Desktop UI folks, WHY is this acceptable?

Thoughts & Feedback
#1

Hello,

I will try to be polite but I cannot think of any good reasons for this other than your ignorance.

my user experience: I press “restart” … i wait… i am presented with mate logos [as tho you’re so awesome] for what seems like an eternity. i enter the console to see that there is some random timer counting down 1 minute and a half holding up the restart. idk why, if i hadn’t pressed esc to see it i’d’ve never known what was going on. i’d just think my computer (or rather since win can reboot in seconds, that your software) is really slow.

why is it acceptable to have ubuntu mate desktop not respond to a user interface command in any discernible way? why is it acceptable to have the user click on something, make him believe something is happening, and then not do it without showing an error or warning of sorts?

wouldn’t it be friendlier to say “hey, ■■■■■■-user, we know you want to shutdown, but this random-ass process is holding things up, would you like to wait for it?”?

thank you for explaining your design choices to me. i will learn how to use ubuntu-mate better based on your responses. i will stop thinking you are just insane careless people because that is currently what it looks like to me!

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#2

See [#4] of the following discussion.

https://ubuntu-mate.community/t/ubuntu-mate-16-04-lts-common-problems-known-bugs-workarounds/8340

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#3

Hi @BananaPeal,

Whenever I try to shut down my computer while a program is still running, I get a window asking if I want to wait or shut down anyway.

If you’re not getting that, it probably means there’s something deeper going on in your system (refer to @steven’s link above), which is very likely outside of the Ubuntu MATE environment.

In either case, this community, and thus the project itself, doesn’t thrive on ad hominem attacks, but we do value a good bug report that can direct the developers to fix an issue, no matter how obscure.

A good place to start would be on launchpad, where a developer is likely to see it and start the triage process. Screenshots, copy-pastes, or even a photo of your screen can go a long way in helping to understand what the issue is and how to fix it :slight_smile:

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#4

Like with most people who start a sentence with ‘I will try to be polite’, you aren’t being polite.

But anyway. Yes this is frustrating. It’s to do with systemd shutting down processes before powering down your machine. Sometimes processes crash and systemd seems to give it 1m30s to get it’s act together before killing it. I think this is far too long, but also, it’s useful to know which program has crashed. I’m not sure whether pressing ctrl-C when you see it held up might quit the waiting.

It’s also nothing to do with the desktop UI. But hey.

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#5

Yep, I’ve noticed random slow shutdowns ever since systemd is introduced, as well as less effective “wild” and “zombie” process killing generally. Since I am not an engineer, I am not sure why’s that, but there HAS been huge disagreements about introducing systemd, mentioning, among others, exactly these issues.

On my system these are rather rare (and becoming rarer), so I don’t make much of a fuss about it (for now… :wink: ), anyway, but it’s certainly NOT about the UI. :slight_smile:

#6

Yes I saw this too with the introduction of systemd. I found apport and whoopsie were crashing (ironic for crash-reporting apps - though I also came across the same issue on OSX recently with their crash reporter), and it was affecting shutdown. If you uninstall both of these, it can resolve the issue.

Not sure what it was that upstart was doing before. Probably just killing everything… (suits me!)

#7

This is a well-known issue. The solution is to open /etc/systemd/system.conf as root and change the following lines from:

DefaultTimeoutStartSec=90s
DefaultTimeoutStopSec=90s

to:

DefaultTimeoutStartSec=10s
DefaultTimeoutStopSec=10s

You’re welcome.

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#8

I have often thought WHY is this acceptable:
Use free software that many people have put time and even love into, mostly in their free time and for free and have someone come along and think it is acceptable to complain with attitude.

So far I am enjoying Ubuntu-MATE, 17.10 and 18.04. I did a nuke and pave as well as switched systems and love what the Ubuntu-MATE team have done.
THANK YOU!

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