KDE Discover gets update to prevent you breaking your Linux system

These are exactly the kinds of positive UX changes we need more of in the world of Linux and which I am glad to see the Linus Linux Challenge has resulted in.

As a rule, any time a user asks a piece of software to do anything, whether it be simply starting or closing the application, or asking it to perform any kind of task, there should be clear communication of the outcome.

For example, an action that refreshes a view in a user interface:
- If the action was successful (refreshing a view), hint at that visually by flashing the display area.
- If the action was unsuccessful, present a message box with a description of exactly what went wrong.
- If the action takes longer than 400ms, present a loading indicator on the view.

The number one thing that causes UX problems, is 'lack of communication'. If you don't know what's happening, or what went wrong, trying to fix the problem is that much harder.

A simple thing like an error message saying "Error: This action cannot be completed as it would remove the following software which is critical to the system's operation:", does not take that much effort for a developer to implement, but makes a massive positive difference for users.

New users aren't 'idiots' (necessarily, I mean in some cases..), they are just new. It's not their fault if they are left confused because the software didn't fully explain itself.

This should be a minimum UX standard that should be implemented across all DEs for all 'failable' actions.

Kudos to the distros for taking onboard the feedback of the Linux Challenge and making great changes as a result. Hopefully we see more of this.


Last edited by gradyvuckovic on 21 November 2021 at 3:16 am UTC

Something to think -> is a good example which did come up denyasis (for other reasons)

If someone removes Network Manager -> is this package essential with systemd networkd still being around or not ?

Just a question :)

Question 2 to make it hard -> if one distribution says it is essential and the other says it isn't -> what would you as an developer of a not distribution package choose as an answer ?

Question 3 to make it completly lost -> what if the user wants to exchange network manager against wicd ?


Last edited by Glog78 on 21 November 2021 at 3:29 am UTC

I'll be damned. I've been using Linux since RedHat 5.2, but today I learned I'm not a real Linux user.

... Is that what you got out of my comments? How? If you don't mind me asking?

And yeah, I raised my hand when you asked who hadn't bricked their system because they were fucking around under the hood. Another shared experience I don't share I guess. I'm a fraud.

You've been around since RedHat 5.2 and you've not screwed up your system even ONCE?! Wow! Again, not sure why you believe that makes you a "fraud", but I can't help bu thinking you're a rare breed :D

Hell, from what I recall I used my entire 2-3 first YEARS breaking my system. Tweaking like a madman, installing packages east and west, trying to force packages not compiled for my distro to work, digging and punching through config files and file property settings and thinking I got the hang of things.

Essentially doing everything I never experienced Windows giving me the opportunity to do.

Zero times. There have been a couple of updates over the years that have more or less bricked things, and there have been times I've had to do a fresh install because of some fuckup or another introduced when upgrading to a new version of whatever it happened to be. But nothing because I've been fucking around under the hood because I absolutely avoid fucking around under the hood if I can at all avoid it.

I don't want to tinker. I don't want to tweak. I don't want to have to use command line if I can get away with it, although that's sometimes not possible. I just want to use my computer like a normal person on an OS I feel comfortable with. All the stuff you list there sounds beyond unpleasant.

There is a tiny little warning blended in with all the other white noise on the screen, and blaming Linus is just silly.

TINY? lol - dude, there was NO "white noise". There's FIRST an explicit warnings, very clearly put, AND info on what exact packages are about to be installed (for you to make up your own mind), then ANOTHER very explicit warning AND you're required to type a bloody SENTENCE to get through with it.
If that ain't clear enough then you're not really mature to use a system that gives you full control. You're supposed to READ what the system tells you. Read, and comprehend.

With great powers comes great responsibilities - and that goes for the package managers too. Most definitely.

But if you're after a OS that completely PADS you inside a fuzzy box where you can do nothing to harm you - well then Linux is not, was never and hopefully never will be your right choice.

this is bullshit.
it dont have to be black and white.

maybe the person want to have an desktop enviroment like KDE or gnome without all the issues that came with linux.
maybe they want to give a new life to an older hardware.
maybe they arent fluent in english and couldnt understand the whole sentence.

people shouldnt be forced to chose between all the benefits of linux or having to deal with something like windows.
this mindset is what prevent linux from geting more marketshare and as result, prevent us from having more games and softwares that support our system, until the day we can no longer do our work or live our lives because linux became unberable due to it weak ecosystem, and its not economically viable to use, or its too much headeach, too much games/softwares we have to give up.

