Librem 5 software updates

Hardware
1

Pardon my ignorance here. As the phone runs PureOS do updates come as they do on say my desktop where a box will pop up telling me that there are updates available? Click on the box and then it updates itself.

Or are software updates done in a different manner?

2

It should work in the same way as on a Linux desktop or laptop, just the GUI may look different.

You can see a glimpse of it in this video, at 1:30 when he says “installing and upgrading software”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhrnMVJDpfs

In the terminal I think you can do things like “apt update” and “apt upgrade” just like on a desktop.

3

Thanks for the link. But in the video it appears to just take you to the software store. Doesn’t really address software bug fixes etc.

4

I think that is the “Updates” button in the bottom-right at 1:34 in the video, but the video doesn’t show what happens when you choose that. Perhaps better to look here: https://docs.puri.sm/Librem_5/Software.html – scroll down to “Updating Applications”.

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5

Thanks again. Still looks to be more about apps. I’m wondering about system updates for example where a bug might get fixed, a feature currently not working optimally might get a software update for example. The L5 needs software updates to continually improve its functionality so I’m wondering how these get onto the phone.

6

To the best of my knowledge you use the same tool to update both applications and the OS (this is how the update software works on desktop pureOS and they seem to be trying to keep the user experience similar).

Alternatively you can use the terminal and update with apt.

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7

It’s all the same for apps and OS updates. They are all installable from within GNOME Software where the OS updates come from the APT repositori(es) and apps from APT and Flatpak via Flathub.

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8

Thanks for the replies. Makes a lot more sense now.

9

This is an easy, bottom line and great thread (up to now). And for someone like me having possibility to check and get almost daily necessary security (main OS software at the first place) and stable apps upgrades is something that makes main difference to me.

In short, I’d qualify this as main advantage of any real Linux phone (without need to quote some/any official source). Maintaining PureOS as stable as this gets might easily be one of the most important things out there for myself (trusting in great job they do, without ignoring great jobs and efforts from other Linux communities). After this, in addition, having Librem 5 being free of blobs, having capability of making phone calls, turning on and off few HKSs, etc., etc, etc. can easily, IMHO, make someone proud that such product exists.

To manually upgrade packages through the CLI:

~$ sudo apt update
~$ sudo apt upgrade

To update all your installed applications and runtimes to the latest version, run:

~$ flatpak update

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