Re: On updates

[Joaquim Rocha <jrocha endlessm com>]

On Mon, Jan 15, 2018 at 9:36 PM, Richard Hughes <hughsient gmail com> wrote:

On 15 January 2018 at 13:01, Joaquim Rocha <jrocha endlessm com> wrote:
> [1] https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Software/Updates#Tentative_Design

So, backing up a bit. Is the issue here that people are:

* Paying for bandwidth per Mb?
* Only have unlimited bandwidth during specific times?
* Happy to pay for bandwidth at peak times to install things, but want
to use idle "free" bandwidth for updates?

It might be useful to work out some personas, as like Matthias I want
thing to just magically work, and for software to stay out of my face,
but for other people that's going to cost them money.

The information I have is that most of Endless' users have some sort of connectivity, but it is unstable and metered or very limited. So they're very conscious about it's used.

Even if they go to an internet café and stay a few hours, shouldn't they be aware of updates they can download while connected, before they eventually go offline for a while again? (even if auto-updates is on)

 

I think working
out who are our target users are is a long overdue exercise and would
be useful in trying to make things simpler. In a flatpak world we have
the ability to install things live, but we also have to support the
offline updates of ostree and PackageKit.

My proposal didn't discard any of these.

 

The other thing we could do to make things simpler is to stop
filtering the updates list based on what is already downloaded. In the
"paying for bandwidth" case this has the effect that the update()
vfunc takes a lot longer as it has to download data (and we have to
convey that in the UI) but it means we can stop doing flatpak
downloads in refresh(). In the "automatic" case we can just download
and deploy in refresh() when the session is idle, obviously showing
the progress if the user stumbles upon the application in the updates
panel or the details page. This keeps us with one boolean setting,
which would be tied to the toggle in the app-menu.

Exactly! My point is that it doesn't matter if you want fully automatic updates or fully manual ones; this setting should only dictate when are updates performed (in a scheduled way, or never), not what pressing update means.

I also think it's totally fine if users have to wait different times for updates if they happen to start them manually: this is behavior users are already used to in smartphones, and most of Endless' users are familiar with smartphones.

IMO, it's also less critical that a user who wants updates fully automated just ignores the Updates section most of the time, than a user who has to be conscious about data and wants to control updates (even if they're automated) but cannot find any because they're not being reflected in the UI. It also prevents surprises like: removing an app while an update is being downloaded automatically in the background, as it would be shown in the UI.

And maybe I'm the odd one here but I prefer to see when my computer is using a bunch of data, if and when I want to, than having either everything blindly automatic or nothing at all.

Cheers,

Joaquim Rocha | Endless