System Update Daemon & UI Feedback

[sorceresslucienne]

Hi,

So first of all, I fully acknowledge that by using xfce in place of Pantheon as my daily driver I am outside the realm of support. With that said, I think there is some nuance for discussion here and so I'll share my experience in good faith anyway. This is something I have a solution for myself personally so there's no real issue here even if this discussion is closed with a blanket "No.", but think there are some opportunities to streamline things for folks using Pantheon and other desktop environments if you'll hear me out. More potential users for you and more flexibility for your existing ones, is my thinking. Ultimately I think this is such a great distro to support, and so even though I am using Pantheon less than y'all probably want me to lol, I still am proud and happy to be using elementary OS and want to help improve it.

1. So first, you can run "io.elementary.settings" ("System Settings", where you can click on "System" and check for system updates) just fine in other desktop environments (if xfce is anything to go by). Awesome! Works just as well as the AppCenter in other desktop environments (again, in xfce anyway).

Bummer is though, unlike the backend for the AppCenter (which I assume is the "io.elementary.appcenter --silent" task running in the background at login), the "System Settings"/system updates daemon ("io.elementary.settings-daemon") does not start up automatically at login in other desktop environments. I've remedied this for myself, but I'm curious why this is the case when it isn't for the AppCenter one. Is this something that could be modified to do regardless of whether Pantheon is in use?

For reference, you just get a "Cannot connect to the backend" error when you check for system updates if you try. No big deal - you start the daemon up and tell it to check again and it works. The implication of this though obviously is that if you do want to switch desktop environments, you'll never get system updates unless you notice the daemon isn't running and fix that for yourself. It didn't even occur to me at first that system updates aren't coming through the AppCenter, and that there even was a separate daemon for those.

2. Once you do install system updates though there's another quirk: elementary OS uniquely doesn't install system updates that require a restart unless you explicitly tell it to - I kinda like that honestly! With that said, there's no way to trigger that in other desktop environments without logging out first and doing it from the login screen (xfce's "Restart" will just reboot, it won't trigger the updates to happen). Small inconvenience ultimately. With that said, would it be possible to place a "Restart and Apply Updates" button within the "System Settings"/system updates UI itself so you can do it from there once you check for them and they're ready for a reboot? A way to just tell it to always install system updates on reboot would be nice too, so it's a non-issue going forward. I can't really think of a use case where I wouldn't want that to happen anyway.

Again, if these things aren't possible or are totally outside the realm of what you want to touch development-wise, I understand. With that said, these are a small couple of changes that could give folks like myself a little bit more flex to use whatever they want while still being in elementary OS' ecosystem.

Let me know if I posted this in the wrong place. :-) I don't have a lot of personal experience using GitHub and don't know y'all's workflows either.

Thanks, y'all!
-Eri

[danirabbit]

Hey thanks for that feedback! It’s worth opening an issue report in system settings for a button to restart and update from within system settings

however we probably should prevent system settings and elementary settings daemon from running in other desktops since they contain a lot of stuff that’s specific to pantheon. So many settings will just not apply or will probably conflict and maybe cause breakage with other desktop environments. It’s really not meant to be a mix-n-match kind of situation. I know that’s not a answer that you’d like to hear sorry!

[sorceresslucienne]

Cool, I'll go fill out an issue report for that button. :-)

And no worries at all, it's really helpful to know where elementary OS is designed to start and stop. May I ask what other kinds of stuff that daemon does? I will use it at my own risk haha.

Oh, and would be an appropriate feature request to add a button somewhere to enable the daemon in other desktop environments, just so updates can happen? There could be some disclaimer on it.

[teamcons]

Oh, and would be an appropriate feature request to add a button somewhere to enable the daemon in other desktop environments, just so updates can happen? There could be some disclaimer on it.

Not directly Ellie Gang here, but ive seen similar requests go nowhere - and thats because dev time is precious, and the primary focus has always been to try and keep the internals tidy and focused for the primary goal of a curated computing experience. Moving internals for sidequests may come at a cost down the line for maintaining, and maintaining code only for outside people who may or may not care anymore could also be quite the burden.

So this may be better in the hands of a couple patchers and packagers, maybe with some kind of pantheon-tweaks tool, focused for more Mix Nd Match approaches. I definitively can see mixing up xfce4 and Pantheon! But the former embraces flexibility while the latter is more of a carefully crafted meal.

Though if you offer a case where it may avoid some possible bug on elementary OS, it would definitively invite more consideration! So do not hesitate to leave in a feature request if you think pure pantheon users would benefit from it, even if your personal use case is a bit less traditional

[danirabbit]

@sorceresslucienne

May I ask what other kinds of stuff that daemon does

It handles the settings portal in Pantheon including things like dark style and accent colors, housekeeping, firmware updates, drivers, etc. The project is here if you wanna dive in more: https://github.com/elementary/settings-daemon

would be an appropriate feature request to add a button somewhere to enable the daemon in other desktop environments

I would say probably not. We should probably make sure settings-daemon self aborts in other desktop environments actually.

just so updates can happen?

This should be handled by whatever normally handles system updates in XFCE

[sorceresslucienne]

Thanks for the replies, y'all! :-)