Discord won't open on Linux when an update is available
The issue in point form:
- Running Manjaro Linux - Discord installed via Pacman
- Discord refuses to open due to 0.0.10 being available
- Pacman says 0.0.9-5 is the latest
- Many Linux users prefer to use package managers over manually installing
Discord should not be forcing users to update to the latest version immediately after each release. Even for a hotfix, it's unreasonable to assume that everyone will have instant access to the latest version.
There are a number of reasons why updating might not be possible right away, including:
- Community-driven package managers can be slower to catch up
- Corporate device policies may lock down app versions
- Users of mobile tethering and metered connections often prefer to wait until they are on an non-metered connection before downloading updates
I'm all for forcing users to eventually update - but give everyone a reasonable amount of time to do so. I've opened Slack on my old macbook, and had a three month old version still work without a hitch.
tl;dr: Please give users a grace period to install updates.
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the package in the main arch linux repos(that manjaro base its repos on) is currently out of date, wait a few days :P. There are app images and flatpak versions avalible. I went the route of editing the pkgbuild and updating that way
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Thanks for the tip on images / flatpak. It's inconvenient, but it works in this case.
That said, my point stands. Forcing users to update immediately isn't realistic, for reasons I've already stated.
To date Discord is the only app I've used that does this.
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Agreed
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I totally agree to taktician. It makes using discord for Linux users even worse. It is not user-friendly!
@Discord: You won't make any friends with something like this! You destroy a part of what makes Linux better than everything else.20 -
Yes it kind of seems like Linux users are treated as B-Class citizens all over the place. First the Share Screen doesn't work properly on multimonitor but initially it didnt work at all for a few months. Now I cant even open Discord at all because there's an update that I cant skip which isn't even available for me? I mean, let's not use Discord at all, if its going to treat us like that. Because I dont wanna wait on every update "a few days" (quoted from the gentleman above) before I actually use Discord.
I understand that I may not be fair in my judgement and douchy. But these kind of things make me kind of furious. Everything runs on Linux, yet the support on Linux from applications like Discord is weak and I cant see the reason why. I've been a premium member for like a year or 2 for Discord, if this is how they thank me then I might go to another valley.13 -
Yeah, this kind of policy sucks. I'm on Arch, so was lucky that the update just popped up. But others might not be so lucky.
This is really a bad practice.
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well there is always team speak.I'm sure they would like the cash Linux brings to any table.
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thr update is now aviliable
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I have to give Discord credit - they have one of the best Electron apps I've seen to date. The contrast between Discord and Slack, in terms of quality, is night and day.
My issue here is that this is unprecedented, hard-coded, app-disabling functionality that serves no real purpose other than to frustrate their Linux userbase - some of which are paying to use it. It can take days if not weeks and even months for updates to propogate across an entire Linux userbase, and there are good reasons for this. A Linux app with an "upgrade now or die lol" policy doesn't make much sense.
This is an easy fix - I hope they implement it soon. I'd hate for this to become a frequent occurance. I was considering upgrading to Nitro Classic for the HD screen sharing, as that's useful for my work... but I'm going to hold off until Discord can commit to fixing this.
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Pop shop doesn't have the new version. Not a great experience.
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This issue still isn't resolved on Manjaro, and while I like that they have a tar.gz, manually installing a package is a world of pain. Why not give a .pkg.tar.zst instead? Then pacman should be able to handle an upgrade that way.
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This is not necessarily Discord's fault
They want all of their users to be on the same release, but they do not control downstream's release schedule. I think there is area for compromise, ie. if discord were to give downstream 1-2 weeks to package the new version before they prevent logins with the prior release. But hey, I'm still waiting for the 2000 character limit to be increased.
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You can manually bump the version number stored in resource/build_info.json and it will start up fine.
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@ggoas yes, that's all I'd want. They should give a bigger timeframe where older clients are allowed to connect. The old client was working just fine, but I wanted to restart my machine.
