fixed via lengthen the timeout of polkit. Though I can understand why most distros don't change the default time because of security reasons. It would be nice if they give an option for it, at least for personal use cases. However, completely removing that timeout would be a security problem, even if the only user is you.
requirement of the root password? why would it need that, when it normally doesn't? to clarify, I didn't mean the "sudo reboot" command, but the reboot button in the KDE application launcher
systemd always requires root password for poweroff and reboot commands and polkit does that for you normally when using GUI. However that problem occurs when polkit timeout runs out. I don't know the exact mechanism behind it so I cannot tell exactly when it happens. When it doesn't do that, those commands don't run via a GUI. So this is on part systemd and part the distro.
