[ubuntu-studio-devel] Upgrade Notifications for Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio

[Erich Eickmeyer]

Hi all,

In Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio, we rely on Discover and the Discover Notifier to run 
our GUI-based package updates. I don't care if you personally use apt periodically 
from the terminal, a case can be made that we expect our users to use Discover to 
do their updates.

Unfortunately, Discover is very, very flawed. It uses packagekit as its backend and 
its upgrader is designed to do one thing: upgrade packages. By comparison, the 
Ubuntu Update Manager will give the user the option to remove unused packages, 
unused kernels. and even notify of new Ubuntu releases, which is something that 
Discover cannot do since it's built to be as distribution-agnostic as possible. 

The lack of notification of new releases means when Release Upgrades are enabled, 
Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio users are not notified whether their systems are set to 
upgrade to regular releases or LTS releases. This is especially problematic for users 
that simply don't know any better. We simply take for granted that we upgrade our 
systems, but new users don't necessarily know that they have to do that, and they 
don't necessarily pay attention to release announcements. We can't take that for 
granted that they automatically know that or are paying attention; it's not basic 
knowledge.

I have been seeing, with high levels of frequency, users showing-up in the #kubuntu 
chat with EOL systems, and users showing up running 20.04 not understanding 
why they aren't getting a notification to upgrade to 22.04. We need to do better 
from a development standpoint and not let this happen. Users need to be notified 
from their systems, not externally.

Years ago, update-manager-qt was a thing, and I'm sure update-notifier-qt was as 
well. I decided to experiment with both. Unfortunately, I ran into a few issues, 
namely that neither exists anymore. Beyond that, using the GTK equivalents, I ran 
into a couple of other issues:

     *  update-notifier doesn't even show in the system tray when there are updates 
on my system, even after a reboot or a relog. Only if I force it by executing it does it 
show, but it doesn't go away after running update-manager.
     *  update-manager runs well, but it pops-up a kdialog while running (see 
attached screenshot). Perhaps a bug/relic from old days, but definitely something 
that needs to be resolved.

Honestly, if these things can be resolved and the Qt equivalents can be resurrected, 
then it would be a huge boon to the users. Not only would they have a more robust 
upgrade management system, but they would also have the benefit of a Release 
Upgrade notifier when those times come.

Of course, if someone has a better solution and would rather re-invent the wheel, 
then sure, but I don't think re-inventing the wheel is ever a good solution and would 
rather see collaboration and cooperation first, as is the Ubuntu spirit.

I added ubuntu-devel@ to this discussion since the packages in question are in 
"main" and would require the help of some core devs to get some work done. 

Thanks for hearing me out,
Erich

-- 
Erich Eickmeyer
Project Leader - Ubuntu Studio
Member - Ubuntu Community Council
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