Notifying end-users when support is no more

[Alec Wright]

On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 16:32 +0000, Alex Jones wrote:
> 
> Something else that we need to remember...
> 
> If we have a system with Warty on, and it's nagging its owner to
> upgrade, the only system it can upgrade to is Breezy, which itself might
> be out of support. If such a case arises, there's no way to get that
> Warty machine upgraded.
> -- 
> Alex Jones <alex at weej.com>
> 
> 
Even when a version is not supported, the repositories are still there,
but not updated.
Let's go forward a year. The current release is Feisty+1 LTS (Something
Iguana?). Microsoft has been taken over by Steve Ballmer, and is
therefore dying. He plans to release a "Windows Developers, Developers,
Developers, Developers Edition". Person X is using Warty, having ignored
the bubbles for a year (Breezy is now Unsupported, and Warty and Hoary
have been unsupported for a year and 6 months respectively). He can
upgrade to Hoary, because the Repositories will still be open, but it
will be very insecure, having not received security updates, or updates
of any sort, for 6 months. Then he can upgrade to Breezy, then Dapper.
The "Your system is unsupported" thing should go, and an "A newer
version of Ubuntu is available." and so he can choose to upgrade again.
There should also be a popup saying "Your system will only be supported
for 6 more months.", with a link to a web page explaining why using an
unsupported release is bad (eg security problems, older packages etc).
He should then be urged to upgrade.

Throughout the process, the user should be notified of his 3 options:
 * Upgrade form the web
 * Upgrade from a CD
 * Do a complete Reinstall (Easier than upgrading through 8 releases!)


---
Alec Wright