I use Linux because it's NOT the padded regime of Windows and MacOS. There will always be a trade-off between security and efficiency.

that is why we have many distros, there is no way in hell that all of then have to cattter to linux elistists like you.
want to use some hard to use distro? there will always be an option for you, but no, you want exclusivity, you want to be one of the only ones who CAN use linux.

i bet you didnt started by compiling your own kernel and installing the user interface from scratch.

just give newbies an option, if they want to go deeper they can use arch or something, but Pop!OS isnt designed for that audience.


Last edited by elmapul on 21 November 2021 at 8:34 am UTC

. We became wiser, and better at reading and better at understanding, even RESPECTING the system.

that is, the ones who survived, the ones who didnt go back to windows.

hell.

They buy the TV with the features they want.

i use VLC because it has the features that i want AND it is open source.
i used firefox long before i knew the term open source.
and then i started respecting floss software and dontributing to it (donation, translation, bug report etc) because i believed in this cause, i saw for my self that it could produce good softwares so i wanted to support it.
i may be the exception, but if it werent for exceptions like me, we would never have something like linux to begin with.

you dont have to chose between opensource and features if you can have both, but we cant unless we increase our marketshare.

between those VERY clear warnings were a listing of what exact packages we talk about.

of course, an newbie user know what xorg is.

has experienced on our Linux system during our first year for DECADES now.

if i suffer you have to suffer too!
bullshit. if you really think like that, why are you using modern computers? go back to "paper file system", tech evolve to make our lifes easier, i bet you have an monitor instead of an printer to read those comments right?

A mac os or windows user don't understand containers and container based security and he don't want to understand why a program don't follow the theme he has set or why he needs a special driver version or or or ...

speaking of themes, one of the reasons why i started using linux was the freedom to customize, freedom is that, being able to make the system work and feel like you want.
removing theme customization like gnome is doing, or puting programs in a sandbox where they cant see the theme that the system is using to adapt (use it thenselves) feel so backward...

i won't try if a sudo rm -rf /* is catched on my distribution , cause i am 90% sure it isn't and i am to lazy to do so at least it works perfectly fine without a warning on subdirs ;)

Ha! It's not caught on my system! I pause and triple check every time I use the rm command with elevated permissions.

Reminds me of this: https://www.pcworld.com/article/431317/scary-steam-for-linux-bug-erases-all-the-personal-files-on-your-pc.html

hell the redhat CEO deleted an entire serve worth of information by accident.

There is a tiny little warning blended in with all the other white noise on the screen, and blaming Linus is just silly.

TINY? lol - dude, there's TWO explicit warnings, very clearly put, AND info on what exact packages are about to be installed, AND you're asked to type a bloody SENTENCE to get through with it.
If that ain't clear enough then you're not really mature to use a system that gives you full control.

With great powers comes great responsibilities - and that goes for the package managers too. Most definitely.

But if you're after a OS that completely PADS you inside a fuzzy box where you can do nothing to harm you - well then Linux is not, was never and hopefully never will be your right choice.

It's a real shame to see such elitist nonsense being posted here. It's techno jargon in the errors, crammed around lots of overloading info that even "power users" screw up on. There is a reason why the term "sane defaults" even exists. Unless we want Linux on the desktop to continue to be gated by zealots and remain irrelevant, we have to appeal to users who don't have the time and patience to relearn every single thing and study all error messages, just to stop their system breaking.

Nah, this time I strongly believe you are wrong, Liam.

The text was clearly indicating that they were ESSENTIAL packages, if a person doesn't understand a term, in this case what “essential” means, then that person should look that term in a dictionary.

YES, Mr. Sebastian was affected by a flaw in the Linux system that should be fixed (and it is not about APT at all), but also, YES, the youtuber has responsibility in what happened too.

you need to high light the ESSENTIAL part in eye catch color, otherwise the user will just ignore the text wall.
or do you really think any one read the terms of service of anything?

I don't think you have much of a picture of what the Linux desktop can be like for straightforward users to use.

he is too used to the problems of linux to see that it can evolve.
its almost like we didnt had ANDROID and a lot of smarth devices like tvs, digital cameras etc running linux and being easy to use at the same time.

sure, those are too dumbed down systems that you cant break but you cant do much, unless you have an way to root your device or know how to hack your camera, but come on! we can have an midle term!


