14 DAY TRIAL // Linux Mint developers have improved the Update Manager for the distribution and it should now provide much better and concise information about the updates the user is downloading.
Most of the update managers used today by various distributions, including Ubuntu and Linux Mint, give way too much information to the user by default. Most people don't really want to know every last library or dependency that is updated, and if it's a bigger package, the amount of information presented is sometimes way too much.
To be fair, the Update Manager for Linux Mint has already improved tremendously in the last couple of years and it's one of the best out there. It has simple and clear information about what's being updated, but it looks like there is still room for improvement.
Linux Mint is getting better
Not many developers bother to make major improvements to the operating system after it has been launched. They usually release various fixes, security updates, and various upgrades for packages, but nothing too substantial. This doesn't really apply to Linux Mint and the devs are still making some subtle but interesting changes.
"The Update Manager no longer shows package updates, but updates (i.e. one line per source package). This means you will no longer see 20 lines or so per LibreOffice update but just a few. To give you an example, on my box this reduced the number of updates from 550 to just under 200."
"Our policy is for users to be selective when they update software, so showing less information and more relevant information makes a lot of sense. A Cinnamon update for instance doesn't need to list cinnamon, cinnamon-dbg, cinnamon-common... assuming you were able to only update one of these 3 packages, it wouldn't work anyway. So that cinnamon update is now listed simply as "cinnamon" and it includes updates for all 3 packages," says the leader of the Linux Mint and Cinnamon projects, Clement Lefebvre.
Providing clear and concise details about the updates sounds like a very good idea and it only makes you wonder why other distros are not doing the same thing. In the case of Linux Mint it looks like a simple enough modification, so it shouldn't be that hard.
The developer also explains that the size and the previous version columns that were available before are still present, but hidden from view, and the application will no longer close by default after the update process has been completed.