8.04 LTS: February 2010 Archives

Remember this little guy, the orangish icon that appears in your upper GNOME panel in Debian Lenny when you have software updates?

Ubuntu has a similar yet different icon (which you can see in the screen-grab below this paragraph). Or had it, I guess. Now that the Ubuntu Project decided to completely change the way users are notified of software updates, opening an update window either in the foreground or background (I seemed to get both at random) at some point during the week the update is released, the cheery orange (or whatever color it used to be in Ubuntu) icon doesn't get much play.

I like the software-update icon. I know what it means. If I didn't know, I could either mouse over it, or actually click it to determine its purpose in my computing life and act accordingly.

I wasn't fond of those randomly opening update windows in Ubuntu Karmic. (Did they have them in Jaunty also? Who can remember?) You see, sometimes I turn the computer on, after which it checks the repos for updates and puts the orange icon on my upper panel.

But I'm not always ready to drop everything and update the system. (That's why I don't mind that the Xfce install of Debian doesn't include the GNOME update manager ... because it's part of GNOME, after all; it's not all that hard to use apt-get or Aptitude to check for updates periodically. But I do like the Update Manager, and it's one of those things I like about GNOME and one of many reasons I use GNOME as my desktop environment.)

No, sometimes I need to get stuff done and don't want to run the update. The orange icon doesn't complain. It waits until I'm ready. It doesn't open any windows on my screen unless I click on it.

And that's the way I like it. It's one of those things that Ubuntu did right in the Hardy days and Debian still does right, Lenny being just about the same age as Hardy.

I guess Ubuntu changed the update notification system in an attempt to, in the minds of its developers, either help new users not accustomed to the ways of things not-Windows, or somehow do updates better than they've been done before.

I'm not sure about the outcome. I guess new users wouldn't know to click on an update icon and might let it sit unclicked for days, weeks or months at a time. They won't ignore an open window on their desktop that tells them they have an update.

But I seem to remember a little dialog shooting out from the Ubuntu update icon that told the user that updates were available. The little dialog - that's a subtle innovation that, in my opinion, addresses users new and experienced equally well.

No matter how GNOME, Debian, Ubuntu and any other projects or distributions treat update notifications going forward, I'm letting it be known that I like a little icon at the top of my panel that doesn't badger me into doing anything but just lets me know that I can do something about updating the box when I have the time.