Last edited by elmapul on 21 November 2021 at 8:33 am UTC

i will glue togheter my comments because there are an entire page of then.

Wait..

Why is this whole comment sections basically a continuation of the previous thread, instead of discussing the actual topic which has nothing to do with the CLI and is a GUI only move to prevent new users from bricking their DE, which I would say is very objectively a good move.

If someone thinks that this was a bad move from KDE, I would love to hear their arguments.


Last edited by Rooster on 21 November 2021 at 9:53 am UTC

Since i use arch on my machine , there is no real default "net"

Really? I'm not familiar with arch, I've used the wiki a ton... it's So helpful!!

But I'd be really surprised if you have to backup all your custom confs in /etc because pacman overwrites them on every update. Or that a DE doesn't use PolKit (or equivalent) without some sort of base default rules package.

I feel it would be a little weird to have no system safe guards, even coming from upstream.

*I could be totally wrong about Arch and if so, I'd gladly share a frosty beverage of your choice if you could enlighten me on the rules.d local override process for Polkit. Trying to fix an issue with Steam and the network.

** Oh, I missed that part in your post. If you count OpenSuse as "mainstream". It has full system snapshot by default, courtesy of BTRFS. Reboot, pick the old snapshot in GRUB and good to go! (Ok... you need a terminal command to finish the rollback, you know, altering the file system and all).

There are safe guards (like pacman usually by default don't overwrite configs but put them next to the existing file) Which is good and bad *lol* ... imagine a config not working because of a missing parameter after a reboot because you didn't checked for the new config template (hadn't had this since years but i had this a few times) *ups* << usually they are not leaving the system in an "unusable" state but i would probably define unusable different than a "newbie" :) -> imagine dns not working anymore after an systemd update or since i boot directly from efi into the kernel i once used an "outdated" way to write the root partition into efi ... lets say thanks god i always have a "normal" bootloader ready ...

With default i mean there is no default net which you can be sure to be find on every arch installation. I for example can boot my X even without polkit (init 2 -> startx /usr/bin/xterm ;) ). There are however packages with files under /usr/share/polkit-1/rules.d and /usr/share/polkit-1/actions. There is no special rule for steam (if that helps) The last issue i had with steam and network i fixed by setting up a local dns proxy and re-enabling ipv6 -> had a ipv4 only config before.

OpenSuse i would call as mainstream but when was the last time someone adviced OpenSuse somewhere for a beginner? Even during 7 pages of this discussion you and me are probably the only two who talk about OpenSuse / Suse so far. Being able to do so on the terminal is a step forward. But i guess we are far from "newbie" friendly even at this point.

i saw something even worse, not being able to login because some file was encoded with the wrong encoding.
(eg: it was UTF 8 when it should be UTF16 or the opposite)
imagine reading an file searching for errors in the code of the config file, only to realize... there is NONE, but you know that this is the file wich is causing problem...
then you change the encoding and puff! it work again!
an newbie would NEVER figure that out.

I don't really understand the outrage. What even is the use-case for a package manager to totally uninstall essential packages upon install of an unrelated package? I can get behind being able to tell the package manager to uninstall essential packages when told to do so explicitly, but installing regular application software should never make massive alterations to the foundational parts of my system to begin with. Having especially the graphical package managers protect you from accidental system breakage is nothing but a good thing.

Honestly, some of this complaining in this thread could easily be applied to --no-preserve-root or even the concept of sudo. Why is 'rm' trying to slow me down from deleting my entire root folder? Why do I need to input my password to modify system files? They are trying to turn my OS into a padded cell! Back in the good old days I could punch in arbitrary values into arbitrary memory locations and the computer stepped out of my way!

Honestly, I am totally behind Liam on this. The complaints on this issue reek of elitism and I see no value in making desktop Linux more fragile to breakage or more obscure to make some tinkerers feel better about themselves. And I say that as a tinkerer myself: I am quite willing to bet that I run a more exotic setup than many of the people that are now up in arms about how their right to tinker is somehow being trampled on. You are still perfectly able to uninstall your display managers and bootloaders even after the apt patches if you really want, just try to realize that this is an exotic use-case and 99.9% of people would only do so by accident and thus there should be some level of safety to prevent that. Even Formula 1 cars come with safety features.

