package manager updates vs software updating itself

[DrVladimirTzu]

Obviously distrobutions have their own methods for updating the software you install on your system via their package manager. However, if you install a piece of software locally, it'll usually have some function to check for and download/install updates itself.

When you install something through a package manager, the program no longer does this since the package manager is going to handle that to keep the system consistent.

I get all that, but.. What is the process for disabling that piece of the softwares behavior? Is it generally done through modifying the code? How would that work on closed source software? Or is it usually just a matter of changing the default preferences to not do this automatically? If that's the case, could a user end up with an inconsistent system by reenabling it?

I'd be curious to know what that process is like for the people working behind the scenes.

[jmadero]

The process is really different dependent on what software you're talking about.

Closed Source Installed Through Package Manager: Often times the update through software is disabled when you install through the package manager so that all updates are handled through the package manager vs. having weird interactions between package manager and software. Some software will still enable you to check for updates and install through the software but doesn't do this automatically. One example of this I believe is Acrobat Reader. The software itself might have preferences to re-enable software updates within the software itself but in general this is not a good idea for regular use machines as the software in package managers have been tested extensively on the distro itself while the ones through the software might not be so heavily tested in linux (ie. might be tested only for Windows and then a linux version is released)

Closed Source Installed Manually: Dependent on software, should be no conflict with update manager. If options are not in preferences of software you can't really alter it since it's closed source.

Open Source: I've never heard of a conflict between updating the software through the software itself or through package manager. Again it is best to install through package managers as the software has been tested on your particular distro and might have slight modifications for your distro that would not be seen in the generic release of the software. Examples include firefox which has an internal software update check/process and options through package manager.

Overall it's just best to stick with the package manager updates unless you're willing to experiment and have possible problems. This being said, I rarely stick to package managers and almost always want the latest release, because of this, I crash my system often with alpha and beta releases

[DrVladimirTzu]

Thankya much for the response man. That's pretty much what I'd figured. It was just a conceptual question really. Although to switch from Ubuntu Debian, which I want to do, I'll need to install chromium locally to get the newest version. Pandora won't play on the older release debian offers. >.<

[jmadero]

Why are you moving away from ubuntu to debian if you don't mind me asking?

[DrVladimirTzu]

Why are you moving away from ubuntu to debian if you don't mind me asking?

Long time no reply. lol My motherboard fried, so I'd been offline. I moved to Debian because it does certain things in a more standard way, like init. I found I couldn't use Pandora because all the browsers are too out of date though, so now I'm back to Ubuntu and just run Deb from a virtualbox. Better for tinkering with things I shouldn't that way anyway. lol

Thanks for the answers man.