As I already said in the Muon Discover design thread, there should be some sort of notification if the package manager (in my case APT) is running in the background.
Currently there's only a notification if updates are found. The user have to click on it.

Current status

There's only a notification if updates are found. The user should click on this icon to start Muon Updater.
This behaviour is OK for experienced users, but is confusing unexperienced users - They don't understand that they have to update by clicking on this icon.
(I activated automatic security updates just in case my parents forget to update, so at least security fixes are installed)

What's the goal?

• No hidden update (apt update) in the background - The user should know when the system updates sources
• The user should know where to click to update software
• Automatic security updates should be enabled or disabled even by a unexperienced user. Digging down the software sources dialog is not an option.
• The user should know if something is installing

My parents shut down their laptop while dpkg configuration was running - the result was an unupdateable system until I ran configuration manually in a terminal, so:

• If something goes wrong, the user should be notified and a solution should be presented - At least for unconfigured packages.

Idea
Note: I think, the current notification area of Plasma 5 is already capable of some of these features (?)
Edit: Note: Still don't know what to do against unfinished configuration by shutting down - Maybe a program should start, offering 'Repair' to non experienced users ?

The notification area should be used for displaying the current status of the package manager and should make it possible to update the system just by clicking on buttons in the notification area.

I think, there should be a 'noob friendly' version of the software sources dialog, where even unexperenced users can set up the update behaviour.


The user should click on a button, not on the tray icon. Everything should be explained in short words.


If the package manager is being used by any application, the tray should change to indicate that there's an operation running - No hidden background stuff, which would confuse users.


Edit:

Only if something really important happens (updates available, ...), a popup should show. If the package manager just refreshes the sources, the icon should only change.

rumangerst wrote:[list]
[*]No hidden update (apt update) in the background - The user should know when the system updates sources

You propose to show a job? That's distracting as it can take time to do the update.

rumangerst wrote:[*]The user should know where to click to update software

I think that's ok, there should be an action associated to that notification.

rumangerst wrote:My parents shut down their laptop while dpkg configuration was running - the result was an unupdateable system until I ran configuration manually in a terminal, so:

Again, the package manager should block the shutdown while there is a dpkg configuration. Never asume the user won't shutdown the computer just by showing a warning message.

Also, if there are none update avialiable, then there's no reason to shown anything, at least that seems natural to me (maybe it's not the same for other).

You propose to show a job? That's distracting as it can take time to do the update.

OK, notification if sources/cache/... is updated is unnecessary and would indeed distract users, but I think it should be shown on one case:
If the user made the package manager update it's sources in a program (Muon Discover, Muon Updater) and closed the program. This would indicate 'Hey, you closed the program, but it didn't do something wrong. Still doing some work'

Again, the package manager should block the shutdown while there is a dpkg configuration. Never asume the user won't shutdown the computer just by showing a warning message.

Yes, it should block shutdown (and standby, hibernation, ...). I didn't adress this problem with the notification stuff. I tried to adress the problem that users don't know if there's currently running some sort of package managing and where to click to update and change some settings.

Still there should be an easy to use solution if something already went wrong ...

Also, if there are none update avialiable, then there's no reason to shown anything, at least that seems natural to me (maybe it's not the same for other).

You are right. The 'Nothing to update' panel is not needed and it wouldn't hurt if it's not existing.

Ahh, and the settings for update behavior could be put into System Settings - many users should look there first if they want to change something.

Edit:

A 'Repair Tool' would be a nice solution for handling problems with the package manager:



In the 'Expert Information' tab is a textbox with all errors and all attempts of 'Auto Repair' to solve the problem (Commands issued, research results of autorepair, ...)

rumangerst wrote:OK, notification if sources/cache/... is updated is unnecessary and would indeed distract users, but I think it should be shown on one case:
If the user made the package manager update it's sources in a program (Muon Discover, Muon Updater) and closed the program. This would indicate 'Hey, you closed the program, but it didn't do something wrong. Still doing some work'

Yep, I agree with you on that. Then, there should be a notification when it concludes, despite the availability of upgrades.

rumangerst wrote:Yes, it should block shutdown (and standby, hibernation, ...). I didn't adress this problem with the notification stuff. I tried to adress the problem that users don't know if there's currently running some sort of package managing and where to click to update and change some settings.

Ah, sorry my persistence, I didn't see that.

rumangerst wrote:Ahh, and the settings for update behavior could be put into System Settings - many users should look there first if they want to change something.

I didn't notice it wasn't there. Again, I agree with you on that.

Also, very nice mockups

rumangerst, fantastic job at explaining the problem you're trying to solve AND proposing potential solutions for it well-considered mockups.

I especially like your idea of of a simple update configuration dialog and using the status and notification areas more effectively for both making the user's actions explicit (e.g. Install Updates button), and showing progress of the installation.

Awesome work on the mockups, really well thought and designed through!

I agree that scheduled refreshing of the repositories doesn't need to be shown to users, whereas I would notify about automatically installed updates. And yes, when the user initiates a refresh of the repos or installation of software and then closes the software manager, the progress should be shown as a job.

About preventing shutdown: I don't know if that's possible, but it would be great to have (though there would have to be an emergency override). It wouldn't be possible to completely prevent a shutdown, though (there are too many ways to shut down and I'm sure that if root says "shutdown -h now", it cannot be stopped), so telling users to not shut down/reboot/power off while a critical job is running would still be helpful.
Gaming consoles display a warning not to shut down whenever they write to disk, for example.

colomar wrote:About preventing shutdown: I don't know if that's possible, but it would be great to have (though there would have to be an emergency override). It wouldn't be possible to completely prevent a shutdown, though (there are too many ways to shut down and I'm sure that if root says "shutdown -h now", it cannot be stopped)...

What if the responsability of shutdown prevention could be passed to another part, like systemd? From what I undertand it can prevent a shutdown even if root issued it.

colomar wrote:so telling users to not shut down/reboot/power off while a critical job is running would still be helpful.
Gaming consoles display a warning not to shut down whenever they write to disk, for example.

That argument sounds solid, I actually have some friends who unplugs their computers from AC when it takes a bit long to shutdown correctly.

Some operations, e.g. "Repair" are highly specific to individual distributions though. Arch's pacman, for example, works quite different in that regard. I'm not sure if it will work well to expose such internal aspects in a general UI.

I think the title of the thread should change to "Muon: Notify users that the package manager is working" or something like that, basically because Muon it's not KDE's default package management system but it's for Kubuntu. Then, in this thread should only be disscused issues regarding to Muon (besides it's already implicit) since a lot of theese stuff are not distro agnostic.
Or maybe the comunity could came up with something like Gnome Software Center and make it a front-end for the most used package manager; but it would require a lot of work.

pablow wrote:I think the title of the thread should change to "Muon: Notify users that the package manager is working" or something like that, basically because Muon it's not KDE's default package management system but it's for Kubuntu. Then, in this thread should only be disscused issues regarding to Muon (besides it's already implicit) since a lot of theese stuff are not distro agnostic.
Or maybe the comunity could came up with something like Gnome Software Center and make it a front-end for the most used package manager; but it would require a lot of work.

Actually it is the goal of Muon to become independent of the package management backend.

colomar wrote:Actually it is the goal of Muon to become independent of the package management backend.

Ah! I didn't know that. I remembered a blog post where one of the people involved in it mentioned that using another package manager different from apt (trough PackageKit) would need a complete rewrite of some things.