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Joshua Blount wrote:
It may be a good idea, as David suggested, to look past our personal user stories, and look for what most people would find useful.
"Most useful" here is probably somewhat synonymous with "least surprising". If the target default Ubuntu end user comes from a Microsoft Windows background, then the Windows XP SP2 style is what that user is probably familiar with: (a) At installation or first use, there is a screen indicating that auto update will be enabled; (b) Daily automatic updates in the background at 3am; (c) The user can alter this, but very few do.
I'm not sure that is going to win many hearts and minds, and clearly it is not innovative... but it is what many users have come to expect their computers to do, because bug #1 is not yet fixed!
One problem is that this behaviour is not what current Ubuntu users expect, so some existing Ubuntu users (power users???) probably *will* be surprised, and (perhaps as evidenced by this discussion and the 300+ comments on a single bug) they are likely to be vocal about their unhappiness.
Another problem is that automated updates by default are bad for some users -- those with slow or expensive Internet connections.
If the primary issue being addressed is "many users rarely or never update their systems; how can we get more users to update more often", then an automated update by default is probably the most effective and most convenient solution.
If we accept that, then how to best address the "slow or expensive Internet connection" issues for the minority becomes a secondary question. Important, but secondary. All the "update on login vs logoff vs pop-under vs where-do-we-put-the-icon" or "how exactly do we notify or prompt the user about updates" debate is *only* relevant for the users in this minority, if the default for the well-connected majority is a fully automated background update. (I don't know of statistics on the fraction of Ubuntu users with slow or expensive connections vs those with fast-enough and unlimited-enough ones -- does anyone have such info?).
BOTTOM LINE: Default to fully automated updates, unless circumstances are exceptional.
Further thoughts: Are there ways the system can try to determine "I'm on a slow connection" (ping latency to a Ubuntu server? Test throughput for a small file download?) and so defer an automated update in those circumstances? Or just let the user specify this per interface? I don't think there's a way to automatically determine "I'm on an expensive connection", so users would (presumably) need to provide info on that when a network connection is first configured.
Would it make sense for users to specify whether or not a given network connection is "expensive" (and/or "slow"), so that an automated updater can "do the right thing"? Are there other network applications that would find knowing whether a given network connection was "slow" or "expensive" useful so they could adapt their behaviour (BitTorrent? Streaming audio/video players?) ?
One last (perhaps weirder) thought: for those with mobile devices that generally have a slow/expensive wireless connection, having a home/office PC or NAS box act as a Ubuntu mirror, so updates from it are really fast when the mobile device is "home", might be worth exploring. For "notebook + smartphone + home media server" type households, this could be very convenient. Right now, local Ubuntu mirrors (or just Ubuntu *update* mirrors) at home or in the office are for the techie few only... is this something we could or should be looking to make significantly easier, to help with the whole update issue?
Jonathan
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