For a graphical package manager frontend, that makes perfect sense as those are targeted towards to less experienced users. As long as there still is a way to decide to remove those packages in CLI, i'm fine with it tbh. i don't like that the option is removed in APT, but i think it's now a flag that has to be passed on invokation? Given that you should rarely need that, thats kind of still ok, albeit too much idiot-proofing in an area where idiots should not be doing stuff ^^

OpenSuse i would call as mainstream but when was the last time someone adviced OpenSuse somewhere for a beginner? Even during 7 pages of this discussion you and me are probably the only two who talk about OpenSuse / Suse so far. Being able to do so on the terminal is a step forward. But i guess we are far from "newbie" friendly even at this point.

Strange. You request safety features like snapshots, being able to boot those and roll back, and yet say the distro that implements all that by default is not for new users....

** Oh, I missed that part in your post. If you count OpenSuse as "mainstream". It has full system snapshot by default, courtesy of BTRFS. Reboot, pick the old snapshot in GRUB and good to go! (Ok... you need a terminal command to finish the rollback, you know, altering the file system and all).

;) it is related to the fact that a user needs to go down to the Terminal as it seems to use BTRFS Snapshots to go back. In this case it's not usable for a "beginner".

Wait..

Why is this whole comment sections basically a continuation of the previous thread, instead of discussing the actual topic which has nothing to do with the CLI and is a GUI only move to prevent new users from bricking their DE, which I would say is very objectively a good move.

If someone thinks that this was a bad move from KDE, I would love to hear their arguments.

From -> https://pointieststick.com/2021/11/19/this-week-in-kde-most-of-gnome-shell-in-the-overview-effect/ -> "Discover now prevents you from doing anything that would uninstall Plasma in the process, which is probably not what you were intending to do (Aleix Pol Gonzalez, Plasma 5.24):"

So KDE Discover now prevents you to deinstall kde plasma but you can go on and deinstall xfce or gnome which might used on a second user of this pc ? (Linus usecase ->) He doesn't liked dolphin as far as i got it and used another filemanager which can be in this scenario still be deinstalled ...


Last edited by Glog78 on 21 November 2021 at 11:08 am UTC

I don't really understand the outrage. What even is the use-case for a package manager to totally uninstall essential packages upon install of an unrelated package? I can get behind being able to tell the package manager to uninstall essential packages when told to do so explicitly, but installing regular application software should never make massive alterations to the foundational parts of my system to begin with. Having especially the graphical package managers protect you from accidental system breakage is nothing but a good thing.

Honestly, some of this complaining in this thread could easily be applied to --no-preserve-root or even the concept of sudo. Why is 'rm' trying to slow me down from deleting my entire root folder? Why do I need to input my password to modify system files? They are trying to turn my OS into a padded cell! Back in the good old days I could punch in arbitrary values into arbitrary memory locations and the computer stepped out of my way!

Honestly, I am totally behind Liam on this. The complaints on this issue reek of elitism and I see no value in making desktop Linux more fragile to breakage or more obscure to make some tinkerers feel better about themselves. And I say that as a tinkerer myself: I am quite willing to bet that I run a more exotic setup than many of the people that are now up in arms about how their right to tinker is somehow being trampled on. You are still perfectly able to uninstall your display managers and bootloaders even after the apt patches if you really want, just try to realize that this is an exotic use-case and 99.9% of people would only do so by accident and thus there should be some level of safety to prevent that. Even Formula 1 cars come with safety features.

Hi Samsai -> you are a programmer. I didn't check the implementation but from my current understanding of the issue ... either this protection should cry on nearly every installed program , cause from a user standpoint they can be essential or it does cry only on very few situations which leaves alot of loopholes and scenarios which makes it no real protection.

I really remember the times when suse's (aka suse 6.x times) default editor was vim or emacs (i don't remember which of both) and i never heard of them and wasn't able to even edit a file. So who defines and what is an essential package ? I gave an example for some questions earlier to think of why none of this solutions technically makes sense (imho) but rather complicate the way even people who have an understanding can help.


Last edited by Glog78 on 21 November 2021 at 11:09 am UTC

Hi Samsai -> you are a programmer. I didn't check the implementation but from my current understanding of the issue ... either this protection should cry on nearly every installed program , cause from a user standpoint the can be essential or it does cry only on very few situations which leaves alot of loopholes and scenarios which makes it no real protection.

