Sources:
* Joey-Elijah Sneddon. "Tweaked’ Software Updater Lands in Ubuntu 13.04". OMGUbuntu. 20130124.
* Joey-Elijah Sneddon. "Usability Tweaks Proposed for ‘Software Updater’ App". OMGUbuntu. 20130122.
According the the online Ubuntu 'zine OMGUbuntu! as a "usability update" the program Software Updater will no display the names of software only a description on what it does or is. Another change is that it looks like software dependencies are nested into a tree as well, a change that I do think it neat and does clean things up a bit.
However, it is the first change I want to focus on: why? The software updater already displays the description prominent over the name. The way it is currently set up you can glance at both and what the program or library being updated is and what it does. This is going to get problematic because let's say I update a program and it does. As far as I can tell the reason for this is to make the updater look more compact, which while it does look a little nicer, I don't think this is the solution. When updating programs or installing I want to know all the important details: name, description, size, and version. If an installer or updater doesn't give all this information then it isn't fully functional.
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Ubuntu is doing their users a disservice to their users and treating them like idiots. And with no official way to easily rollback packages in Ubuntu this could really make bug reporting kinda hairy (and yes, there are normal users that file bug reports, for instance my mom will and so will my brother. Neither one of them are very technically inclined, but they will bitch if something doesn't work like it should). Does the Ubuntu development team really think that normal users aren't able to make cause and effect connections so things like names of the programs updated don't really matter? This is the kind of hubris that keeps me off the Unity platform. Their KDE environment, on the other hand, is pretty good.
The one thing I do like about this update is that it looks like it nests dependencies. I really like this idea and think this is something more updaters and installers should do and should have been doing for a long time now. It makes things more compact and when dealing with multiple applications it shows what application is pulling in which dependency. The only thing confusing about this is that some applications might have shared dependencies.
* Joey-Elijah Sneddon. "Tweaked’ Software Updater Lands in Ubuntu 13.04". OMGUbuntu. 20130124.
* Joey-Elijah Sneddon. "Usability Tweaks Proposed for ‘Software Updater’ App". OMGUbuntu. 20130122.
According the the online Ubuntu 'zine OMGUbuntu! as a "usability update" the program Software Updater will no display the names of software only a description on what it does or is. Another change is that it looks like software dependencies are nested into a tree as well, a change that I do think it neat and does clean things up a bit.
However, it is the first change I want to focus on: why? The software updater already displays the description prominent over the name. The way it is currently set up you can glance at both and what the program or library being updated is and what it does. This is going to get problematic because let's say I update a program and it does. As far as I can tell the reason for this is to make the updater look more compact, which while it does look a little nicer, I don't think this is the solution. When updating programs or installing I want to know all the important details: name, description, size, and version. If an installer or updater doesn't give all this information then it isn't fully functional.
Ubuntu is doing their users a disservice to their users and treating them like idiots. And with no official way to easily rollback packages in Ubuntu this could really make bug reporting kinda hairy (and yes, there are normal users that file bug reports, for instance my mom will and so will my brother. Neither one of them are very technically inclined, but they will bitch if something doesn't work like it should). Does the Ubuntu development team really think that normal users aren't able to make cause and effect connections so things like names of the programs updated don't really matter? This is the kind of hubris that keeps me off the Unity platform. Their KDE environment, on the other hand, is pretty good.
The one thing I do like about this update is that it looks like it nests dependencies. I really like this idea and think this is something more updaters and installers should do and should have been doing for a long time now. It makes things more compact and when dealing with multiple applications it shows what application is pulling in which dependency. The only thing confusing about this is that some applications might have shared dependencies.