KubuntuMaverickUpdates

Summary

An unintended consequence of the migration to KPackageKit was a transition to using standard KDE notifications to inform users that updates are available and the restart is required. These notifications are unduly disruptive for their purpose, but also not sufficiently persistent to ensure users can be informed of updates needed or restart required. For Kubuntu 10.10 we will move to a less disruptive, more reliable system.

Release Note

For Kubuntu 10.10, package update and restart required notifications have been redesigned to be more reliable and less disruptive to users.

Rationale

The current notifications are not suited to the task. Users can just dismiss them if they don't want to install updates and then are not reminded later.

User stories

Roman likes to concentrate on getting his work done. He wants to focus on that and not on interacting with his workspace. He likes that when updates are available, he is informed about them in a non-disruptive, yet consistent way so that he can deal with them when he's ready.

Design

Currently KPackageKit uses its own package cache and so its information about what updates are required can be out of sync with the systems. For Maverick, switch the PackageKit config to using an uncached update check.

We will need icons for both updates available and restart required (the previous Kubuntu icons for this could be reused).

Ideally, the updates available icon would provide a tooltip listing the number of updates available and the number of them that are security updates. Just listing the total number available would be acceptable.

Implementation

Initial implementation done in KPackageKit

Test/Demo Plan

This should be trivially testable by all developers during the Maverick development cycle.

Unresolved issues

None

BoF agenda and discussion

Move the KPackageKit/Kubuntu Notification Helper discussion here once that functional allocation change is decided.


CategorySpec

KubuntuMaverickUpdates (last edited 2010-05-24 23:22:07 by host-84-9-233-120)