Making Update Manager less obtrusive

[Jamin W. Collins]

I apologize for coming into this discussion rather late.  However, I've 
only just become aware of this rather radical change in expected 
behavior.  Having used Ubuntu since 6.10 on my laptops I've grown rather 
accustom to the update-notifier.  As Steve stated in a previous message:

On Friday 20 February 2009 5:13:36 pm Steve Langasek wrote:
 > I recognize that I'm going to be a hard sell here, because I was
 > madly in love with the earlier update-notifier behavior from the first
 > moment I saw it.

Part of what I valued in update-notifier was its ability to inform me 
that there were updates my system was aware of in a timely manner, 
regardless of whether they were security updates, bug fixes, or 
something else.  And that it managed to do so in a very unobtrusive 
manner.  From what I've gathered about its replacement neither of these 
are the case.  The notifications are no longer timely (delayed by days) 
and aren't/won't be as unobtrusive (window nagging for interaction).

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 8:00 AM, Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
 > *  As well as staying closed for a week (excepting security updates)
 >    after it has been open for any reason, Update Manager will also
 >    stay closed for a week if you have installed updates by any method,
 >    including apt-get or aptitude. <http://launchpad.net/bugs/334952>

For security updates, rather than being notified as soon as my system is 
aware of them, it could take up to two days from the time my system is 
aware of them for me to be notified.  So, if my system is set to update 
its package list daily, we are looking at a potential window of nearly 
72 hours from security fix being published to me being notified, 
assuming that the security update hits the repository just after my last 
package update.  Roughly 24 hours until the system checks the repository 
again, then potentially another 48 hours until it notifies me.  I find 
that delay unacceptable.

The situation becomes far worse when looking at non-security updates. 
Reasons for bug fixes vary greatly.  However, one presumable case is to 
fix potential data loss.  With the new scheme we are now looking at a 
window of nearly 192 hours during which a fix could be available and 
known to the user's system.

If my system is aware of updates (security or otherwise) I would like 
timely notification of them.  At minimum, less than 8 hours from when it 
became aware of them, but I'd prefer notification to be immediate as it 
was before.

I'm not the only user that would like to see some (presumably timely) 
notification that the system has knowledge of updates:

On Fri Feb 27 21:28:38 GMT 2009, Jordan Mantha wrote:
 > Is there going to be *any* indicator that says "you have updates"
 > without actually launching a program? I just ran into a little
 > confusion as I popped open Synaptic to install something and was faced
 > with 139 updates (I'm running Jaunty of course). So my computer knew I
 > had updates but it failed to tell me about them, I find that a tad
 > frustrating.

I really don't understand the rationality of moving to a less timely and 
more obtrusive methodology.

Please correct me, or enlighten me, if I'm wrong.

-- 
Jamin W. Collins