So, is your argument that we shouldn't accept any solution that is less than perfect? I think you'll find that suddenly life becomes very very difficult if you start rejecting solutions simply because they are not total solutions. The world runs on compromises, and computers and their software are by themselves a massive pile of compromises built on compromises.

Sure, some users may consider certain packages essential which others would not. However, I think we can establish a fairly agreeable layering, where we designate software that is foundational and without which the normal operation of the system becomes difficult or impossible. In that grouping we can include things like bootloaders, display managers, desktop environments, init systems, package management tools and the core dependencies of the previously mentioned items. After all, I think it's common sense that some user-level application getting accidentally removed is a less of a hassle than your system not booting or entirely losing your graphical environment.

;) it is related to the fact that a user needs to go down to the Terminal as it seems to use BTRFS Snapshots to go back. In this case it's not usable for a "beginner".

So you'd prefer a graphical tool? Like in the case you've accidentally removed your X server?


But it allows you to (ro) boot from the (working) snapshot, fire up the browser and look up how to proceed. You could also just use YaST (X or ncurses) to restore changed files, but if you've badly messed up things a rollback is probably better - for which indeed command line is needed (AFAIK).

But probably we get OT here....

Nope i prefer a failsafe solution (like F5 on windows) or (androids system rescue) to be able at any point with just a button press to recover the system. Thats the idea ... boot your system with f5 -> get a selection of snapshots you can go back to -> win. I guess that would cover up 95% of the beginner mistakes or distribution problems if we can also really split userdata from systemdata (xdg standard and so on).

Hi Samsai -> you are a programmer. I didn't check the implementation but from my current understanding of the issue ... either this protection should cry on nearly every installed program , cause from a user standpoint the can be essential or it does cry only on very few situations which leaves alot of loopholes and scenarios which makes it no real protection.

So, is your argument that we shouldn't accept any solution that is less than perfect? I think you'll find that suddenly life becomes very very difficult if you start rejecting solutions simply because they are not total solutions. The world runs on compromises, and computers and their software are by themselves a massive pile of compromises built on compromises.

Sure, some users may consider certain packages essential which others would not. However, I think we can establish a fairly agreeable layering, where we designate software that is foundational and without which the normal operation of the system becomes difficult or impossible. In that grouping we can include things like bootloaders, display managers, desktop environments, init systems, package management tools and the core dependencies of the previously mentioned items. After all, I think it's common sense that some user-level application getting accidentally removed is a less of a hassle than your system not booting or entirely losing your graphical environment.

I think we should discuss those solutions not agree to them by default or hype them. All what we have currently presented is in my eyes just "acitvism" which in the end we all might more suffer than win.

I think we should discuss those solutions not agree to them by default or hype them. All what we have currently presented is in my eyes just "acitvism" which in the end we all might more suffer than win.

I agree with the solution because I see no obvious flaw that would lead to harm. The solutions implemented in Discover and apt seem to address a real, although somewhat niche, problem. They don't measurably increase complexity nor do they meaningfully harm usability, because the protection essentially only applies in situations where things are likely starting to go wrong already.

I've yet to see a convincing argument against the current implementation. The only arguments I've seen is that this somehow negatively affects the ability to tinker, which it doesn't, or that it doesn't solve every problem in the problem space of problems. It would be great if Discover and apt updates solved the world hunger, but I think expecting them to do that is maybe a bit unreasonable.

I don't know what to do with that activism comment. You seem to be vaguely gesturing at some sort of a slippery slope, but all I am seeing is developers looking at a problem and writing a small fix to prevent it from happening. I guess we could consider this activism of some kind, but that probably makes an activist of all of us programmers.

Don't know if it was intentional or not, but this tidbit here kind of blatantly equates "Linus Sebastian" to "idiot", heh :P

Eh it's a standard saying, does not mean the person is an idiot at all https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/idiot-proof

I know it's a standard saying and that it's not meant to be insulting, but the analogy between "Linus-Sebastian-proof" and "idiot-proof" still stands, both in your and Nate's quote. Not that I'm judging the choice of words, mind you :)

Pacman doesn't prevent you forcibly doing this. I sometimes remove a package that is a dependent/dependency of something else, then do my tinkering and install it again. Of course if I were to forget (hasn't happened yet!) to reinstall said package then that would be my fault and I'd rightly call myself an idiot But I should have that choice.

On Arch in file /etc/pacman.conf
[options]
...
HoldPkg = pacman glibc
...

