New (to me) update notifications in Ubuntu 9.04, plus fixing a 'Distribution Updates' issue in the Update Manager
I finally experienced my first "phantom" update notification in Ubuntu 9.04. In previous versions of the system, a little icon on the upper panel would notify me that updates were available. I could either click the icon and open the Update Manager, then do the update.
But in this new system, the icon is gone. At some interval that I don't understand, the Update Manager just opens, minimized. I brought the window up and did the updates.
It's kind of jarring to have that Update Manager window just start up on its own. I've seen a lot of controversy over this change, both in Launchpad and in the Ubuntu Forums (I don't have the links right now, or I'd link 'em up here).
I also have a single package, gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad, listed under the category "Distribution Updates" in the Update Manager, which can't be checked to update.
In this forum thread, the problem is acknowledged but not solved.
I did see somewhere that upgrading the package through Synaptic instead of the Update Manager can make it work.
Here's what I did:
I went into the Synaptic Package Manager, did a "quick search" for gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad and "manually" upgraded the package, which required the removal of another package, gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mpegdemux
Now I'm the proud owner of gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad version 0.10.11-0ubuntu1, and Update Manager is cleared out.
So ... it appears that the Update Manager is loath to remove a package, but Synaptic is not.
3 Comments
Leave a comment
About this blog
New ways to sign in to comment: I just added the ability for prospective commenters on this blog to sign in using their AOL, Yahoo! and Wordpress.com accounts (for the past 200 posts anyway ... more than that will take an extensive, middle-of-the-night rebuild). That's in addition to the other sign-in choices, which include starting a Movable Type account on this blog, Typekey, OpenID, Live Journal and Vox. If you have trouble getting your Movable Type account verified, or any of the other sign-in options are not working properly, please e-mail me. With these added ways of signing in, there's more reason than ever for you to make a comment (or several!).
Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
Steven Rosenberg aims to learn what he does not know. He writes about it here.
I was wondering about this. I thought I screwed something up switching from xfce to gnome, because it didn't do this in xubuntu 9.04. Pretty lame.
http://www.ubuntumini.com/2009/05/remove-pop-up-update-manager.html is the only place I have seen instructions for putting the Update Manager back in "normal" mode. Even though the website is for Dell's Mini 9, the instructions work for any Ubuntu 9.04 installation.
I've pretty much gotten used to the "new" way of Update Manager in Ubuntu.
I've had the box appear minimized, and not minimized (I guess you'd call that "maximized").
I suppose it's more Windows- and Mac-like to have a window open with some actual information in it rather than a icon appearing on the top taskbar that you have to click to figure out. Of course once you run Ubuntu (or any GNOME desktop-based distro) for awhile, you figure all this stuff out.
But I bet they had usability studies with people who had no idea what the notification icons at the top of the screen meant. So from that standpoint, I understand the change.
What I don't understand is how the control the timing of the Update Manager pop-up. Does it wait for some updates but pop up immediately for others? That I don't know.
I've been running aptitude update && aptitude upgrade lately anyway (and using Aptitude a lot anyway), so I'm not relying on the Update Manager as much.
So let's just say that after the initial shock wore off, I was more or less OK with the change.