I don’t think it should require any user interaction. There’s nothing useful a user can do about the situation. The upgrade is already done! We’re just being annoying by asking for confirmation.
I’m not sure what to do about this. I put a lot of effort into making the release notes useful across different distros, and it would be a shame to remove them. I also believe most users benefit from them—no one has ever complained.
But if you or Jamie prefer to remove them, I won’t argue—go ahead and do it.
As a user I don’t mind the message notifying me that the os has upgraded itself and the button text change has cleared up things.
There could be issues with other packages when an os is updated even with a minor change and it is good to know when this happens.
I run my updates manually so I know if the recent updates breaks anything. I appreciate this is probably a rare event.
At some point, we all started talking about personal preferences here! When the OS is upgraded, it provides a changelog. We should simply show that log to users—that’s all.
Your OS provider upgraded you.
OK (button)
Let’s user know WM/VM didn’t break whatever it is they are about to complain about.
With Debian I don’t know that I’ve ever seen this message anyhow. Other than what is being downloaded/torrented/whatever… there is no real upgrade with a point release. Just accumulated bug fixes.
I’m not opposed to showing release notes at all. I’m saying we shouldn’t demand an answer to a question with only one answer.
Great! Though could you clarify when and how it would be displayed? What exactly are you proposing, considering I’ve already changed the button name?
Just incase you missed above and I am not 100% what the button text is currently.
- button text should be
Ok - keep the text as shown in the example above but add the line or similar
This update was done automatic by the OS and not Webmin.
Make a link and hover over the OS name and version in the information section, perhaps?
But, it may not have been done automatically. The user may have updated on the command line with dnf or via the Package Updates module in Webmin. So, it may very well have been triggered by the user using Webmin. How the upgrade happened is kind of irrelevant to the problem. The problem is we’re demanding the user make a decision about something that has already happened and for which there is only one reasonable answer. That’s bad UI. The user interface should not make the user make decisions about something in the past, or give them the idea that they have to make a decision about something in the past, which is how a lot of people are interpreting this (this is not the first time it’s come up, and it’s been refactored several times over the years). Making the user make unnecessary decisions is bad. Decisions about something for which there is no reasonable alternative answer or anything useful the user can do about it are really bad.
Informing them about a change to their OS and pointing them to the release notes may be useful. But, making them think they have some say in the matter after it’s already done is silly.
Alright, so it’s just about tweaking the message itself and simply labeling the button as “Dismiss” while automatically patching the Webmin config, yet still showing the alert message?
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Because I still see it as part of a dismissible alert message—we do want to inform the user about the change that happened.
That makes sense to me, so adjusting the message itself should address the issue, I think?
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You’re still demanding they answer a question they don’t need to answer.
Yes, that’s right—I still don’t think the alert with a confirmation button is as bad as it’s being made out to be. More importantly, @Jamie designed it this way, and it has worked like this for decades.
That said, I see this as a distraction from doing something truly valuable. There’s plenty of meaningful work to focus on rather than wasting time on minor details.
Now I think about this, if the version update is minor (like 9.4 to 9.5) we could just apply it automatically as part of Webmin’s background status collection and not even bother to notify the user. Even though we’ve shown this notification for a long time, I agree with Joe that it doesn’t really add any value because the update will have no effect on how Webmin / Virtualmin behaves.
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Alright, there’s definitely some good in this—asking unnecessary questions is generally bad practice. I agreed with Joe on that and still think it’s the right approach in general.
What I don’t like in this particular case is that the “Release Notes” link would either have to be removed or placed somewhere else, and we haven’t decided where yet. It would also be visible all the time. I’m considering adding an icon next to the OS name and version in the “Operating System” column on the dashboard. That could work, but the major downside is that users wouldn’t know when a minor OS update occurs and if there’s something to check on, because the link would always display the same icon.
But okay, if this feature is voted out, we have no choice but to find an alternative way to display release notes. We also need to decide if and how we should indicate minor OS upgrades in the UI—I’m open to suggestions.
I don’t mind having the message with a dismiss button, TBH I like having them so I know that an update has occured. Perhaps the update was pushed because of a really bad security flaw and a link to the release notes would allow me to see this etc…
You could put the release notes next to OS name and version and still have the notification banner/message. There is no harm in having the link in both.
There is the option of sending an email to admins like we do with the regular and security updates. Maybe add a checkbox here to send a minor release update email. i think a checkbox is better than a radio because of the different combinations, i.e. I would want the minor and security update notifications only.
A link to the release notes can be handy. As a newbie I would have to chase them down on the internet 
Agreed, as that was one of my original intentions.
Yes, except implementing it cleanly may be challenging, and time consuming!
That sounds like an excellent idea, especially now that we have the facility to send email notifications for each module. What do you think, @Jamie?
Hang on, isn’t the question here just about how we handle Webmin’s detection of a new OS version? That’s separate from how updates to new versions get installed.
Yes, Webmin detection of the OS, right. And, if this happens automatically in the future, as Joe suggested, we could then allow sending an email notification with that information and a link to the OS release notes.