Thanks; I know Arch doesn't and likely won't ever try to hold a user's hands, but I was asking rhetorically about Linux as an OS in general. What we're discussing here is so far only limited to a Debian-derived distro + KDE combination, but since this is a (mostly welcome) change that could very well propagate and end up affecting more distros and package managers, I'd love it if it could be made at once user-friendly but also configurable and/or toggleable for the sake of the more advanced users out there.

Don't know if it was intentional or not, but this tidbit here kind of blatantly equates "Linus Sebastian" to "idiot", heh :P

To be entirely fair, Linus does have a habit of breaking... I mean, dropping... things.

Well, dropping things makes for more views, amirite? It's the hard life of a professional "influencer" :)

Those who just want a consumer box to do their gaming on - why on earth should they install Linux to begin with?

For the same reasons they use Windows maybe, but without the added hurdles of e.g. license costs and telemetry spying? Not all consumers (i.e. non-techheads) are gamer drones who can satisfy their computing needs with consoles (or tablets, or smartphones, or other such appliances). So for these consumers there should exist a solution besides Microsoft's and Apple's closed source, spying, bloated and insecure crap; there should be an OS that allows them to use a PC in a manner as advanced or as noobish as they desire. And that's what Linux is (trying to be) all about.

Linus mentioned some gamer-oriented distros that they found but decided against those on purpose so that they could act like a regular Joe searching the 'net and trying out a popular one. So, he purposefully decided against the distro he probably should have tried out.

As per your quote (I wouldn't know myself because I don't watch Linus's streams) he did the exact opposite: he tried to act as an average Joe and install whatever a Google search for "Linux" would get him to install, instead of purposefully downloading and installing a virtually unknown (currently; because it's newer) "gamer" distro which the average Joe out there would never find and install on their own. That's exactly what I'd do myself if I were in his place (streaming tech videos for average Joes).

Those who just want a consumer box to do their gaming on - why on earth should they install Linux to begin with?

For the same reasons they use Windows maybe, but without the added hurdles of e.g. license costs and telemetry spying? Not all consumers (i.e. non-techheads) are gamer drones who can satisfy their computing needs with consoles (or tablets, or smartphones, or other such appliances). So for these consumers there should exist a solution besides Microsoft's and Apple's closed source, spying, bloated and insecure crap; there should be an OS that allows them to use a PC in a manner as advanced or as noobish as they desire. And that's what Linux is (trying to be) all about.

If you intentionally want to delete something, wouldn't you normally do it by, I dunno, using a "delete something" command of some sort, not by trying to trigger the deletion by installing a package? As far as I know, nobody's done anything to the stuff you do when you're trying to delete things.

No, there is no actual difference between explicitly trying to remove a (critical) package, and a misconfigured package inadvertently launching the same process for removing a (critical) package. It's the same "piece of code" as far as apt is concerned, it's just that you've arrived there by following two different paths. So whatever alterations are made to the destination will affect both paths.

which would mean those approved-of people would be in a position to know they needed to add "--let-it-hose-my-system"

At least in my case no, I wasn't aware, hence the *hint*/*wink* part of my previous comment. As long as this override switch does exist, then it's pretty much my ideal situation as far as functionality is concerned (i.e. it's a much better solution than having the user type out that cheesy phrase).

I know that because I read about Linux, not because I use Linux. As a Linux user, I have no awareness of that. I have an applet for sound stuff on my taskbar; if it isn't in the setting when I right click that applet, I don't know about it. So no, that fact isn't relevant at all.

That's an example of great UX, and it's what I'd love Linux to become in its entirety: an OS that behind the scenes allows you full choice in how to configure your system and what components to install or leave out if you so desire, but that on the surface it handles those things for you and it Just Works™ so that even my grandmother can use it.

As an analogy for anyone who may have watched the WALL-E film, I've always dreamed for Linux to become a beautiful, polished, Mac-like EVE with a simple and intuitive interface and two (figuratively speaking) buttons: one large one in the front for "power on and let us handle everything for you, enjoy your stay dear user" and one small one in the back for "open hatch and enter WALL-E mode".

These are exactly the kinds of positive UX changes we need more of in the world of Linux and which I am glad to see the Linus Linux Challenge has resulted in.

As a rule, any time a user asks a piece of software to do anything, whether it be simply starting or closing the application, or asking it to perform any kind of task, there should be clear communication of the outcome.

