[bArray]

> It isn't reasonable to have different default behaviour - otherwise the majority of users would be vulnerable from a security perspective.

A better default behaviour would be to alert the user and allow them to choose to indefinitely defer by "accepting the risk". Some setups, rightfully or wrongfully, have a very long running time and cannot be restarted.

> If you want different behaviour, just configure it as you wish.

I'm not sure if it changed, but they made it extremely difficult on purpose. You can stop snap from updating, but then lots of other things also break.

> This just isn't a reasonable description of reality.

It's my experience with packages I use.

[rlpb]

> A better default behaviour would be to alert the user and allow them to choose to indefinitely defer by "accepting the risk".

That would be terrible UX and is exactly contrary to Ubuntu's philosophy, which is to do the right thing by default.

The alternative is to bombard the user with questions that they're generally not in a position to understand, and force them to receive an education on stuff that doesn't matter to most users before they can use their computer.

[bArray]

> That would be terrible UX and is exactly contrary to Ubuntu's philosophy, which is to do the right thing by default.

Even in Windows (or at least it used to be), the decision to perform an update now was a user decision. Just killing off applications without warning is the worst UX ever. Randomly killing stuff off is the opposite of what I want my OS doing.

> The alternative is to bombard the user with questions that they're generally not in a position to understand, and force them to receive an education on stuff that doesn't matter to most users before they can use their computer.

It doesn't have to be like that. It could be: "Do you want to update now? The following programs are affected and will be restarted: X, Y, Z. [Learn more]" The answers could be "Yes", "Remind me on next boot", "Remind me later" (offers common delays, i.e. 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week).

What is should never do is take the power away from a user. I saw an Ubuntu user's system restart their snap programs in the middle of delivering a conference presentation without warning. That was the worst way that could have been handled.

[rlpb]

> I saw an Ubuntu user's system restart their snap programs in the middle of delivering a conference presentation without warning.

It's been years since they added warnings for upcoming snap updates. There's also "refresh awareness", which defers updates (to a limit, with warnings before exceeding the limit) while a user is using an app.