Something I don’t love about Silverblue with GNOME as it is today is that there is little visibility into ongoing OS upgrades, e.g. when rpm-ostree is pulling down a new OS deployment.
And worse, unless I am misunderstanding what is happening, it seems to also make GNOME Software seem to hang when in fact it is doing important (albeit what should be background) work.
@cassidy GNOME Software is still unfortunately a bit rough around the edges in this area. I wonder if they'll eventually add some sort of integration in a similar vein as how it works with dnf on mainline Fedora.
I've personally resorted to just taking a peek with rpm-ostree status if I want to see if anything is going on, but I don't think "just use Terminal" is in any sense a real answer, especially for Average Joe. But it can band-aid help now, at least.
@jibsaramnim yep, I have to do the same and it’s frustrating, especially as I am not going to ask my four-year-old to do that—but I could reasonably tell them to let me know if there is a System Update Downloading notification when they are done using it!
@cassidy It's quite surprising that this hasn't made it into GNOME Software yet (nor through an extension or so). I believe that's several other DEs have resorted to showing updates are available and/or being downloaded, simply by showing a tray icon or so.
Having it connected to the shutdown/restart UI in a similar way that it shows you when "another user" us currently logged in would be even better. At least that way you can find out before you inadvertently kill the update.
@cassidy Nice! I'd love to hear back from you if you do end up being able to cook up a prototype of sorts. I'd love to contribute in some way if I can :D
On my Android devices, I get a little persistent notification that there is ongoing background OS updating work. That’s nice to know “oh cool, yeah that monthly update I heard about is being installed behind the scenes,” but can be doubly important visibility for a laptop I’d normally shut down when done; I shouldn’t shut down right now if I want to be running the most secure version ASAP. Otherwise I’d have to wait when I use the computer next time (and for longer) for it to finish.
Maybe this gets into a bigger question about communicating long-running processes… Android uses notifications and while I understand that it might not be the best place (long-running processes are very different from realtime chat messages!), we also don’t have a good place to stick a progress bar today.
There is the Background Apps area in Quick Settings which maybe works, but of course GNOME Software doesn’t show up there. 🙈 Other FD.o platforms support a progress bar on a taskbar or dock. 🙉
This specific situation is probably less of an issue on more powerful always-on machines with persistent high speed network connections, but on my little low-power laptop with a garbage Wi-Fi card that is only on for short times when the kid is using it, it means I am regularly checking rpm-ostree from the terminal to see what is going on, and then manually leaving it open and sitting there to constantly check on its progress. Otherwise, it would practically forever be on an old OS version.
@cassidy My old gaming laptop is always on the charger at home on consistent WiFi, and Silverblue updates were still painfully confusing and slow, at least until I switched to Universal Blue, which improved things somewhat. Here’s to hoping it gets better with future updates!
Additionally I remove the rpm-ostree backend in bluefin so that gnome-software only manages flatpak installation and firmware notifications. And then we also turn off all the gnome-software notifications.
Hah, totally opposite of what Cassidy is thinking of.
@jorge@leaferiksen not totally the opposite; for apps I think auto-updating the world by default is great, and I think auto-downloading OS updates (respecting metered data ofc) is great as well. And I don't know that a notification is the right answer.
My underlying want is just a way to help users know what's happening if they want to know, and know when they need to reboot to actually get the latest. Because we see folks just never reboot, so they'd never get OS updates in this model.
@cassidy Hadn’t really thought about that. I guess it is a hard call whether something subtle and persistent (eg kde’s system tray restart to update button) can actually work as well as a notification.
I just remembered that this ties into a longstanding issue we’ve observed at Endless on the other end of this problem space: some people never reboot! So if you make updates transparent and automatic on reboot, you really need to encourage some folks to reboot. Gradually increasing to the point of being unignorable.
Start with a little blue dot on the power icon, escalate to a scary red power icon with a ❗ and a big scary message on click saying you need to reboot to get the latest updates.
I have to remember to unpack this thread and file all the appropriate issues tomorrow, because it feels too close to work and it’s Sunday night, damnit! 😜
@alatiera yep, the same idea (and a source of inspiration). But legit needed. We’ve seen people—both very technically inclined and very not—just never close their browser, let alone reboot their laptop. 😱 Literally:
>“I reported this issue a month ago, why hasn’t it been fixed?”
“We sent the update out three weeks ago, when was the last time you rebooted?”
>“Reboot and lose my tabs? Why would I do that‽”
So what Google learned on the browser (and ChromeOS) side is even more relevant to us.
@alatiera yeah, I’m just super wary of any automatic restart, especially because our ecosystem doesn’t use inhibition and autosave reliably at all. Losing people's work is super shitty unless they very explicitly opted into that.
@alatiera that’s the same as Android: the download is the long process but the install is a partition switch on reboot.
My point is that pulling down the update shouldn’t be entirely transparent, IMHO. There’s value in knowing, “yes, that security update you heard about is being pulled down, it should be ready in about an hour” or however long it’ll take your network.
I agree that it should be downloaded automatically in the background when unmetered, but not completely invisibly.
@alatiera I mean, we have a(n on-by-default!) preference for automatic app update notifications for what I imagine is a similar reason. In that case I actually turn them off, but for something that is going to take a longer time and affects the security of my whole system, right now there is virtually no visibility into it.
@alatiera I literally can’t open GNOME Software to check if it shows anything while an OS update is being downloaded, because it has been stuck on “Downloading software catalog” for the past hour. 💀
But yeah, a notification mentioning it would be fine! Just something so I don’t have to open and babysit the terminal once a week until it is done…
@alatiera I would probably throw a “System Update Installing” (or “Downloading,” idk) notification if you’re unmetered and it’s actually downloading, then clicking that should take you to the progress in Software.
On metered connections, yeah, a “System Update Available” notification that takes you to the Updates tab in Software would probably be fine… maybe that’s what it already does, but Software is just so broken I never get that far until the update is already downloaded? idk
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