Update Manager (Software Updater) pops to front interrupting focus

[Jamin W. Collins]

Binary package hint: update-manager

Freshly installed Jaunty 9.04.
Waited for Update Manager to auto open in background.
Opened terminal.
Ran "sudo apt-get update".
Update Manager jumped to foreground stealing focus.

This is 100% reproducible.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: update-manager 1:0.111.7
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: update-manager
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic i686

[Weeble (clockworksaint)]

Is this a deliberate change? I recently installed Karmic, previously having had Intrepid installed. In Intrepid, when updates became available an icon appeared in the notification area next to the network and sound icons. I could click on it and install the updates when I wanted to. Now I see the behaviour described in this bug - as soon as my system detects updates (it's set to check every day) it pops up a window and steals focus from whatever I'm doing. I don't mind if it pops up a window, but I do not think it should steal focus in doing so.

[Jamin W. Collins (jcollins)]

This bug is not a duplicate of 391479. That is talking about windows "during" an update. This is about the initial update notice, which is supposed to appear minimized not appearing minimized, but rather "front and center".

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Andrew (andrewkvalheim)]

This problem still occurs in 11.10.

[Stéphane Guillou (stephane-guillou)]

This problem still exists in 12.04.

When the extra dialogue appears after starting installing the updates, software updater goes to front but doesn't take focus. To go back to their work (say, on Firefox), the user has to (1) click on the software updater window to make it take the focus, and then (2) click on the Firefox window to bring it back in front, which is unintuitive and time consuming.

This bug should at least be classified as "Medium".

[NoOp (glgxg)]

Problem (per the original symptoms reported - not Comment #6) just started occuring on Ubunt 14.04:

$ apt-cache policy update-manager
update-manager:
  Installed: 1:0.196.12
  Candidate: 1:0.196.12
  Version table:
 *** 1:0.196.12 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty-updates/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:0.196.11 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ trusty/main amd64 Packages

Update-manager popped up maximized stealing focus of the entire desktop (minus panels).