[Desktop-packages] [Bug 1378396] [NEW] Guest session needs to remind user that data will be deleted

[Julian Foad]

Public bug reported:

Ubuntu gives users a "guest session" that looks and feels pretty much
like a regular session, but on logging out it deletes the user's data
without adequate warning. This is a serious problem because users, even
long-time users such as myself, may not expect this, and somebody they
care about *will* lose important data. For examples, see bug #435930:
the initial report, and comment #3, and comment #7. (Those examples are
from before there was a warning dialogue at the start of the session,
but that by itself surely won't prevent more occurrences.)

A set of design changes to fix this bug properly would need to involve
reminding the user at appropriate times while using the session that all
data they store in the "home" directory is temporary. This could include
changing the desktop theme and background to something visually
different from a regular session; changes to the file-save and
directory-browsing dialogs to remind users that Desktop and Documents
and so on are not permanent storage locations, and more. I remember
using SuSE Linux a few years ago, and you could log in as root, and the
root session was visually distinguished in several ways as a reminder.

The behaviour of a guest session should be specified in
 (see bug #882296, "No complete
specification for how Ubuntu sessions are supposed to work").

Bug #435930 and bug #1270788 ask for reminder messages at log-in and
log-out time respectively, but I see those as only crude attempts to
ameliorate the real problem.

(I'm not sure what projects/packages this bug report should target:
lightdm, gnome-session, Ayatana Design, ...)

** Affects: lightdm (Ubuntu)
 Importance: Undecided
 Status: New

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Title:
  Guest session needs to remind user that data will be deleted

Status in “lightdm” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Ubuntu gives users a "guest session" that looks and feels pretty much
  like a regular session, but on logging out it deletes the user's data
  without adequate warning. This is a serious problem because users,
  even long-time users such as myself, may not expect this, and somebody
  they care about *will* lose important data. For examples, see bug
  #435930: the initial report, and comment #3, and comment #7. (Those
  examples are from before there was a warning dialogue at the start of
  the session, but that by itself surely won't prevent more
  occurrences.)

  A set of design changes to fix this bug properly would need to involve
  reminding the user at appropriate times while using the session that
  all data they store in the "home" directory is temporary. This could
  include changing the desktop theme and background to something
  visually different from a regular session; changes to the file-save
  and directory-browsing dialogs to remind users that Desktop and
  Documents and so on are not permanent storage locations, and more. I
  remember using SuSE Linux a few years ago, and you could log in as
  root, and the root session was visually distinguished in several ways
  as a reminder.

  The behaviour of a guest session should be specified in
   (see bug #882296, "No
  complete specification for how Ubuntu sessions are supposed to work").

  Bug #435930 and bug #1270788 ask for reminder messages at log-in and
  log-out time respectively, but I see those as only crude attempts to
  ameliorate the real problem.

  (I'm not sure what projects/packages this bug report should target:
  lightdm, gnome-session, Ayatana Design, ...)

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[Desktop-packages] [Bug 1378396] Re: Guest session needs to remind user that data will be deleted

[Julian Foad]

This blueprint is relevant:
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/guest-session-sane-
defaults

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Title:
  Guest session needs to remind user that data will be deleted

Status in “lightdm” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  Ubuntu gives users a "guest session" that looks and feels pretty much
  like a regular session, but on logging out it deletes the user's data
  without adequate warning. This is a serious problem because users,
  even long-time users such as myself, may not expect this, and somebody
  they care about *will* lose important data. For examples, see bug
  #435930: the initial report, and comment #3, and comment #7. (Those
  examples are from before there was a warning dialogue at the start of
  the session, but that by itself surely won't prevent more
  occurrences.)

  A set of design changes to fix this bug properly would need to involve
  reminding the user at appropriate times while using the session that
  all data they store in the "home" directory is temporary. This could
  include changing the desktop theme and background to something
  visually different from a regular session; changes to the file-save
  and directory-browsing dialogs to remind users that Desktop and
  Documents and so on are not permanent storage locations, and more. I
  remember using SuSE Linux a few years ago, and you could log in as
  root, and the root session was visually distinguished in several ways
  as a reminder.

  The behaviour of a guest session should be specified in
   (see bug #882296, "No
  complete specification for how Ubuntu sessions are supposed to work").

  Bug #435930 and bug #1270788 ask for reminder messages at log-in and
  log-out time respectively, but I see those as only crude attempts to
  ameliorate the real problem.

