Show HN: Chromium Updater | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Chromium Updater

benbristow.co.uk

32 pointsbenbristow10 comments

With a proper linux box things get updated as if by magic. There is no need to manually update your software unless it is one of those rare things that does not deal with the repo manager.

Seriously, in 2014, Windows machines don't have this core functionality?

They don't. Avoid at all cost.

It does for apps that you get via the Windows app store.

>There is no need to manually update your software unless it is one of those rare things that does not deal with the repo manager.

That's not quite true. Ubuntu, for example, is notorious for shipping old and broken versions of software in its package manager, and then never actually updating them. I've personally run into issues with leiningen, rvm, pip, and a few other packages where the version in the apt repository is known to be buggy and is never updated.

It's not that bad. Linux distro with point-release will always be become outdated over time because they don't upgrade there package to new major version. If you want always up-to-date software, use a rolling-release distro.

In my opinion, the packages shipped with Ubuntu-server are pretty solid. No comment about the desktop version though, since I don't use it.

On linux you need the distribution to update its package before most people get it. That is just wrong! You end up with old versions of just about everything. Very old versions if you use some Debian relative. What's worse is that you force software to have "releases" even if it is just some commit arbitrarily designated as "version 2.2.2".

Windows does it much better. The people who provide the software are responsible for updating.

What Windows could use is a unified update checking mechanism so that every software didn't install their own service, or nag you at startup or while in use that there is a newer version.

I even prefer the Windows method of installing but that is a little beyond this rant.

Cool project, OP (I couldn’t actually get things up and running but filed a bug with details).

If you want to do a v2 (or somebody else is looking for a project), try extending Google’s autoupdater (Omaha): https://code.google.com/p/omaha/. The client is open source, the client-server protocol is documented (https://code.google.com/p/omaha/wiki/ServerProtocol), but an open-source server implementation is missing.

I highly recommend Chromatic if you are a Mac user.

https://mrgeckosmedia.com/applications/info/Chromatic

Why is Pepper Flash dismissed so handily in tech circles? It is ridiculously better than Adobe's version, in every aspect. Even with click-to-play enabled, lots of sites still continue to use flash, so how can anyone justify using Adobe's sleazy bug ridden updater?

I have a ninite executable in my startup filder, so about all my software gets updated automatically. https://ninite.com

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