How can i disable apt update each time i launch Discover?
It’s very annoying.
2 Likes
if you are launching it from the system tray then you are going to be taken directly to the updates page.
if you launch it from the app menu, then it takes you to the home page.
This is not relevant information.
Regardless of which page is opened, APT goes to update EVERY time Discover is launched.
ah, i didn’t get that from your question
far as i know this has always been the behavior in the background, otherwise how is discover supposed to know if there are updates pending without checking?
have you tried setting the notification frequency to Never?
would you prefer that it only check for updates when you open the updates tab?
that would sort of defeat the purpose of the status notification in the tab, but you could submit a feature request at bugs.kde.org
I haven’t tried these ideas:
-
Open discover
on the left hand side see the Settings page. open that page.
deselect all the repositories. -
in the Software Settings , Software Updates => you can set the notification frequency to “Never”.
Will Discover still show the available (distribution) applications after disabling/deselecting all the application repositories? A empty Application store would be kind of sad.
What I have done using Discover only for Flatpak, not for the Distro (arch) apps. I have uninstalled the PackageKit backend after installing the Flatpak backend. Apt (or in my case pacman) you have to handle yourself after that, of cause.
Let the user decide for themselves. The APT update blocks any apps manipulation until it is complete, but e.g. what if the network has a problem? The timeout is too long, and you can’t help but wait.
When it became a bad idea or so impossible to just add an “Update” button so user can just click it? And a checkbox to disable autoupdate? Why so brutal UX?
This is a setting associated with the background schedule, but not with every start of plasma-discover.
I think it’s not a problem to alter the settings about scheduled update/notification and APT update every time Discover starts.
No, it doesn’t help to disable the APT update every time Discover is launched.
Yes, that would be a good enough solution 
I see it dumb simply:
You launch $ plasma-discover --mode Browsing and Discover starts without any update job.
You launch $ plasma-discover --mode Update and Discover starts with update routine.
I feel like this is something you should post to your distribution’s chat board. What is your distribution anyway? Debian?
In any case, you can edit your .desktop file to use the --mode Browsing and as I said, maybe ask your distribution to make this the default. I am not using Discover to update system packages and thus, the default - looking for updates - is fine.
KDE Neon
It doesn’t work. As I’ve said above, no matter how you are running Discover at this moment - APT goes to updade ANYWAY each time you starts the Discover.
A problem here is that some distros have a more active software repository, so fetching an up-to-date package list is a lot more important on KDE neon than, say Debian, Plus it checks for Flatpak/snap (if enabled), firmware, and KDE Store items as well. There is no place to un-check the KDE store, and this may be what Discover is checking even with --mode Browsing.
I think most of the distro packaging systems want you to update their database/lists before doing things, generally speaking.
Some sort of logic or detection on how long it has been since Discover was last opened might be useful for sure, but how long?
Works for me (KDE neon), using --mode Browsing in the terminal, or editing the menu entry. I don’t see the very noticeable spike in network activity compared to opening Discover normally, and the UI loads and opens more quickly for me, and to the Home section.
HOWEVER, if you are offline, it does gripe about being offline and being unable to refresh caches. It still loads a lot faster for me than starting normally, even counting for needing to dismiss the message.
Pinned or Favorite icons may not pick up the menu edit immediately,
there seems to be something already because if i open it for the first time today i get a net work spike of it checking (and there are now updates pending, orange alert)
but if i now close it and open it a 2nd time i get no spike and it still shows the orange alert.
so there must be some timer of some kind already.
i think the problem is what is use case for such behavior?
why are you launching discover if not to “discover” what is the latest available package info?
you are asking for a plasma-discover --mode Stale option and i can’t see the use case for it.
Slow and metered Internet access. I have been living off of this myself for about a year now, until I can get the house actually connected and finally get off of mobile tethering. Soon!!! I moved from semi-urban US to regional Australia. I will be getting fiber, though. Err Fibre.
Slower computer trying to check as many as 5 different things at once. That sort of thing.
It is just slow sometimes. We know how people get over a few seconds of loading time on systems that rarely actually reboot 
so walk me thru it…
you have a slow connection and only want to see what discover has cached from the last time it checked the contents of the repositories it has access to.
this would be the plasma-discover --mode Stale where you get the GUI up and it shows you the cached version of the repositories from last time it checked (assuming such a cache even exists).
with perhaps a red alert showing that it really really needs to access the internet to be up to date, but “here’s the Stale info i got for you.”
ok. i guess i can see that part.
but now what?
as soon as you click on anything in the browser it’s going to want to fetch the latest info on that to give you the details and let you install it… is it not?
so what have you gained other than delaying the inevitable wait time?
Yes, and no.
Screenshots, yes, those will be downloaded. Reviews probably. But only when you open an app page, though. But the rest should already be there.
For me, nothing. I do most of my package management in the terminal, and only do a daily update or random thing in Discover, and I also do not care about the wait or the wasted data, But I can see how it can annoy people, just like 5 extra seconds of boot time, or those extra megabytes of ram on an idle system.
As long as you could still search apps and sort by category it would make sense, that would all have to take place locally with a cached version of the repository.
i could see the utility of that, but for the rare instance when you go to actually get the thing and it’s no longer there.
as for the reviews when i run plasma-discover --mode Browsing in a terminal window i get fetch ratings! false, but i don’t know where that is coming from.