The question of how best to present and enable software and system updates to Linux users has resulted in different distributions doing things their own distinctive way.
For instance, on the Ubuntu-based Chinese distro Linux Deepin software updates are intergrated directly within the Deepin Software Center, creating a one-stop-hub for all things app-related — an approach I’d love to see Ubuntu adopt.
Ubuntu uses Update Manager, a standalone tool for updating apps, dependencies, kernels and other packages, that is straightforward in what it does (and easy to use), but which newer users, less familiar with the kinds of information it shows, find intimidating.
So change is afoot.
In Ubuntu 12.10, Update Manager is being renamed to simply Software Updater. The new nomenclature underscores the tool’s key purpose: to update software, not manage it.
To wit: Software Updater clearly tells a user ‘this is the tool that updates your software’, whereas the less-specific ‘Update Manager’ could be mistaken for a tool for managing updates, rather than checking for and installing new ones.
Unlike Synaptic or the Ubuntu Software Center, you can’t uninstall things using Update Manager, so Software Updater ditches the risk of that misconception.
This app renaming arrives ahead of a wider UI ‘overhaul’ to the Software Updater app itself, the exact makeup of which we’ll see develop in the coming weeks as development on Ubuntu 12.10 steps up a year ahead of its arrival in the autumn.
Thanks: Marco