SDB:PackageKit

What is PackageKit?

From the official site:

PackageKit is a system designed to make installing and updating software on your computer easier. The primary design goal is to unify all the software graphical tools used in different distributions, and use some of the latest technology like PolicyKit.

Different distributions use different package managers (apt, zypper, dnf, etc). Instead of users having manage updates using these tools manually via the commandline for their respective distribution, PackageKit abstracts that process to software management programs like Plasma's Discover and the GNOME's Software Center.

In general, it is recommended to allow packagekit to handle system maintenance and software package updates since it contains background operations to ensure stable delivery with minimal interruptions. For this reason, newcomers to Tumbleweed should continue to use their respective software managers (Discover for Plasma, Gnome Software for Gnome) until there is an absolute need for manual intervention and/or greater understanding.

What if I Still Want To Manually Update My Machine from Time to Time

Some users, often advanced or "power" users, prefer to always manually manage updates via Zypper in the commandline interface. From time to time, you may observe the following error when trying to do so: "PackageKit is still running (probably busy)". Because updates/maintenance to your system is mission critical - it is not easily interrupted or safe for you to do so. If you come across this message, wait it out for a few minutes before continuing. If, for whatever reason, you want to disable Package Kit - do the following at your own risk.

NOTE: While something might not go wrong right away for your system as the result of this intervention - it might come back to impact you negatively at a later time - do so at your own risk.

How to Stop / Disable or Remove PackageKit

To stop and disable the systemd service:

sudo systemctl disable --now packagekit

It might be that some program (like gnome-software) is trying to restart it. For such cases we can mask it:

sudo systemctl mask packagekit

To completely remove it:

sudo zypper remove PackageKit