Do not launch in background

The arguments stating:
* It is completely different to the past behaviour
* No other distribution does this
do not seem valid.

You cannot rule off the solution just because it's different to someone else's/past solution.

The argument that
* It is very disruptive
is a valid critique, but the solution is based on a principle that the user should update his system as often as possible and therefore the disruption is necessary.

Launchpad Bug Tracker wrote:
> I see that update-manager is autolaunched, on the advice of the "Desktop
> Experience" team. This is clearly the wrong thing to do for various
> reasons:
>
> * It is very disruptive
>
In future, this window will open in the background and call for
attention when the user has time.

> * It is completely different to the past behaviour
>
In many cases, we want to change current behaviour, so unless past
behaviour is something we urgently want to hang on to we won't be too
influenced by it.
> * No other distribution does this
>
We've done many other things that no other distribution did, and that
they now do. I'm rather proud of that tradition :-)

 status invalid

Mark

Just to be clear, the window is not supposed to take focus when it opens. If it does, please report that as a bug, including which window manager you're using. Thanks!

It just appeared with Metacity with the compositor switched on. I have switched this off in gconf anyway, because I never use update-manager.

I think it is a mistake to show windows without them being specifically requested, unless there is an error. This is also the case with the new Evolution e-mail notifier.

Having used Ubuntu for years, this new approach really disappoints me.

"the user should update his system as often as possible"

If that is the purpose, than it would be better to just have unattended-upgrades (for security updates only of course) enabled by default and don't bother the user with annoyances such as this.

Again, the window should not appear on top of the window stack. If it does, please report it as a bug.

Guys, the update-notifier will be opened when there are updates, BUT it
should do so quietly in the background, not grab the focus. So, if it's
grabbing the focus for you, please report that as a bug (and provide
details of your window manager).

Mark

Has it even been considered to automatically install updates, instead of confronting the user with a dialog they are not interested in only to push them into installing updates?

So, update-manager is supposed to open, but not be visible. When I restarted, update-manager appeared after about one minute.

Windows should not open randomly without the user requesting it.

Wouter Stomp wrote:
> Has it even been considered to automatically install updates, instead of
> confronting the user with a dialog they are not interested in only to
> push them into installing updates?
>
I believe auto-updating is available as an option. It would not be the
default.

Mark

Bruce, changing the bug description but insisting it's a bug isn't
constructive.

The intended behaviour of update-manager is that it open the window, in
the background. We aren't going to leave a bug open when the behaviour
conforms to the intended behaviour. If you think there's better
behaviour, please start a thread on ubuntu-devel or another list, or in
the forums. This bug isn't appropriate.

Mark

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=6756704. I'll look into the mailing list.

"So, if it's grabbing the focus for you, please report that as a bug"

There is a longstanding bugreport open about this: bug 35876. Of course it would be nice if this is going to be fixed in the next few weeks, but it has been open for three years already.

"I believe auto-updating is available as an option. It would not be the default."

I know it is available as an option, provided by the unattended-upgrades package. But it seems putting this dialog in front of the user everytime there is an update is a way of pushing the user into actually installing the updates. Or does it have a different purpose? If that is the purpose, I think it would be a good idea to at least consider, and not just saying we don't do that, auto-installing security updates instead.

I didn't understand why with this default option, there is no more the feature to show a notify (either in the tray, or a bubble) when an update is available. I don't care if the application is automatically started every 2 days, but I really can't understand why it does no more notify on new updates...

How do I disable this new "feature" or do I need to completely remove update-manager and thus the ubuntu-desktop package as well?

If I read the gconf key correctly I just need to disable apps/update-notifier/auto_launch to get the old behavior?

Yes, that's the one.

We've built a more consistent model of how applications should lead
users to be aware of decisions they need to take. Updates are important
decisions, we need to catalyse a decision. We don't need to completely
interrupt the workflow, but we need to put this decision "into the queue".

Rather than putting up a persistent indicator, as we did in the past, we
want to lead the user directly to the place they can take action.

There are four ways an app can raise awareness of an event, state, or
decision. It can notify, with a temporary hint. In certain cases, it can
also ask the system to put up a persistent indicator. In other cases, it
can open a window in the background queuing the decision, and in the
most extreme cases it can grab the focus with a system modal dialog.
There are clear guidelines for deciding when an app should use each of
those approaches, or combinations of them. In this case, update-manager
should be opening a window in the background.

