I am referring to the removal up the update-notifier in the Gnome notification area. The discussion of it is embedded in the thread headed by:
https:/ /lists. ubuntu. com/archives/ ubuntu- devel/2009- February/ 027416. html
Specific messages worth reading are:
https:/ /lists. ubuntu. com/archives/ ubuntu- devel/2009- February/ 027434. html
https:/ /lists. ubuntu. com/archives/ ubuntu- devel/2009- February/ 027451. html
https:/ /lists. ubuntu. com/archives/ ubuntu- devel/2009- February/ 027454. html
https:/ /lists. ubuntu. com/archives/ ubuntu- devel/2009- February/ 027437. html
https:/ /lists. ubuntu. com/archives/ ubuntu- devel/2009- February/ 027445. html
Matthew Paul Thomas says that the desired behavior is:
* When there are security updates, Update Manager will open and show
them (plus any other available updates) within a day.
* When there are non-security updates, Update Manager will open and
show them *one week* after it was last opened (whether it was last
opened manually or automatically, and regardless of whether updates
were actually installed then).
* When there are no available updates, Update Manager will not open
automatically at all.
Desired by whom? And where was discussion of this change that effects the entire Ubuntu community? Because some percentage of users don't apparently understand that the notification area has meaning, we are not going to use it for updates? Chow Loong Jin raised a valid point that if update notification is now done by opening the entire update manager program, perhaps evolution and similar should open their application UIs rather than use the notification area. And there are concerns about unintended functional consequences of this ill-conceived change, discussed in the thread.
Personally, I predict that opening the Update Manager window while people are working will piss off a lot of users when it happens, and may result in them wanting to disable automatic checking. Yes, that'll be highly desirable, won't it?
In other words, this change should be corrected, and a notification icon should be displayed when updates are available.
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The window currently opens far too often when security updates are available: this is because of bug 369198, which is awaiting testing before it can be fixed in Ubuntu 9.04.
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To disable the new behaviour and get the old behaviour:
gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update- notifier/ auto_launch false
(Take into account that this gconf change is not supported.)
To have the update manager launch immediately when updates are available, use this:
gconftool -s --type int /apps/update- notifier/ regular_ auto_launch_ interval 0