  (I'm not sure what projects/packages this bug report should target:
  lightdm, gnome-session, Ayatana Design, ...)

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[Desktop-packages] [Bug 1270788] Re: logging out of guest session should notify that data will be cleared

[Julian Foad]

Hi Gunnar.

There are two issues in play. The real issue here is that Ubuntu gives
users a session that looks and feels pretty much like a regular session,
but then it deletes the user's data without adequate warning. That's a
serious design flaw. That bug deserves its own bug report, with serious
severity. A set of design changes to fix that bug could include changing
the desktop background to something that reminds the user they're
working in a temporary session; changes to the file-save and directory-
browsing dialogs to remind users that Desktop and Documents and so on
are not permanent storage locations, and more. I remember using SuSE
Linux a few years ago, and you could log in as root, and the root
session was visually distinguished in several ways as a reminder.

The subject of this bug #1270788 is merely a request to ameliorate the
real problem by adding a warning at log-out time. This, you can
reasonably call a "wish". This isn't the best way of fixing the real
problem, it's just one relatively straightforward change that comes to
mind that would help a bit. It should be a dependency of the real bug.

Ubuntu is specifically aimed at a general audience. We're lacking human
interface design guidelines for session management (the subject of bug
#882296), but the Gnome guidelines are relevant and say (at
https://developer.gnome.org/hig-book/3.12/hig-book.html#principles-
forgiveness ) "In all cases, the user's work is sacrosanct. Nothing your
application does should lose or destroy user's work without explicit
user action." Logging out is not an explicit action to delete data.

The attitude that users who don't pay attention will always run into
trouble is what, for years, made computers only suitable for use by
geeks like me (and I guess you too) who (speaking for myself) care more
about how the computer works than we do about "real" work. There is no
way I would let somebody I care about use a guest session in its current
state. If I did, and they lost work in this way, I would vow never to
try to get them to use open-source software again.

I'd be glad to help with blueprinting, design review, and testing any
proposed design change.

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Title:
  logging out of guest session should notify that data will be cleared

Status in “lightdm” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  If logging out from the guest account resets it and clears all data,
  then the logout dialog should give a hint that all data will be reset
  and that the user should cancel if he/she wants to save files on a USB
  drive, or if he/she wants to ask the host/computer owner to copy the
  files to a persistent location.

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[Desktop-packages] [Bug 1270788] Re: loggin out from guest session should notify that data will be cleared

[Julian Foad]

Ubuntu deletes the user's data at log-out time. Warning when this is
about to happen is the very LEAST we should do.

Warning at log-in time alone is totally insufficient. The user who logs
out may not be the one who launched it, and may not be the guest who
saved some work in that session, and/or the user may not have paid
attention to the warning or remembered it. See the blueprint
 for some use cases of this nature.

Please elevate the severity of this bug. It is not just a wish, it is a
data-loss problem.

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Title:
  loggin out from guest session should notify that data will be cleared

Status in “lightdm” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  If logging out from the guest account resets it and clears all data,
  then the logout dialog should give a hint that all data will be reset
  and that the user should cancel if he/she wants to save files on a USB
  drive, or if he/she wants to ask the host/computer owner to copy the
  files to a persistent location.

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[Desktop-packages] [Bug 435930] Re: Guest session does not warn about temporary nature of files

[Julian Foad]

This needs, at least, a warning at log-out time as well.

The new warning at log-in time is better than no warning at all but is
still TOTALLY INSUFFICIENT. Ubuntu deletes the user's data at log-out
time. The user that saved work and logged out may not be the user that
launched the guest session: "here, use this computer, I've launched a
guest session for you". Or the user that saves work may leave the
computer logged in, intending to come back to it, maybe knowing that
their work will be lost if they log out or maybe not knowing; and then
their friend comes along and logs out the session, and gets not even a
warning that their friend's data is now being deleted.

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Title:
  Guest session does not warn about temporary nature of files

Status in Ayatana Design:
  New
Status in “lightdm” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released
Status in Baltix GNU/Linux:
  New

Bug description:
  Hi all,

  this is not a bug per se, rather a request for a feature.  One of the
  users I support has allowed someone to use his desktop using the
  "Guest Session", not realising that files saved during this session do
  not persist after logout.  The person in question proceeded to do a
  good few hours work on the machine, saving files to the Guest Session
  desktop.  They were of course extremely dismayed when they logged in
  again, only to find that their work has disappeared.

