NTP not installed by default: user confusion guaranteed

[Paul Harrison]

In the 7.04 beta, the "Date/Time" dialog provides a drop down allowing the user to synchronize with Internet servers rather than set the time manually. Only the NTP services, which are required for the feature to operate, are not installed by default. The user is then presented with a dialog asking them if they want to install NTP.

* I suspect 90% of users have no idea what NTP is or does.
* If this fails for any reason (such as a package manager such as the Ubuntu updater also running), it fails silently.
* If you do get a chance to install it, the installation process will ask you if you want to overwrite the /etc/ntp.conf file which it accuses you (or some other package) of modifying.

NTP is a tiny, tiny, package, and there's no reason not to install it by default. Making it part of the default install does not break anything, and it ensures the user is not asked jargon filled (or incorrect) questions. The user just wants to be able to have the clock sync with an external service. This is the kind of thing that should "just work".

[Paul Harrison (peharri)]

Concerns the default install, so I'm assuming ubuntu-desktop is the correct package...?

[Neal McBurnett (nealmcb)]

I'm puzzled by the "Fix Released" status - what change was made?

The bug suggests installing the ntp daemon (in the "ntp" package) by default, but that is not the case.

Without ntp, clocks generally quickly go out of sync since by default Ubuntu still only runs ntpdate when a network interface comes up, which may be just once per week or month for a desktop machine.