Synaptic>Icon Legend>Package is supported - means what?

[markfilipak]

I've searched and found no joy ...
Synaptic shows orange sunbursts next to some packages. The 'Icon Legend' dialog says it means "Package is supported".

Q1: What does "Package is supported" really mean?
Q2: 'Who' supports it?
Q3: Are the other, un-sunbursted packages unsupported?

Thanks for your attention,
Mark.

[catweazel]

I've searched and found no joy ...
Synaptic shows orange sunbursts next to some packages. The 'Icon Legend' dialog says it means "Package is supported".

Q1: What does "Package is supported" really mean?
Q2: 'Who' supports it?
Q3: Are the other, un-sunbursted packages unsupported?

Open Synaptic and select 'Sections' in the left panel. Only software in certain sections is fully supported. Fully supported means you get regular updates. In the background of Synaptic, this means that only packages coming from the 'main' section of the repositories are supported. Applications coming from other sections will generally only get security updates.

Well, at least that's what I think it means

[smurphos]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories

[markfilipak]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories

I went to the linked page. Then I went to all the pages that it links to. Then I went to all the pages that all of them link to. That was 2-levels deep. It took me a few hours.

The string "Package is supported" was not found on any of those pages.

Can you give me a more specific link that says what "Package is supported" really means?

Thanks!

[markfilipak]

I've searched and found no joy ...
Synaptic shows orange sunbursts next to some packages. The 'Icon Legend' dialog says it means "Package is supported".

Q1: What does "Package is supported" really mean?
Q2: 'Who' supports it?
Q3: Are the other, un-sunbursted packages unsupported?

Open Synaptic and select 'Sections' in the left panel. Only software in certain sections is fully supported. Fully supported means you get regular updates. In the background of Synaptic, this means that only packages coming from the 'main' section of the repositories are supported. Applications coming from other sections will generally only get security updates.

Well, at least that's what I think it means

Well, there's no "Main" section. So I suppose you mean the "Sections" section. I see "All", "Amateur Radio", "Communication", "Communication (multiverse)", "Communication (universe)", etc. I did some reading and now understand to what the "multiverse" and "universe" refer, but I've not found any "Sections" entry that refers to "main". So, even if the non-existant "main" implies "Package is supported", that leaves me not knowing what either "main" really means or what "Package is supported" really means.

You know, I've given the lack of communication in the Linux community a lot of thought lately. The problem is a fairly classic psychological dilemma. It's the conflict between law and culture -- I refer to the organizing principles of civic communication & control. Law is hard on the sources of knowledge because formulating law requires effort & foresight, but is explicit and only has to be communicated once. Culture is easy for the sources of knowledge because so much is assumed, but it has to be communicated over, and over, and over ... because, by its very nature, culture is poorly defined. Is the root problem that the sources of Linux knowledge are lazy? No. It's that the leaders of Linux are ignorant of what it takes to succeed as a society. There currently is no Linux community. There's a Linux tribe. That works for those who are already in the tribe, but it doesn't allow for entrants from outside the Linux tribe. And it results in occasional warfare.

PS: If you think I'm being pedantic and that the community vs. tribe is bullcrap, think about the Internet. Instead of creating a community that unites humankind, it's creating an array of tribes that battle. The US is coming apart. Will that happen in the EU? Will that happen globally? Will only tribes of humankind survive?

[AZgl1800]

I just gave this post 5 stars for being Humorous, and informative at the same time.

I titled it: Definition of what the Linux Community is, or is not. *****

The 5 stars are at the end of my bookmark..... I do this to topics that have special import to me...

I've been indoctrinated in the less than helpfulness of Microsoft since DOS 1.0 and I have waded through every iteration of that right until they invented Win10........ and that is where I jumped ship. I have had enough.......

so, Linux, here I came, and yes, the Textbook is rather vaporous, it has to be picked up in pieces, with "this tutorial" and "that tutorial" and more effectively to me, is just following each and every Problem thread as it shows up, trying out the steps that are shown, then writing up documentation "that makes sense to me" in my Evernote database with a proper heading.

Linux - How to make a USB Flash Drive

etc, etc, etc, I have quite an extensive Evernote database now on Linux....
This way, if I am looking for something, but my 75 y/o brain can't remember the terms, I just type in "Linux" and scroll down thru the titles until something jogs my mind.

[markfilipak]

I just gave this post 5 stars for being Humorous, and informative at the same time.

I titled it: Definition of what the Linux Community is, or is not. *****

The 5 stars are at the end of my bookmark..... I do this to topics that have special import to me...

I've been indoctrinated in the less than helpfulness of Microsoft since DOS 1.0 and I have waded through every iteration of that right until they invented Win10........ and that is where I jumped ship. I have had enough.......

so, Linux, here I came, and yes, the Textbook is rather vaporous, it has to be picked up in pieces, with "this tutorial" and "that tutorial" and more effectively to me, is just following each and every Problem thread as it shows up, trying out the steps that are shown, then writing up documentation "that makes sense to me" in my Evernote database with a proper heading.

Linux - How to make a USB Flash Drive

etc, etc, etc, I have quite an extensive Evernote database now on Linux....
This way, if I am looking for something, but my 75 y/o brain can't remember the terms, I just type in "Linux" and scroll down thru the titles until something jogs my mind.