Afterwards I spent an hour trying to get connected / trying to get sound working in Firefox so I rejoin my friends in MC. :(
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@Mikachu: Thanks! Worked for me. Here is what I did:
# Find discord directory:
ls -la `which discord`
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 24 Mar 7 2019 /usr/bin/discord -> ../share/discord/Discord# find and update JSON file using sed command
find /usr/share/discord -name build_info.json -exec sudo sed -i.orig 's/\.9/\.10/' {} \;
# display both the updated JSON and backup ( original )
find /usr/share/discord -name build_info.* -ls -exec cat {} \; -exec echo \;
4325594 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 56 Feb 26 06:54 /usr/share/discord/resources/build_info.json
{
"releaseChannel": "stable",
"version": "0.0.10"
}
4325980 4 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 55 Mar 7 2019 /usr/share/discord/resources/build_info.json.orig
{
"releaseChannel": "stable",
"version": "0.0.9"
}# start discord now
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How should i edit the file to make it work? and what file.the .orig one or the other one or both
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@epiK the orig is the original one, I use sed to make a backup just in case. After you run sed you should have version 0.0.10 in build_info.json and you are done. When the real 10 is available in your package manager of choice it will overwrite this file.
It should be fine to delete the original, but in case some people have more stuff in their build-info.json I thought it was a good idea to keep a copy.
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Discord has now been updated in the Arch community package database (less than 15 mins ago as of writing) so it should update to the correct version now, but you might need to tell pacman to sync package databases first.
I do agree that there should be a longer transition window to allow those using linux package managers to keep up though...3 -
Agree. Can't use Discord on my Gentoo anymore, there is no 0.0.10 in Portage yet.
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The thing is... I have multiple machines, so while I can't start a Discord on one machine because there is a newer version available. The discord that is still running on a different machine, continues to run perfectly fine.
In other words, there is no reason why the old one can run for a period. Discord just does not let the user run it until they upgrade... Very anti-social that!
This is with Fedora 31, system install. Had to install a second 'personal' one for a few days, until the update became available. Waste of personal disk space, time, and energy! When a little slack in allowing the use of older version would have fixed the problem.Arrgghhh.... Pull out hair... Hmm... What hair!
Hmmm... Nice alternative to fool the older discord in thinking it is the newer one!4 -
This is happening again. This is terrible user experience, I have something schedule on Discord now and this is ruining it...
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I actually bothered with changing the version number (https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360057789311/comments/360009476712 ) this time around to get back in, but this really is getting annoying.
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I can confirm. It once again happened on my machine too. So waiting for the system updated. But they should really have a grace period. Really bad practice, still.
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Same here. Pacman's latest version is discord-0.0.10-3, while opening the app shows 0.0.11 is available.
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Looks like version 0.0.11 is on the Arch Community repository now so only a matter of time before Pacman picks it up.
+1 for a longer grace period so that the good community folks who package up the Discord App for us Arch users have ample time to do so and for the new updates to be able to roll out before old versions get locked out.edit: it's kinda telling that there's no linux download link in the footer of this support page like there is for every other platform :(
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If it still hasn't reached you via Pacman (and you're using Arch) and you're tired of the browser version, it looks like you can manually download the offline package from the repository here (Package actions > Download from Mirror) then install using
sudo pacman -U discord-<change for your version>.pkg.tar.zst
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I just encountered this with version 0.0.12 using Manjaro (Manjaro package here: https://discover.manjaro.org/applications/discord ). This is quite the opposite experience compared to skypeforlinux. Discord's advertising was originally all about throwing Skype away, yet Skype works way better to this day. When there's a Skype update in Linux, it shows a link for the update in the channel list after Skype is already running, allowing the user to click it at their leisure, and otherwise get their work done. I'm presently glad to have not switched to Discord for anything serious, and have stuck with Skype for that instead. That being said, I do genuinely hope Discord can catch up to Skype some day though. I have no ill will. Thanks for making Discord!
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Just now. 0.0.12 is out and I can't launch discord because not in arch repo yet, I launched the 0.0.11 a few minutes ago and now I can't. that's highly stupid.
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Agreed 2x
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I made a thread on the Manjaro forums discussing this user-toxic situation and proposing that Manjaro either make an exception for Discord or drop official support for Discord: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/discord-update-official-manjaro-application-package-situation/23816 .
Any Manjaro users, please feel free to chime in in that thread.
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