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[Julian Foad <1270788@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Gunnar.

There are two issues in play. The real issue here is that Ubuntu gives
users a session that looks and feels pretty much like a regular session,
but then it deletes the user's data without adequate warning. That's a
serious design flaw. That bug deserves its own bug report, with serious
severity. A set of design changes to fix that bug could include changing
the desktop background to something that reminds the user they're
working in a temporary session; changes to the file-save and directory-
browsing dialogs to remind users that Desktop and Documents and so on
are not permanent storage locations, and more. I remember using SuSE
Linux a few years ago, and you could log in as root, and the root
session was visually distinguished in several ways as a reminder.

The subject of this bug #1270788 is merely a request to ameliorate the
real problem by adding a warning at log-out time. This, you can
reasonably call a "wish". This isn't the best way of fixing the real
problem, it's just one relatively straightforward change that comes to
mind that would help a bit. It should be a dependency of the real bug.

Ubuntu is specifically aimed at a general audience. We're lacking human
interface design guidelines for session management (the subject of bug
#882296), but the Gnome guidelines are relevant and say (at
https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.12/hig-book.html#principles-
forgiveness ) "In all cases, the user's work is sacrosanct. Nothing your
application does should lose or destroy user's work without explicit
user action." Logging out is not an explicit action to delete data.

The attitude that users who don't pay attention will always run into
trouble is what, for years, made computers only suitable for use by
geeks like me (and I guess you too) who (speaking for myself) care more
about how the computer works than we do about "real" work. There is no
way I would let somebody I care about use a guest session in its current
state. If I did, and they lost work in this way, I would vow never to
try to get them to use open-source software again.

I'd be glad to help with blueprinting, design review, and testing any
proposed design change.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to lightdm in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1270788

Title:
  logging out of guest session should notify that data will be cleared

Status in “lightdm” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  If logging out from the guest account resets it and clears all data,
  then the logout dialog should give a hint that all data will be reset
  and that the user should cancel if he/she wants to save files on a USB
  drive, or if he/she wants to ask the host/computer owner to copy the
  files to a persistent location.

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