[20.04] Offers older version of NVIDIA version than what's installed (and doesn't list currently installed version)

[CanntAim]

Hey all,

I have a Wild Dog Pro from 2017 sitting on 20.04 version of PopOS and I noticed recently that Pop!_Shop application seems to really want me to install 510 despite:

A) 510 has issues. (Doesn't recognize display and defaults to 800x600 stretched)
B) I'm already on a more recent version of the drivers that work well for me.

I'm okay with simply waiting till newer drivers are released and switching to them by purging and installing drivers through apt or better yet switching them through additional drivers application but just wanted to note this as it appears to be a bug? Not sure if there is a reason for the downgrade but I have been upgrading drivers through Pop!_Shop until now and this is first time that I observed it wanting me to go backwards.

Thanks for all the work and great operating system!

[jacobgkau]

This should probably be transferred to https://github.com/pop-os/shop since it's concerning the Pop!_Shop GUI rather than the NVIDIA drivers, although the GUI's received major updates in 22.04 and those aren't being backported to 20.04 (you should upgrade if possible.)

It is somewhat expected for multiple versions to be presented, see issues such as pop-os/nvidia-graphics-drivers#112. The shop doesn't "really want" you to install it, it's just offering it as an option. Notifications and badges will show up for updates (which have "Update" buttons), but not for drivers (which have "Install" buttons.)

[jacobgkau]

This issue seems similar to #417. #332 improved the UX by also showing the currently-installed version alongside older available versions; but that improvement probably applied to the current version of Pop!_OS at the time (which was 21.10) and not 20.04.

[CanntAim]

I see, sounds like the newer version displays and behaves similar to how the Additional Drivers application does:

I'll think about upgrading but the general plan was to stick to this LTS release until I get newer System76 machine.

I'm assuming the shop (and any other system76/Pop_OS! applications) are still receiving backport security fixes, only UI/UX improvements are excluded?

[jacobgkau]

I'll think about upgrading but the general plan was to stick to this LTS release until I get newer System76 machine.

For what it's worth, 22.04 is also an LTS release (which is how we're still on it this late into 2023.) 24.04 LTS is expected around April of next year, so you'll be two LTS versions behind at that point. I'd personally recommend staying on the latest release unless you have applications that require an older version, but at the very least, it would be best to not get more than one LTS version behind. Once you get multiple releases behind, you increase the chances you'll run into issues when you eventually do need to upgrade.

The upgrade GUI in Settings should make upgrading fairly painless, and as a hardware customer, you're welcome to open a support ticket for human assistance with the upgrade if that would help.

I'm assuming the shop (and any other system76/Pop_OS! applications) are still receiving backport security fixes, only UI/UX improvements are excluded?

Let me put it this way: we absolutely address known security vulnerabilities as appropriate, but we generally put a lot more effort into making sure the latest LTS runs properly on all our old generations of hardware than we do testing or maintaining older LTS versions.

For example, the 20.04 kernel is currently still on version 6.0.12 after multiple unsuccessful attempts to update it to the 6.2.x series earlier this year (it eventually becomes difficult to continue updating the bedrock of an older release without breaking the older apps on it.) However, we have pushed multiple netfilter security patch commits to the 20.04 kernel this year as a stopgap measure.

Some components, such as Mutter and Mesa, we initially packaged for 20.04 (providing a newer version than Ubuntu did at the time) but we've now dropped our packaging for and allowed the Ubuntu LTS packaging to take over since their versions superseded ours and our backports are no longer necessary for supporting what we supported on that release. (We still maintain these components in-house for the current 22.04 LTS release.)

Regarding this repository, I don't recall any instances of the Pop!_Shop needing a security-related update at all. It uses PackageKit as a backend, so PackageKit would probably be what would need security updates, and those would be provided by Ubuntu since we don't currently repackage PackageKit (it looks like Ubuntu's last security update for PackageKit on 20.04 was in September 2020, but it is actively maintained.)

[CanntAim]

Understood, thanks for the insight! I'll attempt making the upgrade on my two Pop_OS! boxes (Both on 20.04 LTS) before the end of the year. One of the machines is basically stock (no added PPAs), the Wild Dog Pro might have to be more careful but I don't suspect too many problems if there are any.