Autostarts + checks for updates: Switching to an opt-in model for packagers?
As you might have guessed from the title, this is more of a feature request than an Issue.
As of this writing Discover launches by default on any new installment of Plasma. But it is also subscribed as an "autostart" application, while also autochecking for new updates out of the box right after the user has installed Plasma.
Would it be possible to give packagers more leeway by moving to an opt-in or opt-out model, by allowing them to select:
- whether they want Discover to autostart?
- whether they want Discover to autocheck for updates?
There are two reasons motivating this request.
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The autostart + autocheck settings sends a bad message to users of rolling-release distributions. For if you are such a user, you seldom wants to perform system upgrades as soon as a new update is available. Instead, you want to wait until bugs are identified and corrected, or you want to upgrade using an update policy which is not at all amenable to the "apply updates as they come" strategy that Discover proposes (for example on openSUSE Tumbleweed some users might typically prefer to turn to a "smarter" update policy, for example one on which all system packages are updated together in a single pass and represent collectively a "meaningful" state of the system ("snapshots").
-
It adds overhead / noise on distributions that have their own built-in GUI app for managing software. Here unfortunately my argument loses generality because I know only openSUSE Yast that does that.
If I am not mistaken Discover makes it difficult for packagers to opt out of the autostart + autocheck features. Do you think it would be possible to make their life a little bit easier by switching to defaults allowing for an easy opt-in/opt-out configuration for packagers?