Mark

Ok, I'm not against this change yet, we have to use this for a while
before making a decision if we like it or not.
What I cannot really understand is why the default option is to wait
for 2 days before the window is opened, even if a new update is
available. (we're not in a stable release, and it's important to test
updates! This behaviour would be correct when jaunty will be out)

Mark,

Perhaps we should have a message of some sort either when the app launches or in the release notes (many users however don't read it) letting the user know what is going on. This would help reduce confusion as to why there is now (as opposed to pre Jaunty) a running program awaiting input on their desktop that they did not launch. Otherwise they may be reminded of malware on Windows. :(

Of course I am one of the users who on Windows disables auto update and does it manually, in my case this is primarily because it decides to just reboot your system whenever it wants, which is incredibly disruptive behaviour and has resulted in data loss on many occasions. A registry key can change that behaviour as well, but you must know it exists.

This just reminded me of a related issue, is there a smart way to disable automatic downloading of apt packages lists? For users who are on mobile broadband they could easily eat up a large chunk of their monthly bandwidth allowance especially if they are running the development release. On my system the Packages files are about 44MB and over a month just daily downloading would surpass 1.3GB. Most mobile broadband plans in the US only allow 5GB/month before they just outright cancel your account. Other countries may have even lower limits and/or charge per MB. I noticed it does not run if you are battery power but doesn't actually check to see what type of internet connection you are using, maybe it could find out somehow via network manager. Perhaps I should file a bug on apt about this issue?

Please don't get me wrong I'm all for users updating as frequently as possible.

Chris

Chris

If the window that opens shows you the list of updates and asks if you
want to apply them, then that's clear enough as a rationale for the
window's existence.

I think there should be an option to prevent auto-downloading of the
Packages files, but that would be a separate bug.

As a more sophisticated approach, it might be useful to be able to say
"don't download those over mobile broadband connections", but I can't
think of a way to do that which is classy and simple.

Mark

If Ubuntu insist of spamming me with auto-opening windows, I'm afraid I'll have to go to Fedora. I realise that the loss of one person isn't an issue, but I'm sure many other long-term users such as me will feel the same way.

Bruce Cowan wrote:
> If Ubuntu insist of spamming me with auto-opening windows, I'm afraid
> I'll have to go to Fedora. I realise that the loss of one person isn't
> an issue, but I'm sure many other long-term users such as me will feel
> the same way.
>
You have security updates. In the absence of a decision on those, you
are vulnerable. It's not spam, you're not being offered something
commercial. The window should open in the background, quietly, making it
possible for you to act on it when you want.

It's not a rationale or a justification, but Mac OS X does exactly this,
too.

Mark

Ah, so it's just copying of OS X then, I did wonder. I'm afraid OS X is not the pinnacle of usabilty, and this pathetic attempt to copy it is clearly wrong.

Unattended upgrades installs security upgrades well enough thank you.

Bruce,

Albeit the MacOS and the new Ubuntu way may not be perfect it is clearly superior to the Windows default method of installing updates silently as soon as it gets a connection to the internet and then rebooting your system without your permission. Yes you can delay it if you are sitting at the system when it wants to reboot, but if not you are prone to data loss... or you have to know the registry key to set to keep it from rebooting.

:-)

Chris

I was not advocating the Windows way.

Ubuntu is not Windows, and Ubuntu is not OS X; and quite right so. Ubuntu is something else, and should not emulate other systems.

With allowances for familiarity, we do things in Ubuntu based on whether they are a good idea, not based on whether other OSes do them.

BTW, the design guidelines Mark mentioned are at <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotificationDesignGuidelines>.

Bruce, as I said very clearly, what MacOS does is neither a
rationalization nor a justification for us doing what we do. Still,
it's useful information because it speaks to what may be familiar to
some users.

In the end, we are making changes because we think they are for the
best. I would ask you to be patient, and to try to tell the difference
between a bug, and a difference of opinion.

You may well be right, but the way to change our minds is by making a
considered case for the change you want. Start a discussion, gather
facts, make a case. I know you do a lot for Ubuntu and free software,
in part by filing bugs where things can be improved. That's much
appreciated by me and others. But it would be even better if we could
have these conversations in a good spirit, in the right forums.

Mark

As you may have noticed, I'm a stroppy bastard. I'll post to ubuntu-devel with my concerns properly laid out in a wonderfully constucted e-mail soon enough.

I'm sorry but as someone who spends quite a lot of time working with less experienced users, alarm bells start ringing as soon as the idea of "auto-opening" windows are mentioned. New/none technically oriented users to Ubuntu and Windows alike will not be terribly comfortable with the window list anyway (as simple as it seems to anyone who has grown up with computers) and thus are unlikely to check it regularly enough to notice the sudden appearance of a new window and to presume that they will find it in the midst of other activities depends on them switching applications fluently rather than mainly using the web browser (or whatever) and then shutting down with ether of Ubuntu's excellent methods (menu on press of the hardware button or on panel) without closing every window individually. Add to this virtual desktops (which currently are only really accessible to power users, although Micro's excellent tooltip patches which have been rejected completely had the potential to change this) and some users may need to switch desktop to find it. You need to consider that users do not treat windows as a "queue" which they logically work through but rather as a "jumble" of separate entities which overlap, stuff occasionally needs to be transfered in between and which often get in each others way - using new windows as a way to ask a question (do you want to update your system?) is just ugly and neither user friendly or elegant. Whilst this behaviour is used for Apple update manager, it is one of the things Ubuntu users vividly remember as reasons why the windows desktop is so annoying.

Many aspects of the new notifications system are great (I love it with pidgin libnotify although this needs to be installed by default to get most of the benefit (even power users are lazy - they don't want to install an obscure package to befit from such a key feature and normal users will never find it)) but the lack of controls on notifications leaves a huge void as to how can applications catch users attention without driving them up the wall. The existing solution for update notifications was little better - I know many a user who never bother to look at the notification and update! Update notifications should be delivered at a standard time and in a standard place - on login seems like a good option although users should be consulted (this does raise issues e.g. are you going to be telling users to restart just after they have booted al a Windows) and if they are on startup they should lock and even cover the screen (whilst gnome etc loads in the background) to ensure that they are responded to and then continue in either a window or a persistent notification showing a progress bar (the same would be amazing if implemented for downloads, as although running downloads completely in the background would make sense if users were less impatient, having a non intrusive progress bar is the only way to make it possible for users to work on something else without them constantly checking on it, or worse loosing five minutes staring at the download manager (in my experience at least)).

Sorry for the long post and good luck in getting everything working in the best pos...

Tom, you make a good point that users might not see the window when they
go to shutdown. It would perhaps be useful for the shutdown dialog to
know that updates are available, and have an option to install them
during the shutdown. Would you file a separate bug for that, on
update-manager? There's probably a better place to file the bug, though
there are several different places that a shutdown option is presented
for confirmation.

I don't think a new bug is the best way to tackle this as the new behaviour for update manager is the route of this problem ("Do not launch in background" is the best title to describe the issues I can think of), in real use cases opening a new window without telling users why is not a good way to interact with them (it is one of the reasons people give for feeling that Windows is annoying) - if you have to explain to users (as many of us will have to for our families/businesses/friends who we have converted to Ubuntu) that something is not a bug, but a "feature" then you know that in that case the usability case for that behaviour is compromised.

I don't think that offering to install updates on shutdown is a good idea because having seen the aftermath of that behaviour in Vista (note that I am not arguing against it purely because Windows does it, but because everyone hates the fact that it does) many issues spring to mind:
 * It makes the whole shutdown process feel slow (the phantom 30 minute shutdown in Vista).
 * As that will be the only task that the computer is doing certain less experienced users or even all laptop owners will feel obliged to wait for it (especially if they like to turn their computer off at the wall) - that is a pain for them and a great disruption.
 * Even if it is optional, most of the time users will feel obliged to say confirm whether or not they will resent it.
 * When users shutdown it may be because they have something else pressing to do (e.g. go to a meeting) or they may have just have finished - in both cases making them them go through further procedures is inconvenient, irritating and disturbs their workflow.

