On 24/04/10 15:20, Jim Rorie wrote:But you are penalizing the very people that are helping you. I can't install updates automatically because I'm typically running a late alpha, beta or RC to help Ubuntu test it's product. Or I'm on development machine that can't afford to go down because of a badly tested patch. Under your current proposal, here is what I'm supposed to do. 1) Poll updates since I have no indicator. This is a complete and total fail, IMO. I think there might have been three days in the last six months when there were no updates to Lucid. It would make more sense to notify you that there are NO updates today, than that there are updates :-) If there ever was a reason for a notification, it would be updates. Yes and no. Security updates should be top of mind for the user, and yes, that means having them a little in your face. Other updates are really irrelevant. They come along, you should do them every now and then, but they are not worth interrupting you for. If you wanted them sooner, you could subscribe the the -proposed PPA, if you wanted them later, you could update monthly, it really doesn't make that much difference to the average user, and failing to see that makes this conversation very difficult. 2) I have to dig through the menu to trigger updates(Hmm, is that preferences or administration? I can never remember). Annoying for a regular task. Again. Updates are not a regular task for regular users. I appreciate that you're passionate about the latest builds. If you were *more* passionate, you might be subscribed to a few of the daily PPAs for packages you're really interested. But all of this makes you part of the tiny minority of users for whom this is a matter of some excitement. It makes you important to us, which is why I'm taking the time to answer this for the umpteenth time, but it is not a passion we should expect end-users to share. 3) You are going to pop down a dialog on my desktop if I fall off the hamster wheel, much like porn spam. And open a security hole. (More later) 4) You are going to reboot my system some percentage of the time, thus further interrupting my workflow. This is INSANE! I'm a committed user that understands the magnitude of security patches and updates to the point to be able to assist in bug reporting. And I'm being punished because someone felt people didn't understand the update notifier. And now you want to take away my usability hack. Calm down please. Melodrama won't bolster your argument. Some security updates are not active until you reboot. Period. If there is a security problem in your kernel, you need a new kernel, and you need to boot it. We're done a lot of work to minimise the number of cases where that's important, but I'm not aware of any way to eliminate the occasional requirement of a reboot. A sane solution: When the user shuts down, reboots, suspends or resumes(or the screen saver if they have suspend turned off), trigger the dialog to ask about updates (or provide a button to automatically do them) The system will do the task, reboot/reset or whatever without interrupting the workflow. These events happen multiple times a day so they are timely. If someone says no like 20 times, then you can annoy them. But they probably are going to say no then too. I do believe there is a proposal along these lines in the works, MPT would comment in detail. It does not make sense to offer this on resume or unlock, as the user is at that point clearly anxious to get going, not wrap up. But nevertheless, yes, there are times when it is useful to offer the option to do something about updates, and we'll do so.
But your arguments are not entirely persuasive :-)
And you think malware couldn't put up a systray icon tricking you into thinking you have updates? You think you would be able to tell the difference? The panel icon is just as fakeable as the popup. Mark |
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