14 DAY TRIAL // The highly anticipated GNOME 3.30 desktop environment will be released in less than a month, and we bet Linux users can't wait to install it on their favorite GNU/Linux distributions to discover all the new features and enhancements.
One of the coolest, long-anticipated feature coming to the GNOME 3.30 desktop environment this fall is automatic updates. Yes, you're reading it right, the GNOME Project is enabling automatic software updates for you so you won't have to worry about if you're running the latest version of a software or not, but only for Flatpaks at this time.
According to Richard Hughes, the new automatic updates feature has been implemented in the GNOME Software package manager and will be available as part of the GNOME 3.30 release this fall, enabled by default only for Flatpak apps, the universal binary format for Linux-based operating systems, along with an option in preferences to disable it.
"For GNOME 3.30 we’ve enabled something that people have been asking for since at least the birth of the gnome-software project: automatically installing updates," said Richard Hughes. "Since it’s still not safe to auto-update packages [] we will restrict automatic updates to Flatpaks. Although we do automatically download things like firmware updates, ostree content, and package updates."
So it looks to us like the new automatic updates feature will first work only with Flatpak apps, which are safe to use thanks to the conternization technologies they utilize, but regular packages and firmware updates will still be automatically downloaded by GNOME Software, just that they won't be automatically installed, so you'll have to manually install them.
GNOME 3.30 to bring better Flatpak support
We said it before and we'll say it again, GNOME 3.30 will bring a better Flatpak experience, not only to the Nautilus file manager as we reported last month, but now also to the GNOME Software package manager, which will automatically download and update your installed Flatpak apps, and better support installations of Flatpaks from a flatpakref repository.
The first GNU/Linux distributions to get a taste of the new automatic updates functionality in the GNOME desktop environment will be Fedora 28 and Fedora 29. The first GNOME 3.30 Beta release is already available for testing in Fedora Rawhide if you can't wait until next month when the final GNOME 3.30 release will hit the streets on September 5, 2018.
Automatic updates for flatpak are on the way. https://t.co/Clwbysu1Sm — Flatpak (@FlatpakApps) August 9, 2018