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posted by martyb on Thursday November 10 2016, @02:49AM   Printer-friendly
from the differences-are-good dept.

I find the Libre Office Update tool for the Windows version of the Suite is not really worth having at all. A notice will pop up indicating that an update is available, but the tool just goes to the Libre Office web site for you to download the full package manually. Compare that to the Pale Moon web browser, which will download small update packages when a new version becomes available. You do not need to remove the old version of Pale Moon to install the update, because its update tool takes care of it automatically.

Libre Office is a high profile Open Source application, I am surprised that their version for the Windows operating system does not have an easy upgrade path. I think that working on the Upgrade tool would be a worthy upgrade to the Suite, and the current version is holding back adoption of it.

Disclaimer: I am not a programmer, so I can't write an upgrade tool on my own. Also my employers owns any software I create (employment agreement).

[Ed note: I was debating whether or not to run this story. Sounds like it could lead to a good discussion. If LibreOffice can download deltas on other platforms, why not on Windows? What practical reason could there be?]


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by ledow on Thursday November 10 2016, @10:19AM

    by ledow (5567) on Thursday November 10 2016, @10:19AM (#425071) Homepage

    I'd much prefer if it every damn app on the planet didn't need an update service running constantly in order to do so.

    Chrome is the prime culprit here (uses Google Update service).
    Along with Adobe software.

    Just because you're an installed app does not give you arbitrary permission to install permanent and persistent services running as a user capable of installing software that you download off the Internet and the user has no way of verifying.

    But there are plenty of apps (thousands of them) that auto-update without needing that. Scheduled tasks, or check-on-run is very common. There's no reason that you couldn't knock something up in a matter of hours to run on Libreoffice startup (my concerns about their stupid launcher junk aside), that checks a URL, downloads the file listed on it, in a secure manner, and then executes it.

    The reason it doesn't exist is more presumably because there's little call for it. Most people smart enough to be using LibreOffice update when they feel they need to, not auto-apply every update that comes their way.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @04:13PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 10 2016, @04:13PM (#425165)

    the reason apps want to update like that is b/c you're on a slaveware platform without proper package management and that crapware is insecure as shit and it needs to update so it doesn't get your whole pos "os" hosed. you're blaming the apps that are actually acting responsibly about their crapware instead of blaming yourself for being a lazy minded slave. whenever windows or apple users whine about their problems they just come off like pathetic children b/c that's what you all are. bawling dependents.

    • (Score: 2) by ledow on Friday November 11 2016, @08:03AM

      by ledow (5567) on Friday November 11 2016, @08:03AM (#425596) Homepage

      Seriously, put a capital letter in occasionally if you're going to be talking about people coming off like babies.

      For reference, i run Linux and Windows servers and desktops, and have lived with a Linux primary desktop for seven years (do you know why I don't any more? Because Ubuntu Unity went to junk, KDE looks horrid nowadays, and Gnome is all-but-dead and ugly. I ran KDE on *Slackware* for the majority of time because it gave me the control and let me select what desktop I wanted and tinker with how it looked. And nowadays almost all modern distros have sidebars (hate them), top-taskbars (just no), or Mac-like stripped off menus stuck at the top (hate that too). You can configure some of those out, but not all, especially not if you want to stay on a modern desktop OS easily.)

      Even on Windows, I have just as many Linux VM's as Windows ones. Rather than bitch, I use the right tool for the right job, and manage them both effectively (so the Chrome update thing is under my control, but it shouldn't be that way on everyone's desktop without question - it harks back to the Quicktime Updater days of everything running a taskbar icon to constantly update on its own schedule). Even my Windows Servers run Classic Shell so I can configure the start menu to operate as I think it should.

      When was the last time you checked a Perl module? They can auto-download and auto-update from a central repo like CPAN even under Ubuntu etc. It's as easy as a switch on the 'perl' command.
      What about things like Let's Encrypt - it operates in a self-downloaded container that you have no idea what can be put in there.
      And that's without thinking "What if this distro WANTS to just throw systemd on my machine?"

      That stuff can just as easily update-to and run code that you don't want. Don't pretend this is a Linux only issue.

      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday November 11 2016, @03:16PM

        by tangomargarine (667) on Friday November 11 2016, @03:16PM (#425686)

        and have lived with a Linux primary desktop for seven years (do you know why I don't any more? Because Ubuntu Unity went to junk, KDE looks horrid nowadays, and Gnome is all-but-dead and ugly.

        You've never heard of XFCE?

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"