Updates for user installed software in TemplateVMs?

When additional software is installed by user with the Fedora or Debian package managers, does Qubes update take care of updates for it or does it only update “factory” applications? If so, how should updates of additional software be installed manually, e.g. for VLC?
What about utilities like ntfs-3g? I think I need it for a ntfs formatted external drive?

Qubes update mechanism includes running apt upgrade and dnf update, so all installed software will be updated. You can verify this by looking at the installed versions before and after an update.

If it’s installed from the repositories, it should be updated just fine with the Qubes update tool. See also: How to update | Qubes OS.

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The one caveat here is that there might be some weirdness in the transition from the old linux NTFS driver in the kernel to the new (paragon-sourced) NTFS driver, available in kernel 5.15 and later.

Remember that by default, the kernel running in the template-based VMs is centrally managed by dom0 (even if the template received kernel updates, they aren’t normally used). It might be the case that userland and the kernel might not agree on the driver/utils that take priority w/r/t NTFS support with some mix of ingredients.

It’s possible that the FUSE version of NTFS sidesteps all of this, of course.

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