It has been over a week, still there is not sign of update in APT repository?

I use Ubuntu 19.10 and to my knowledge, I know that LO version 6.3.4.2 has been released in 2019.12.12 which is like 12 days ago, and still no sign of an update.

Is it due to the mechanism of how I installed LO? Because I installed LO using a command named “sudo apt install libreoffice”.

I did install LibreOffice from Snap repository (which has almost update-to-date packages) because of their response time to launch the app.

  1. When is Apt repository is going to
    be update-to-date?
  2. Who is responsible for 12 days delay?
  3. Why things are like this? Not well organized like Firefox.

Disclaimer: Sorry if I hurt someone’s feelings. But I love LibreOffice and I want to use the latest stable update ASAP when it is released. Is it too much to expect from loyal user.

Dear Pierre Cardin! I see that you have released a new fashion collection two weeks ago. I routinely visit a random local fashion store around the corner; and they still sell your collection from last year. Is it too much to expect from a loyal customer that your collections are up-to-date in a random place?

97 years old and still alive, nice example. :smiley:

For any repository, “who is responsible” is the maintainers of the repository. And any other questions are to be asked to them (“When is Apt repository is going to be update-to-date” or “Why things are like this”, including subjective opinions like “Not well organized”, where a reason might be stability valued over new features, something which might be different in different packages, having different maintainers, or different target audience, or available alternatives like PPAs).

“Stability” of a package in case of a distro-provided package is not only stability of the application itself, but also tested interoperability of a release with other components of the OS, something that takes time. A new point release of a software, bringing bug fixes, might suddenly also bring problems in a specific distro, when e.g. a newer system library was required for a fix; so it might take considerable additional time from the package maintainers of a random repo to sufficiently test updated packages.

hmm, learned things. Thanks.
I guess this is how Linux is.

But isn’t it’s painful to maintain “stability” for very versions? Not only with Ubuntu maintainer, but thousands of distro with thousand’s of maintainers. Why can’t two products have an isolated impact on themself?

For example, Ubuntu caring for their own product, and LibreOffice caring for their own product.

Like how Windows and MAC operate. They don’t give a shit about how other companies’ products operate with their machine, do they?

For example, VLC makes a product for Windows, but there is no requirement of Windows maintainer. And windows don’t have time for this. They have to care about their own products. It’s already too much on their plate.

Similarly millions of products can’t have millions of maintainers, do they? In the future, it will be a mess to maintain this. Now it has taken 12 days, in the future, it can take a year.

I am wondering how this is going to work. Enlighten me. @mike-kaganski

For any Linux distro, they would hate if LO would bring its own copy of, say, OpenSSL package that it uses, when there’s distro’s own OpenSSL package. It is simply unacceptable for the distro (not for LO; TDF maintains own package that pretty much follows your expectation, available on LO site). So it’s the distro policy, not LO decision how to divide responsibilities. Distros themselves decide that they want provide own packages with own policies and own dependencies and own testing.

LO has also Windows package, without requirements for “Windows maintainers” - same as for TDF-provided Linux package. See how that’s not TDF-related, but Ubuntu-decided?

Millions of packages do have own maintainers (one maintainer typically maintains several packages). It’s up to them to decide how is it going to work in the future.

Additionally, “caring for own product” in case of Windows or Mac is rather “easy” (given relatively small number of systems - versions - of those OSes that TDF should ensure compatibility with). Yet, it’s still a hard work for TDF to make sure that its own releases do work correctly with, say, new macOS releases; and it’s very often that e.g. macOS Catalina makes LO work incorrectly (and if Apple would care of it, it would surely find the reason for blurry display, and provide a fix, in a couple of hours - when we can’t fix it for months). In case of Linux distros, providing compatibility with thousands of distros with tens of versions each would be impossible for TDF; and the only way is using old enough baseline, which results in TDF package being e.g. slow and not using a specific distro advanced features.

So let’s say, if install LO version 1 from PPA and not from APT. Is there any significant difference? Will I have a problem? And if I have a problem, does Ubuntu know that problem and do something about it?

Being a Windows (mainly) user, here’s my “answer”:

  1. In this specific case, the PPA I mentioned is the one where the maintainers of official Ubuntu LO package prepare their next updates. So - it’s pretty much where they test things; the packages are prepared just like the official package. When installed, this PPA takes over the official package, and updated normally, no changes from user PoV.
  2. Still, it’s not an officially released package - so everything happens.
  3. If Ubuntu knows of a problem is a question to you: did you follow what is there in the package page to inform them?