"Not all updates can be installed" dialog is confusing

[Matt Zimmerman]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Update Manager displayed a dialog informing me that some updates were not installable, but the text explaining the situation was very unclear.

It recommends that I run a "distribution upgrade", which is defined as installing as many updates as possible. I think a different name would be much clearer here. Perhaps "Partial upgrade"?

The text uses the word "uncompleted", which should be "incomplete".

Finally, I think that the explanation of potential causes would be clearer if it were bulleted. Something like:

"This might be caused by:
 * A previous upgrade which didn't complete
 * Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu
 * Normal changes in the repository for a pre-release version of Ubuntu"

mpt, thoughts?

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

Also, the dialog which follows informs me that it is upgrading me to version 7.04.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

(when in fact it was only installing some updates to Feisty)

[Michael Vogt (mvo)]

Thanks for your bugreport.

This problem is fixed in my local tree and the fix will be part of the next upload.

Cheers,
 Michael

[Tollef Fog Heen (tfheen)]

Bringing milestone forward

[Ronald D. Frisch (frisch16-verizon)]

pida could not be installed during an automatic upgrade from gutsy to hardy.

[Daniel (hackie)]

Hey... Seams to be fixed now, right?
I just wanted to report that the term "partial upgrade" is confusing and that it should be renamed to something like "dist-upgrade" :(
So I post now to that people who decided that rename:

Technically, after 1 year puzzling about the message "Do you want to do a partial upgrade" I think it means: doing apt-get dist-upgrade instead of apt-get upgrade (in other terms: a "harder" upgrade). Right?

But when someone like me reads this message , he will think: "Ok, due to dependency problems, not everything can be installed right now, but when I agree I will get at least some of them". So for me it is less than a normal upgrade because I think that no problematic installs will happen. (I call it a "soft" upgrade)

So I agree to something that in real has much more risk as I think.

But I also see the problem:
- gui applications and console application should use same definitions
- but the words of the console apt-get are confusing for only-gui-users (because dist-upgrade sound like release-upgrade but I not)

What do you mean?