  I think it would be a nice feature if, upon logging into the Guest
  Session, a splash screen appeared telling the user in no uncertain
  terms that any files they saved during the session would not persist
  after they logged out.  I am a linux sysadmin and I was unaware of
  this property of the Guest Session and had to search online for an
  explanation for the behavior which, I'm sure you agree, is not ideal.

  Thanks in advance,
  Dan T.

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[Desktop-packages] [Bug 1074778] Re: Upgrading to 12.10 created a "~/fontconfig" folder but did not delete it

[Julian Foad]

This folder got created when I upgraded from 12.04 LTS to 14.04.1 LTS
using the software updates tool "upgrade to a new LTS release" method.

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Title:
  Upgrading to 12.10 created a "~/fontconfig" folder but did not delete
  it

Status in “fontconfig” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I upgraded from Ubuntu 12.04 to 12.10. In the process, a folder called
  "~/fontconfig" was created and not deleted. This happened on my two
  machines.

  More information here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/202796/what-is-
  the-fontconfig-folder-in-my-home-may-i-delete-it

  ProblemType: Bug
  DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
  Package: fontconfig 2.10.1-0ubuntu3
  ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-17.28-generic 3.5.5
  Uname: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64
  NonfreeKernelModules: fglrx
  ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu6
  Architecture: amd64
  Date: Sat Nov  3 18:57:29 2012
  InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-04-29 (188 days ago)
  InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 
(20120425)
  MarkForUpload: True
  SourcePackage: fontconfig
  UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-20 (14 days ago)

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[Desktop-packages] [Bug 861493] Re: evince doesn't print duplex on duplex-able printers

[Julian Foad]

I confirm this bug with evince 3.4.0 on Ubuntu 12.04.3.

On my system, if one of the following paper sizes was selected PRIOR TO
opening the Print dialogue, then the "Two-sided:" drop-down list control
is populated with only a "One Sided" option:

  Letter Small Margins 8.5x11in
  A4 Small Margins 210x297mm

If one of the following paper sizes was selected PRIOR TO opening the
Print dialogue then it is populated with three options: "One Sided",
"Long Edge (Standard)", "Short Edge (Flip)".

  US Letter
  A4
  Letter Borderless 8.5x11in
  A4 Borderless 210x297mm

Changing the paper size while the Print dialogue is open does NOT CHANGE
the set of options in the "Two-sided" control. If an option is included
and selected then it works: two-sided printing is performed on the
selected paper size. Therefore I conclude that this appears to be (at
least partly) a bug in the operation of the Print dialog rather than a
bug in the printing itself.

One work-around is to select a paper size such as A4, cause that setting
to be "saved" (e.g. click on "Print Preview" and close the preview) and
then re-open the Print dialogue. The "Two-sided:" control will then
contain three options. Select the desired paper size and two-sided
option and select Print. In my tests, by this means two-sided printing
then proceeds successfully on any of the paper sizes I have tried.

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Title:
  evince doesn't print duplex on duplex-able printers

Status in “evince” package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  I have a postscript-printer, which can print on both sides of the
  paper (duplex). When I print a file with "lpr -Pduplex file.pdf",
  everything is o.k., when I do that in evince (selecting printer
  duplex), it prints every page on a single sheet, so it acts not the
  same as lpr does. This happens with Ubuntu 10.04.3. evince is in
  2.30.3-0ubuntu1.2.

  Greetings,
  Leander Jedamus

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[Desktop-packages] [Bug 799584] Re: No images for Help documents installed

[Julian Foad]

Not fixed.

Ubuntu 12.04.2, LibreOffice 3.5.7.2 Build ID: 350m1(Build:2) behaves
exactly as described in comment #2.

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Title:
  No images for Help documents installed

Status in “libreoffice” package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Released

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: libreoffice

  Image files for Help documents are archived only in libreoffice-style-
  galaxy, not in libreoffice-style-human, provided as the default style.
  Human style should archive them or shoudl recommend Galaxy style.

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[Desktop-packages] [Bug 693770] Re: gdm-simple-greeter: Should not show disabled user accounts

[Julian Foad]

I see this in Ubuntu 10.10.

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Title:
  gdm-simple-greeter: Should not show disabled user accounts

Status in “gdm” package in Ubuntu:
  Expired

Bug description:
  Binary package hint: gdm

  Under "Administration -> Users and Groups" I have disabled an account
  (so it now says "This account is disabled."). I would expect the login
  screen to not offer me this account for login.

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