I’ve been using Ubuntu Jaunty for a few weeks now. So far, I’ve been very happy with it, and there have been some great improvements - most notably for me, the boot time - I run it on two different laptops (work and home), so I go through the boot sequence at least once a day.

There is, however, one new “feature” in Jaunty that I find unhelpful, and apparently a lot of people agree. The update manager behavior has been changed. Instead of just showing an icon in the system tray when updates are available, Jaunty actually starts up the update manage application. Apparently, the thinking is that the system tray tends to get a lot of junk in it, and people ignore the update icon. The Ubuntu dev team wanted to make sure that people apply updates in a timely fashion, and felt that actually starting the update manager would encourage people to do so. At least they have it pop up unfocused, and behind other active windows. However, I prefer the old behavior, and don’t ignore the update icon. I also feel that a gui application like this should never be started without the user initiating it. I can just see myself in front of a roomful of people, doing a demo, and having the update manager pop up on the projector. That would be very professional :-(

To regain the old behavior, execute the following command:

gconftool -s --type bool /apps/update-notifier/auto_launch false