Comment 238 for bug 332945

If you want users who cannot handle a notification icon to update the system, then a pop-up window might not be any better, because every regular window that pops up somewhere is closed without reading by default by at least 90% of the users. For those users, an automated update process should be default. That is way more efficient than a pop-up window. Everyone else will just keep handling updates as he has done so far, and a constant reminder is just exactly what you need. And that in turn is exactly what the notification area is for. It may be overloaded by apps, but (as was said before, but I want to emphasize it again) update notifications are _the_ message that need to go there. I would always close the pop-up window, because I don't want to update right now and I don't want it sitting in my Alt+tab list and then forget about the update.

What is also forgotten is that ubuntu already has a large user base which do not know much about their OS. As several people here already exemplified, they will be irritated by this new behavior. I think, the best compromise would be to have the old behavior as standard, and if no update takes place after a fixed amount of time, then remind the user additionally with a pop-up window.