Well! I think you're my 4-year-older big brother. So, you're willing to pay the price the tribe requires in order to become part of the tribe. Good for you, but ultimately, that's sad. I learned everything I needed to know about Microsoft when I saw that the 'copy' command accepted a '/v' switch that actually verified that the copy operation was successful, but the '/v' switch WAS NOT THE DEFAULT because Microsoft thought that users wouldn't care or wouldn't accept waiting an extra few seconds to see whether there was an error. Of course, this impression was further confirmed when Microsoft added Active-X to WindowsNT.

[Sir Charles]

I've searched and found no joy ...
Synaptic shows orange sunbursts next to some packages. The 'Icon Legend' dialog says it means "Package is supported".

Q1: What does "Package is supported" really mean?
Q2: 'Who' supports it?
Q3: Are the other, un-sunbursted packages unsupported?

Open Synaptic and select 'Sections' in the left panel. Only software in certain sections is fully supported. Fully supported means you get regular updates. In the background of Synaptic, this means that only packages coming from the 'main' section of the repositories are supported. Applications coming from other sections will generally only get security updates.

Well, at least that's what I think it means

Well, there's no "Main" section. So I suppose you mean the "Sections" section. I see "All", "Amateur Radio", "Communication", "Communication (multiverse)", "Communication (universe)", etc. I did some reading and now understand to what the "multiverse" and "universe" refer, but I've not found any "Sections" entry that refers to "main". So, even if the non-existant "main" implies "Package is supported", that leaves me not knowing what either "main" really means or what "Package is supported" really means.

Open Synaptic. Go to settings --> Preferences: toggle Components, Apply, OK.

synaptic.png

synaptic2.png

[markfilipak]

Open Synaptic. Go to settings --> Preferences: toggle Components, Apply, OK.
[...I didn't know how to put the pictures here...]

Thank you soooooo much! Stupid me. Users shouldn't care to see everything, eh?

[Sir Charles]

Thank you soooooo much! Stupid me. Users shouldn't care to see everything, eh?

You are welcome! We just have to lift all the stones to see what is under

[Moem]

We just have to lift all the stones to see what is under

And sometimes, what's under the stones is just some bugs.

[Sir Charles]

We just have to lift all the stones to see what is under

And sometimes, what's under the stones is just some bugs.

Exactly, LOL!

[smurphos]

Well, there's no "Main" section. So I suppose you mean the "Sections" section. I see "All", "Amateur Radio", "Communication", "Communication (multiverse)", "Communication (universe)", etc. I did some reading and now understand to what the "multiverse" and "universe" refer, but I've not found any "Sections" entry that refers to "main". So, even if the non-existent "main" implies "Package is supported", that leaves me not knowing what either "main" really means or what "Package is supported" really means.

Browsing synaptic by origin is potentially more informative. Start at the end of the list - all of the origins that start with 'xenial' and that come from an ubuntu.com source will be in one of the categories from that link. Everything from main and restricted in this subset gets the 'package is supported' icon. Nothing else does.

Of main Ubuntu says

...When you install software from the main component, you are assured that the software will come with security updates and that commercial technical support is available from Canonical

So security issues will definitely get fixed and probably bugs particularly if they might impact on Canonical's paying customers.

Of restricted Ubuntu says

....However, we make exceptions for a small set of tools and drivers that make it possible to install Ubuntu and its free applications on everyday hardware. These proprietary drivers are kept in the restricted component. Please note that it may not be possible to provide complete support for this software because we are unable to fix the software ourselves - we can only forward problem reports to the actual authors....

These are packages that are not open source but the Ubuntu team feel need to be available. It's basically the repo for the Nvidia graphics drivers. If these have a security issue or a bug Ubuntu will do their best to get the upstream source to fix it. This doesn't always work well - there have recently been people reporting problems with newer Nvidia drivers not working and issues with certain kernels etc.

Universe and multiverse get no guaranteed support from Ubuntu. They may pass on security updates for universe if provided by the authors of the packages.

Moving up the list the repos starting with 'sylvia' are the repos maintained by the Mint team. They don't get the icon even if they are described as being in main. This is confusing because at least the contents of sylvia/main are packages either directly maintained by the Mint team or by the maintainers of the XFCE, Mate and KDE desktop environments and you can be satisfied that these are getting developed, bugs fixed etc. Not sure why it is that they don't get the icon but it might just be that the version of synaptic used in Mint only uses the icon for Ubuntu sourced packages.

If you are not using 18.3 the name of the mint maintained repo will start with be the code name of the particular release - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Min ... on_history

I hope that helps.

[markfilipak]

... a ton of information that I will be digesting for quite a while ...

My god, man. If there was a LIKE button, I'd be banging it like a pinball game. You are the MAN!

My mind boggles: "Cononical" (which I didn't know is a company -- I thought it was some sort of classification, per the programming definition of "cononical") & "xenial" & "sylvia", Yeah, I knew what Ubuntu is, and I knew what Nvidia is (in fact, I tried to get a job there when it was a month-old startup but they didn't want me).

Are there any other magic words I need to research? THIS is the type of information that newbies really need. It's the start of a roadmap to Mint.

Thanks again, smurphos.