Bug#442478: update-manager: Too Many Windows

[Matthew Tylee Atkinson]

Package: update-manager
Version: 0.42.2ubuntu22-15
Severity: wishlist

Though this is a GUI tool designed to make updating easy, I think it can
actually be more complex to use than the command-line approach.  The
current version represents a very good start on the usability front, but
I feel that there are some big (and fairly simple) improvements that
could be made.

The main problem IMHO is that such a lot of popups are spawned and
changes made to the main window during one update routine.  Though most
of these windows exist only to impart the progress of one stage of the
update to the user, they make the process seem overly complex to them.
In a typical install process, the following window spawns/changes occur.

1a. Main window loads in disabled mode.
1b. The ``apt-get update'' window may need to be invoked.
2.  The ``reading caches'' window appears.
3.  The main window gets enabled; user clicks the ``install'' button.
4.  The ``downloading'' or just ``installing'' window appears for some
time.
5.  The user is then offered to close this window when the install has
finished.
6.  The main window appears again.
7.  The ``reading caches'' window appears again.

Please bear in mind that most of these popups are not actually the type
of window that the user would need to interact with; they're essentially
just progress meters.

This causes problems in the following situations.

A. Most users just want to do the upgrade as quickly as possible.  We
sould just require one click on the ``install'' button and let the rest
go on automatically.  Requiring the user to press buttons both causes
them to have to attend to the process and makes it all seem a lot more
complicated (on the command line I can do a dist-upgrade in two commands
maximum).

B. For users who like to leave an update progressing on one desktop
whilst they're still working on another, it's very annoying because
windows keep popping up when they are not welcome.

My proposed solution is to collapse most of these external windows into
the main one.  By this, I mean that a status/progress bar should be
embedded into the main window at the bottom that shows the progress of
actions when the the controls in the main window are disabled.  This
way, no annoying popups happen and the update can be left to run without
bothering -- even alarming -- the user with popup messages (which most
users tend to associate with ``ah; there has been a problem'' until
they've read what the message is about).

Please contact me if you feel this is a good idea and I will try to
provide more information.

best regards,


Matthew

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (1100, 'testing'), (300, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.22-2-k7 (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages update-manager depends on:
ii  libgnome2-perl               1.040-1     Perl interface to the GNOME librar
ii  lsb-release                  3.1-24      Linux Standard Base version report
ii  python                       2.4.4-6     An interactive high-level object-o
ii  python-apt                   0.7.3.1     Python interface to libapt-pkg
ii  python-glade2                2.10.6-1    GTK+ bindings: Glade support
ii  python-gnome2                2.18.2-1+b1 Python bindings for the GNOME desk
ii  python-gnupginterface        0.3.2-9     Python interface to GnuPG (GPG)
ii  python-support               0.6.4       automated rebuilding support for p
ii  synaptic                     0.60+b1     Graphical package manager

update-manager recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information