Previous discussion: “…a ‘Details…’ button, which would open a secondary dialog for controlling the schedule as well as listing recent updates … A simple first step — useful and releasable by itself — would be to add a caption below the new label, of the form ‘Last check: Yesterday 16:27’. If someone submits a merge proposal to do that, then I’ll design the next bit.”
Yes — I reported that issue in 2012. It predates snaps because it isn’t specific to snaps.
However, following the principle that things more closely related should be closer together, that is #3 on the list:
-
All snap update settings should be together. (For example, it would be awful for some to be in GNOME Settings and some outside, simply because some happen to be in common with another packaging system while others are snap-specific.)
-
Snap update settings should be together with .deb update settings. (Though they behave in different ways, these differences are most easily explained to users with them next to each other.)
-
Update settings in general should be together with other system settings. (The structure of the GNOME Settings UI is quite awkward at the moment — because it’s optimised for phones rather than desktops — but even so, Software & Updates settings would still be easier to find inside it rather than outside it.) This would also reduce the problem of Software Updater and Software & Updates being hard to distinguish in the shell, and fix various other bugs (as well as, I’m sure, introducing new bugs).
Ideally, all three of these can be satisfied at once. But if they can’t be, they are in order of importance.
That’s a case where you might sacrifice #3 to achieve the other two. That is, you might put snap update settings in software-properties so that people using other environments can access them in the same place they currently access .deb update settings.