When using the Qubes update tool quite often when an update is available other templates are listed as “MAYBE” having an update, I select those as well and run them every time. However so far my experience is that they never actually do have an update. Is it best practice to keep running the ones listed as “MAYBE” anyways? I’m not sure what prompts the updater to change one to maybe and if there’s a chance there might actually be one available or it’s just currently a bug.
“Maybe” means the qube hasn’t been updated for a while and that it’s likely there is an update for it.
Discussed half year ago: Updater GUI: Clarify meaning of "MAYBE" status (including how it's different from "NO") · Issue #8511 · QubesOS/qubes-issues · GitHub
Simply put:
don’t rely on it, as sometimes “maybe” can become “no”, and “no” can become “yes”.
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thanks for the context link! yea the update system has been a little lacking for me but it’s workable. Id really like to see a list of updates, their context, and date, similar to what a Windows updater show. That way you know what you’re updating and when, and for past reference if you’re having an issue with something that should have been resolved in an update. I also find it confusing for a fresh install, like how do I know for sure when I do a fresh install and do updates its actually grabbed everything that currently available to be updated… last time I wiped I just ran the updated over and over after a couple restarts as a just in case. Even then there’s so little info on the updater and no update logs that it’s kind of an exercise in trust in the system that everything is updated unless I don’t know enough commands to make confirmations and see logs.
To be precise, it means there may be an update available. The updater doesn’t know, because update checking hasn’t occurred recently, where “recently” is a user-configurable time value.
I don’t see how you arrive at that conclusion.
“Yes” — We know there are updates available.
“Maybe” — We haven’t checked recently, so we don’t know whether there are updates available.
“No” — We checked recently, and there no updates available.
So, of course “maybe” should sometimes become “no” (when you check after a while, and there are still no updates available), and sometimes “no” should become “yes” (when you check again, and now there are updates available). It would be unreliable if this were not the behavior.
I don’t see how this part is any different than any other OS. If anything, Windows seems less reliable than Qubes on this point.
See here: