Notifying end-users when support is no more

[Conrad Knauer]

On 1/1/07, Alec Wright <alecjw at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > Today, I booted to Windows after 4-5 months. Because of my switch to
> > > Linux, I have been behaving like an average Windows user, not going out
> > > of my way to protect the OS.
> > >
> > > A pop up appeared and told me that my AVG free anti-virus 7.1 will not
> > > be updated ever again after Jan 15th, and that I should update to 7.5.
> > > Without this pop up, however annoying, I would not have known that I
> > > will not be getting any security updates. That would leave me vulnerable
> > > to everything out there...
> > >
> > > I think our end-users who do not like to go out of their way to learn
> > > about what's going on in the community could really use such a feature.
> > >
> > > This idea was discussed before, but nothing happened. So I wanted to
> > > attract your attention to this issue again.
> > >
> > > At the least, if it is do-able, for desktop users, you could change the
> > > background picture to something that says "upgrade because your current
> > > version will not get security updates within 1 month."... or maybe a pop
> > > up by update-manager? I suspect that server users are more
> > > security-savvy and don't need such intervention.
> >
> > I don't think that a large-window pop-up or changing the background
> > image is the way to go though; why not just a notification area icon
> > like when it informs us that updates are available, with a balloon
> > similar to how it informs us that a restart is required?
> >
> +1 to that. When you click on the bubble, it should send you to a page
> telling you about how to upgrade and which version to upgade to (eg
> stable or LTS).

Wouldn't it be better just to have it run update-manager and if they
need more info, they can click the help button or maybe offer a 'more
info' button?

CK