Automatic and silent installation of security updates

[Jay Camp]

On Fri, 2005-07-08 at 07:50 -0700, Daniel Robitaille wrote:
> I personally like the icons set that used to be found in Red Hat 9 and Fedora 
> 1 (not sure what they use nowadays):  the big green button when system is up 
> to date, and big red pulsating icon when you need an upgrade.  Highly visible, 
> and easy to understand from an user point of view.   And always present:  I'm 
> sure a lot of inexperienced users lose the  update-manager notification area 
> from their panel in Ubuntu, but don't even know it's gone.  You need an icon 
> that is always there, when updates are there or not, to get the visual 
> reminder that thing are "working" and updated and are being checked 
> continuously by your computer.

I disagree.  I take the stance that the user should be able to assume
that updates are being checked for continuously and that the
notification will only appear when their attention is needed.  It's like
the difference between polling (having it always there and the user
needs to keep "checking up on things") and interrupts (the user takes an
action when needed).

The last thing we need is to go down the road of what I call Windows
systray hell.  You know, those 10 things that pop up in the corner
everytime somebody boots up Windows.

I imagine the update-manager will be improved in the future as the
notification framework GNOME is working on comes to fruition.

Jay