Strange upgrade behaviour

Fri Nov 28 08:53:39 UTC 2014

On 2014-11-23 23:58, Michael Bauer wrote:
> ... the user cannot pick and choose easily on an application by
> application basis about which UI language they want. Someone might
> want Filezilla in a different language because the translation is
> real bad or maybe Firefox in a different language because they want
> to practice.

Most users prefer that you can set the display language once and that
it's effective all over the desktop. Doing it per app instead is an idea
that would be hard to sell.

As always there are workarounds, though. While I usually have Swedish as
the selected display language in Language Support, I prefer English in
Thunderbird and gnome-terminal. It's accomplished with these two  files:

$ cat ~/bin/thunderbird
#!/bin/sh
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
exec /usr/bin/thunderbird $@

$ cat ~/bin/gnome-terminal
#!/bin/sh
export LANGUAGE=en_US
exec /usr/bin/gnome-terminal $@

>> I have also been surprised a few times when opening Language
>> Support and noticing that Firefox translations were suddenly
>> missing, so apparently they were silently uninstalled at some
>> point. Can't tell when or why.
>> 
>> The update of missing language support packages, which is carried
>> out when you open the Language Support GUI, can be accomplished
>> with this terminal command:
>> 
>> sudo apt-get install $(check-language-support)
> 
> Yes but if we want to have any chances of 'selling' Ubuntu to normal 
> users, we should try to avoid steps like that at all cost.

Agree. I was not suggesting that we should make it a normal procedure to
run that command manually.

>> I have played with the thought to propose that something along
>> those lines is carried out via Software Updater. Suspect that such
>> a change wouldn't be completely uncontroversial, though.
> 
> Echoing GunChleoc here, can't see that either

I brought up the idea on IRC with Sebastien Bacher, one of the desktop
developers:

<quote from #ubuntu-desktop 2014-11-24>
[09:51] <GunnarHj> seb128: Thinking of having the equivalent of "sudo
apt-get install $(check-language-support)" be run without opening the
language-selector UI, either in update-manager or as autostart. Any
spontaneous thoughts?
[09:52] <seb128> GunnarHj, downloading/installing thing without asking
the user is poor taste ... or do you mean having update-manager
prompting about that on first run? don't we have a such prompt on first
login after installation?
[09:54] <GunnarHj> seb128: Only on first run, and only if you install
without internet. The issue is that some language packs (e.g. firefox)
are silently uninstalled sometimes. So the idea is to ensure that
everything is there.
[09:55] <GunnarHj> seb128: I agree that prompting would be nicer, and in
that case update-manager would be the place, I suppose.
[09:56] <seb128> GunnarHj, the cases where they are uninstalled
shouldn't happen if you use the graphical tools, it should rather hold
on some package updates than uninstall
[09:57] <GunnarHj> seb128: Wasn't aware of that distinction. OTOH, how
do you prevent users from installing from terminal?
[09:58] <seb128> GunnarHj, no we don't, but those who are technical
enough to do that are responsible for what they are doing
[10:01] <GunnarHj> seb128: You have to admin that uninstalling is
nonintuitive behavior. I for one don't understand why it happens.
[10:01] <GunnarHj> s/admin/admit/
[10:01] <seb128> GunnarHj, well, don't use dist-upgrade, just use
"upgrade", it does the safe thing
[10:02] <seb128> those issues also only happen in dev series
[10:02] <seb128> non technical users run stable series
[10:02] <seb128> so you have a biased view on who is impacted
[10:03] <GunnarHj> seb128: Are you absolutely sure it only happens in
dev series?
[10:03] <seb128> GunnarHj, why would it happen on stable series?
[10:03] <seb128> and how?
[10:07] <GunnarHj> seb128: Don't know. Don't know. I have still seen it
happen (I think). So have others.
[10:07] <GunnarHj>
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-translators/2014-November/006721.html
[10:07] <GunnarHj> https://launchpad.net/bugs/1395273
[10:58] <GunnarHj> seb128: To conclude what we were talking about a few
minutes ago: You don't encourage me to proceed with the idea to guard
against absent language support packages along those lines. Is that so?
[12:38] <seb128> GunnarHj, I don't think it's an important issue or hit
lot of users, you could try to add some ui to e.g update-manager but
then you might hit the reverse problem and annoy users who uninstalled
language support for e.g firefox because they prefer english
[13:20] <GunnarHj> seb128: I understand what you are saying. I might
investigate a little more. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts!
[13:20] <seb128> GunnarHj, yw!
</quote>

On 2014-11-24 12:21, Fòram na Gàidhlig wrote:
> Users shouldn't need to go to Language Support or enter any commands
> at all unless they want to change something themselves (rather than the
> system silently changing it under them)

As a first step, I think we should focus on *why* language support
packages may be unsolicitedly uninstalled. We need to figure out under
which circumstances it can happen, and submit a bug report which
includes a reproducible use case. We don't have such a bug report yet,
have we?

>>> The explanation is that that's how the language pack system is
>>> designed currently. Either you have English - all English -
>>> installed or not. But some users are (for to me unknown reasons)
>>> very picky about installing only what they need.
> 
> I can get that - I was kind of bemused that I had to install all
> Englishes, because my language doesn't have the coverage yet to be
> included in the installer. One English would have done the job just as
> nicely - I only needed it so I could pick my own language later, and
> after the switch, to fill the gaps in incomplete translations, all I
> really need is the basic "en" that's used as a basis for translation.

Was there anything you couldn't do with your computer because you
installed multiple English variants? I suppose not.

Personally I don't see the problem here. When you use a Linux distro -
any distro - you install a lot of things you don't need, but which at
the same time don't hurt.

> As explained above, I think the design for English is seriously broken,
> and it's not really nice for English-speakers either - in the initial
> install, they too get forced to install all Englishes, even if the
> updater then drops this later.

You mix two things here. Yes, there is only one set of language support
packages per language, and some of the sets (English, Spanish,
Portugese...) include translations and other stuff for more than one
variant. Not a problem IMO. Then we think that language support packages
are silently uninstalled sometimes. As already said above, I suggest
that we focus on the latter.

-- 
Gunnar Hjalmarsson
https://launchpad.net/~gunnarhj