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mhalano
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November 20, 2021
Question

Repository for Linux packages

  • November 20, 2021
  • 16 replies
  • 101 views

When will be available a repository for DEB and RPM Zoom's packages? It's hard to keep an eye on the updates and download and install manually. I would like if my system find the updates during the regular update.

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      R
      Newcomer
      rickined
      Newcomer
      September 10, 2025

      I think the answer is never. I just use the unofficial mwt apt repository. 

      A
      Newcomer
      abstrmkth
      Newcomer
      September 10, 2025

      Agree... I use the flatpak from Flathub, it works fine.

       

      The company has every opportunity to take ownership of the app on Flathub and make it official (so they can do QA and improve it further), but they don't.

       

      (And please no replies about unofficial flatpaks being unsafe. You have access to the git repositories for Flathub and can verify yourself that it is a combination of open source software built from source, and the official binary from the company. There is no opportunity for the unofficial flatpak maintainer to inject any code without also making that visible in the git repos, just as is the case with any reasonable linux distro.)

      J
      Newcomer
      joost_ringoot
      Newcomer
      September 10, 2025

      Thanks to chatgpt I found a script oneliner  that you  can run to do an automatic update (eg: with a cronjob and/or in /ec/rc.local (runs at boot))

      curl -L -o zoom_latest_amd64.deb https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom_amd64.deb && apt update && apt -y install ./zoom_latest_amd64.deb​
      dmbreakey
      Newcomer
      dmbreakey
      Newcomer
      September 10, 2025
      This post has been deleted.

      That would be hugely appreciated; in the Linux community, this is something that "just works" once it's set up. And one of the major benefits is it gets integrated into the single system-wide software-update mechanism, so it's a seamless experience.

       

      Contrast this to Windows (and I assume Mac) where there can be, potentially, dozens of processes running in the background, who's only function is to check for updates for individual products.

       

      If they're concerned about bandwidth, my understanding is apt first checks the server metadata, to see if there's even any updates at all. Only if the server's file metadata indicates there's a change does the client then actually download the updated files. Of course that's if the server provides this metadata; if it doesn't then the client has no option but to download every time.

      dmbreakey
      Newcomer
      dmbreakey
      Newcomer
      September 18, 2025
      This post has been deleted.

      Indeed; the unofficial repo offered in this thread has already proven itself useful; the last time I ran apt upgrade, I saw an updated Zoom package seamlessly included. The worst I have to do now is just remember to restart the app if necessary, to have it pick up the new libraries.

       

      Would be nice if it could do this automatically, but I don't know if that's possible; maybe the same way Chrome does it, by putting up a notification that says "The software has been updated; restart to bring it fully up-to-date."? I'm guessing Chrome does this by tracking the modification date of the core binary, and checking it periodically (say, once per hour); surely the Zoom app could do the same?

       

      I would say don't restart automatically; the user might be in an active session.

      G
      Newcomer
      gene_wood
      Newcomer
      December 23, 2025

      You can use the APT::Update::Pre-Invoke feature in apt.conf to instruct apt to check for an updated Zoom .deb file and fetch it if needed.

      To enable this approach, copy paste the code below into a file and run it once. The code will

      • Create a new /usr/local/zoom-deb-files directory to contain the Zoom .deb file and the APT repo files (Packages and Release)
      • Create the new /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99update_zoom file. This file instructs apt to check for a newer file hosted on Zoom's CDN, each time you run apt update, and if one is present, download it and rebuild the local APT repo.
      • Create the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/local-zoom.list file to instruct apt to use this new local APT repo
      #!/usr/bin/env bash

# Based on https://askubuntu.com/a/1316231/14601

url=https://zoom.us/client/latest/zoom_amd64.deb
debdir=/usr/local/zoom-deb-files
aptconf=/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/99update_zoom
sourcelist=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/local-zoom.list

sudo mkdir -p $debdir
# --timestamping only fetches the file if the last-modified HTTP header in the
#   response is newer than the last modified time of the local file
# --no-if-modified-since tells wget to send a HEAD request to determine if
#   there's a new file or not before sending a GET request
# The grep prevents running apt-ftparchive if no new file was downloaded
echo 'APT::Update::Pre-Invoke ' \
'{"cd '$debdir' ' \
'&& wget --timestamping --no-if-modified-since '$url' 2>&1 ' \
'| ( grep --quiet ' "'Server file no newer than local file'" ' && exit 1 || exit 0 ) ' \
'&& apt-ftparchive packages . > Packages ' \
'&& apt-ftparchive release . > Release ' \
'|| true";};' | sudo tee $aptconf
echo 'deb [trusted=yes lang=none] file:'$debdir' ./' | sudo tee $sourcelist

      Once this is done, you can run this to install Zoom

      sudo apt update
sudo apt install zoom
      L
      Newcomer
      locateparcels
      Newcomer
      December 25, 2025

      It makes sense that many Linux users want an official Zoom repository — manually downloading and updating packages can be tedious, especially compared to distro-managed repos. A centralized source improves consistency and saves time, similar to how good tracking tools help streamline workflows. For example, services like LocateParcels.com simplify parceltracking by bringing all updates into one place rather than checking multiple sources manually.

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