DeFriends,
This morning's update apparently wanted to do an upgrade, no idea why.
It wants to remove zoom. Now it is 2021, Zoom is as essential as the telephone fifty years ago. This is clearly an error, and at this point, we are at the moment when the simplicity of the tool versus the chaos of Debian testing updates which require immense knowledge of pinning, &c, has been compromised.
Please advise on how to update disrtibution without losing zoom. Pinning does not help.
Best,
M
As far as I know Zoom is not a native program, but must be updated regularly through the Zoom page. I am guessing it wants to remove it as the dependencies have changed, which could otherwise put you in "dependency hell". I would just let it be removed and re-install Zoom. When I was using Zoom during the lock-downs it would open but not let you sign into a meeting if you did not have the most current release. As far as I know Zoom does not have an official PPA either. Use gdebi to install the .deb file.
You could try the hold command, but even if Zoom stays, I don't think it will help you. i don't think it will let you sign into a meeting.
It's not an error. Zoom has for some reason built a dependency for ibus into it's .deb package which is what causes Zoom to be uninstalled during the upgrade process.
Run the upgrade then reinstall Zoom.
You can try and contact Zoom to ask why it's set as a "Dependency" and not a "Recommends" in their package but thus far they have been unresponsive to this question.
Good luck on your upgrade.
Dear Frank and friends,
Yes, that is exactly what happened, in doing the math, so to speak, today's upgrade(why upgrade and not update?) wanted to rid us of ibus, and thus removed zoom, which, apparently, canonical, according to the infallible internet, wants to install as snap.
Zoom programmers were paid by the number of characters....
According to the powers of ubuntu, snap should avoid this kind of thing, but for some reason, the mate software gui is somehow different from the gnome gui which leads us to pray for the return of synaptic as the sole place to find stuff from gui.... sometimes, more choice is not better.
I am gathering from this all, that for security and ease of development, snaps are really going to be the future?
The purpose of ubuntu mate was to avoid the pure debian stomach cramps when doing the every other day update which took ten minutes, as the updater here was beyond accurate.
This was a clean install, then do all the things I need to do so all my screens look the same, and it took as long as doing the debian route, except I thought I would avoid the every other day check of synpatic, as testing is the only way to get hardware support for newish things, but today the removal of ibus created the issue. Zoom and many other proprietary things, not to mention available printers, which is an almost monthly change at Best Buy in the US, means we need as close to a rolling distro as possible, and that is the paradox which is becoming more visible thanks to covid.
But yes, simple answer, ibus gone, zoom gone.
Harder answer, why did I not have the option to hold ibus to allow to keep Zoom, which is another way of saying, politely, can we introduce the chaos of the times debian testing is missing an essential element of a package because it migrated or did not, or at least be able to stop updater while maintaining future automatic updates?
I care not a whit for ibus, but would have saved half an hour, plus the ten minutes writing, if it gave the option "do not do this update, but this will not interfere with the next one"
That flexibility is missing, although, it saves the time of reading the numbers of things in a terminal we do not want to lose, and in this case, it is just silly example, the end user should ultimately have total control of his system without the fear of breakage because of the preferences of a central system. And having the foolproof updated means someone must decide what goes and what stays.
and that is the conundrum.
Thank you all for your help. Zoom, Skype, and webx will not change, that is for sure.
Best to all,
M
I certainly hope not. I would hate to have to look for a new OS.
