Avoiding fragmentation with a rolling release

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

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Steve Langasek wrote on 01/03/13 01:44:
> 
> On Thu, Feb 28, 2013 at 02:05:35PM -0800, Alex Chiang wrote: ...
> 
>> If you want to avoid the daily grind, press the close button
>> when update-manager fires. Or set the 'check for updates'
>> frequency to monthly. I think the intended audience for monthly
>> images could handle that workflow.
> 
> Except we really, really don't want users doing that.  When 
> update-manager fires because there's a critical security update,
> and failing to apply it means their machine will in short order
> become part of a botnet with the best-designed UI the world has
> ever seen, we really don't want the user's first instinct to be to
> postpone the update.
> 
> ...

Certainly we don't want people to instinctively dismiss the dialog.
The recent redesign has aimed at getting consent more often.

But changing the updates frequency instead is a valid option, because
Software Sources has two update frequency settings.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareUpdates#settings>

"When there are security updates:", defaulting to "Display immediately".

And "When there are other updates:", defaulting to "Display weekly".

You can change the latter right now to "Display every two weeks",
without delaying your exposure to security updates at all.

As I understand the purpose of monthly snapshots so far, we could
achieve the same effect simply by adding a "Display monthly" item to
that second menu.

However, currently when there are security updates, Software Updater
assumes that you will want to install any available non-security
updates at the same time, to minimize interruption. Minimizing
bandwidth use from update churn is not a problem we optimize for at
the moment (except for warning you when you're on mobile broadband).
But we could add a setting for that if necessary.

- -- 
mpt

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