update-manager behaviour [was: Auto-launching of applications]

[Stephen Ryan]

On 2/23/09, Aigars Mahinovs <aigarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/2/23 Colin Watson <cjwatson at ubuntu.com>:
>
> > This question assumes that opening unfocused in the background is
>  > sufficient to cause it not to interfere with running applications. This
>  > is not an obviously correct assumption. A 100MB footprint with
>  > non-trivial extra I/O out of the blue (not in response to an explicit
>  > user action) is more than enough to interfere with other things you're
>  > doing regardless of focus, particularly the performance-critical things
>  > given as examples above.
>
>
> This should be an important concern. It should be simple to write a
>  very small C program that would start up, look at the system load
>  running applications and available RAM and then only start a secondary
>  application (such as an automatic update) when some conditions are
>  met, for example system load <0.5 over last 15 minutes, 200Mb of free
>  RAM (including cache RAM at 2:1 ratio). Then automatic security
>  updates could be done in the background (if user so chooses) and also
>  a button could be added to the update-manager to "Upgrade when idle".


Actually, what this little app needs to do is to *predict* when the
system will be appropriately idle for long enough to install however
many updates there are.  Do let me know when you've got that crystal
ball working, I've got some lottery tickets to buy.

The key difference between me and an application is that I have some
knowledge of my intentions, and I can use that knowledge to reduce or
eliminate any inconvenience.  No application can possibly do that.

...

>  However, the system should _never_ open windows without user action.
>  Linux is about user being in control. Viruses on Windows take away
>  control from users by creating new pop-up (and pop-under) windows. Any
>  new Ubuntu user coming from virus infected waters will automatically
>  associate a window that magically appears on his desktop as a virus,
>  many veteran Linux user will see that as a violation of user trust in
>  the system. The system can poke user via notification or maybe even
>  icons in really important cases, but window control is user's domain
>  and the system has no business messing with that.

Hear, hear! Well said, indeed.  It would be a bad precedent to
deliberately design into an important part of the OS something that
violates such an important convention.

*Please* redesign this, and consider the importance of user control
this time.  The whole system loses credibility when I lose control of
a part of it.  Don't go there!

-- 
Stephen Ryan
Dartware, LLC