Auto-launching of applications

Martin Pitt martin.pitt at ubuntu.com
Wed Feb 25 10:42:02 GMT 2009


Mark Shuttleworth [2009-02-25  9:20 +0000]:
> In this case, there are definitely things we can do which would improve
> both, and there are also things we can do which ensure that we only pay
> the price the user *wants* to pay, *when* they want to pay it. For
> example, deferring heavy lifting and parsing until we know the user
> actually wants to proceed.

A considerable part of that price comes from firing up python, loading
gtk, glade, and half a dozen other modules, etc. It's not easy to
reduce that startup cost, short of rewriting u-m in C (which we don't
really want IMHO).

> I very much want the work that comes from this initiative to be
> *stylish*, *fast* and *robust*, so any suggestions you have for the
> engineering team on the latter will be taken seriously, especially if
> they come with patches! We will have full test suites to address the
> latter point.

Just for the record, ideas which were discussed yesterday:

Security updates:
-----------------
Instead of immediately bringing up u-manager, u-notifier could just
pop up a message box

  ----------------------------------------------------------------
  There are security updates available for your computer which you
  ought to install.

    [ Install now ] [ Details... ] [ Remind me later ]
  ----------------------------------------------------------------

"Install now" would forego the u-m list view and immediately start
updates. "Details" would open u-m as usual, but only when the user
actually acknowledges the dialog and wants to act on it. "Remind me
later" would just close the dialog.

u-m should also provide an obvious path to enabling automatic updates.

Bug fixes:
----------

  ----------------------------------------------------------------
  There are updates available for your computer which fix important
  problems and errors.

    [ Install now ] [ Details... ] [ Remind me later ]
  ----------------------------------------------------------------

So this looks and works similar, just with a different rationale.
Here, update-notifier should provide an obvious path how to disable
notifications about bug fixes entirely, since not all users want them
(but at the same time we don't want them to disable update-notifier
entirely, to retain security updates and reboot notifications).

Martin

-- 
Martin Pitt                        | http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer (www.ubuntu.com)  | Debian Developer  (www.debian.org)



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