Just wondering, would it be worth creating a blueprint to discuss alternative solutions or just use the mailing list? This change in behaviour needs to be discussed with users and develops to get it to work in a consistent and usable manner; IMHO we cannot ship the new behaviour until this has happened (without confusing many new users).

There are often differences of opinion about what makes for better
usability. A bug report is a poor place to discuss those, because you
end up talking only to the people who agree that it's a bug. I'm only
here because I have a specific interest in this first wave of reactions
to the work I've put in motion and am leading, but in future, I won't be
engaged on individual bugs, especially on those that I don't think are
bugs :-)

The best place to address those differences is on a mailing list. For
the moment, the ubuntu-devel list would be best, but I'll look into
getting one together for focused discussion on user experience.

Even there, the people writing the code will largely carry the day.
Opinions are welcome, but recognise that none of us will get everything
we want. Saying "this doesn't work for me" is useful, but saying it
again and again isn't. Everyone on the GNOME, KDE, Ubuntu or Canonical
user experience teams can change their mind, including me, when
presented with good evidence well articulated.

> I don't think that offering to install updates on shutdown is a good idea because having seen the aftermath of that behaviour in Vista (note that I am not arguing against it purely because Windows does it, but because everyone hates the fact that it does) many issues spring to mind:
> * It makes the whole shutdown process feel slow (the phantom 30 minute shutdown in Vista).
>
We would make the process much more explicit: install updates with clear
progress indication, *then* shutdown.

> * As that will be the only task that the computer is doing certain less experienced users or even all laptop owners will feel obliged to wait for it (especially if they like to turn their computer off at the wall) - that is a pain for them and a great disruption.
>
It would be optional on shutdown.
> * Even if it is optional, most of the time users will feel obliged to say confirm whether or not they will resent it.
>
They would resent being hacked even more.

Mark

I don't think the proposed behavior is bad. An unfocused window isn't too disturbing, at least for me.

Anyway, if security updates are considered so important, I would seriously think of making them be installed automatically by default. I think this is the best way of doing it for most users who don't want to pay attention to this kind of things (including myself). Expert users could set the settings manually to not automatic updates.

If that would be done, I'd disable automatic updates if a laptop is running on batteries.

I've posted to ubuntu-devel, but it is stuck in the moderation queue.

I thought better: I wouldn't like an application to be opened automatically, even unfocused. I wrote my suggestions on ubuntu-devel as well.

I was wondering why I don't get update-notifier icon any more, and understand now that this is a new feature, replaced by something akin to those pop-unders in the browser (which by the way, I so far have not ever seen in my several jaunty test installations!).

Recently I gave my step-father a laptop with the ubuntu hardy remix on it; his first ever computer use at the age of 80 (!) and we are both quite pleased. I managed to make him understand to never give his password to a program unless he has called it up, for a purpose that he understaood. Now I need to tell him that this is true in general, but sometimes it ain't?

Bad idea.

May I add the following anecdote as a reason to revert to the old behaviour: My mother, by any standard a computer illiterate person, discovered the notification icon on her own and regularly updates her 8.04 machine. The behaviour was clearly good enough to illicit her attention. I had never told her what the notification icons were for or introduced her to the concept of updates, I was planning to log in remotely and carry them out for her regularly.

Recently, for some obscure reason her firefox window launched as a 3x4 pixel window. She kept clicking the firefox icon, opening 12 windows until I told her what was going on. I explained the concept of the task bar many times before and still she never looks at it, which is why she didn't notice that there were already 12 instances open.

My hypothesis is that most users regard the panels as frames which are filled with unimportant information such as launchers, the clock and so on, useful in specific situations but generally ignored. The screen space which grabs their attention is the one between the panels. Therefore, a notification invading into their workspace is more likely to entice them to update, as happened in the case of my mother.

Having said that, these decisions should be made through an evidence based approach with actual user testing, not by guessing how "Joe User" thinks. If this is how the DX team arrived at their conclusion, fair enough, but if it isn't, at least survey the user base and consider reverting back to the old notifications based on the results.

If you decide to keep current behaviour, please do keep the gconf property around because I find the window getting minimized in the background horribly annoying. I have several updates which cannot currently be installed as they haven't propagated to my mirror yet and the damn thing drives me nuts.

-Bartek