For example, an action that refreshes a view in a user interface:
- If the action was successful (refreshing a view), hint at that visually by flashing the display area.
- If the action was unsuccessful, present a message box with a description of exactly what went wrong.
- If the action takes longer than 400ms, present a loading indicator on the view.

The number one thing that causes UX problems, is 'lack of communication'. If you don't know what's happening, or what went wrong, trying to fix the problem is that much harder.

A simple thing like an error message saying "Error: This action cannot be completed as it would remove the following software which is critical to the system's operation:", does not take that much effort for a developer to implement, but makes a massive positive difference for users.

New users aren't 'idiots' (necessarily, I mean in some cases..), they are just new. It's not their fault if they are left confused because the software didn't fully explain itself.

This should be a minimum UX standard that should be implemented across all DEs for all 'failable' actions.

Kudos to the distros for taking onboard the feedback of the Linux Challenge and making great changes as a result. Hopefully we see more of this.

Just a lucky guess here, but you sound like a web designer or at least an experienced UX guy. Kudos to you, we desperately need more UX guys in the open source part of the world.

people shouldnt be forced to chose between all the benefits of linux or having to deal with something like windows.

Exactly this! As the Linux community we should be striving for the best of both (or three if we include the Macs, as we should) worlds.

What even is the use-case for a package manager to totally uninstall essential packages upon install of an unrelated package? I can get behind being able to tell the package manager to uninstall essential packages when told to do so explicitly, but installing regular application software should never make massive alterations to the foundational parts of my system to begin with.

Well, this change is actually all about completely preventing the package manager from uninstalling essential packages when told to do so, either explicitly or implicitly. What produced the error Linus faced was trying to install a misconfigured package combined with his/the system's failure to first update the package listings before he tried to install it; it's just that this misconfigured package ended up firing apt's "remove essential package" routine and from thereon there was nothing to prevent apt from doing exactly as ordered, beyond that one silly "fail-safe" (which shouldn't ever have been implemented in the first place).

PS - Damn, reading a thread with so many comments and wanting to reply to so many of them is really a b*tch to manage without ending up with a small essay instead of a comment... Sorry about the real estate abuse.

I think we should discuss those solutions not agree to them by default or hype them. All what we have currently presented is in my eyes just "acitvism" which in the end we all might more suffer than win.

I agree with the solution because I see no obvious flaw that would lead to harm. The solutions implemented in Discover and apt seem to address a real, although somewhat niche, problem. They don't measurably increase complexity nor do they meaningfully harm usability, because the protection essentially only applies in situations where things are likely starting to go wrong already.

I've yet to see a convincing argument against the current implementation. The only arguments I've seen is that this somehow negatively affects the ability to tinker, which it doesn't, or that it doesn't solve every problem in the problem space of problems. It would be great if Discover and apt updates solved the world hunger, but I think expecting them to do that is maybe a bit unreasonable.

I don't know what to do with that activism comment. You seem to be vaguely gesturing at some sort of a slippery slope, but all I am seeing is developers looking at a problem and writing a small fix to prevent it from happening. I guess we could consider this activism of some kind, but that probably makes an activist of all of us programmers.

Ok very slowly ... if someone of you can tell me how you want to solve the problem which programs are essential to a user in the user environment i would agree with this solution. Here again some question which might make it more obvious from a "scenario" which can happen:

...

If someone removes Network Manager -> is this package essential with systemd networkd still being around or not ?

Just a question :)

Question 2 to make it hard -> if one distribution says it is essential and the other says it isn't -> what would you as an developer of a none distribution package choose as an answer ? (in this case kde discover?)

Question 3 to make it completly lost -> what if the user wants to exchange network manager against wicd ?

Last edited by Glog78 on 21 November 2021 at 11:51 am UTC

Well, this change is actually all about completely preventing the package manager from uninstalling essential packages when told to do so, either explicitly or implicitly. What produced the error Linus faced was trying to install a misconfigured package combined with his/the system's failure to first update the package listings before he tried to install it; it's just that this misconfigured package ended up firing apt's "remove essential package" routine and from thereon there was nothing to prevent apt from doing exactly as ordered, beyond that one silly "fail-safe" (which shouldn't ever have been implemented in the first place).

I am aware of the scenario. Apt still retains the ability to uninstall essential packages and that counts as having the ability to explicitly order such a removal for me. The only difference is that now the fail-safe mechanism is stronger and will better dissuade users who don't actually know what they are doing.