[Ayatana] Recent discussions about updates : proposal to retarget the discussion

[Steve Dodier <sidnioulz@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Ayatana,
There have been, lately, a lot of discussions about the Update Manager. They have lasted for a good while, there have been over 100 emails, and no decision has been made so far. More worrying, I can't clearly see a beginning of consensus on the ideas proposed in the different threads. I think the main reason of that is that we should first have thought about what is currently an issue, and, while drafting changes to the current implementation, thought about which issue we were trying to address, and how our proposal would address it. This enables validation of choices on a sane (ie. less subjective) basis, and I hope that such an approach can lead to better results.
After a quick discussion on IRC with Scott, Mac and other people whose name I forgot (*hides*), I identified 4 main issues (i found others by the meanwhile but I won't evocate them here) :
 1. Some updates take effect only after a reboot

 2. Some updates require an application to be restarted, otherwise this application doesn't work as expected

 3. The update notification mechanisms should never be rude / intrusive towards the user, at the risk of the user trying to neutralize it

 4. A fair proportion of users doesn't perform security updates fast enough

I formalized and explained them in a Wiki page [ https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ayatana/UpdateIssues ], that I hope to see grow with more issues, and proposals for each of them, till we get a complete draft of what we think should be done. I hope this attempt will help us to find effective solutions in time for Karmic.

Cordially, SD.

--
Steve Dodier
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