Comment # 10 on bug 955233 from Wolfgang Bauer

(In reply to Wolfgang Bauer from comment #9)
> Or maybe we should just disable that check for being online/offline in the
> applet.

PS, changing line #102 in
/usr/share/plasma/plasmoids/org.kde.plasma.pkupdates/contents/ui/main.qml
from
        return PkUpdates.isNetworkMobile ? checkOnMobile :
PkUpdates.isNetworkOnline

to
        return PkUpdates.isNetworkMobile ? checkOnMobile : true

works quite well on a quick test.
(people that want to try it can just make the change locally on their system,
those are just text files)

The applet even does display "Network Offline" if it checks for updates and
there's no network connection.

One disadvantage: it will popup an error message immediately on login, so we
should probably also delay the first check for updates (as Apper did).