Disadvantages of offline updates

[Brian Marshall]

On Tue, Dec 04, 2012 at 11:12:22PM -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-12-04 at 18:11 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
> > I'm not sure the current status. When I filed my bug, which was a bit
> > pre-Beta, I was getting notifications, obviously (the bug being that
> > clicking on them triggered an online update). I can't say I've noticed any
> > lately, but I don't know if that means there aren't any or I just forgot
> > about them, or if it's intentional or a bug...
> 
> We are only showing a notification about 'important' updates - which are
> currently defined as security updates. And there's another inconsistency
> there in that the notification lets you launch the update viewer, which lets
> you review the updates and install them 'online' - the opposite of what you
> get for regular updates.
> 
> So yes, the user experience is not as consistent as we want it to, yet. I
> think Adam already pointed to the relevant upstream bugs.

Thanks for the explanation. I think it'd be best if the user was given an
opportunity to review updates for every time the "Install Updates & Restart"
menu item exists.

That could involve showing a notification for every type of update (which might
be too much), although am I right in thinking that the minimum time between
showing notifications is longer than the minimum time between auto-downloading
updates? If so, you'd still run into cases where the install updates menu item
is available but you haven't gotten a notification yet.

Another solution could be to change the menu item so it opens the update
application and lets you review the updates there, with a button to install and
restart. (Basically the equivalent of an update notification with "View", but
integrated into the Shell user menu.) That would add an extra step to people
who don't want to review their updates, but would remove several steps from
people who do.

I think that last solution would solve the issue of my current workflow:
1. See updates can be installed in the menu
2. Switch to Activities mode
3. Open Software (gpk-application)
4. App menu -> Check for Updates
5. Quit the application after reviewing updates
6. Go back to Shell menu to install them offline
...which seems overly complicated, unless I'm missing something.

-- Brian