I have pressed the Install button, and the counter doesn’t count down.
After a while the Virtual machine restarted, and the installation proceed.
The installation was successful, it was just a surprise if I had been a new Linus user I would have assumed the installation had crashed.
The timer between the user name and the buttons on the bottom is a clue that there is an expected delay as well as the remaining time in that delay.
Users are expected to read the screen before panicking. Sometimes the timer does not follow the actual time, but it still shows an expected delay.
Hi Jeff, I can’t agree, the counter which you see everytime you log off, shutdown etc. normally counts down, and when it stops counting down you know something has gone wrong. You can normally override the counter by pressing the option you want to happen which will happen straight away, this is what I do when i shut down my machine, I don’t wait for the counter I press the shutdown button which is highlighted. The timer is only a delay before the default opinion (Highlighted) is performed should you wish to change your mind. Can you help me out by please pointing out which part of the screen I am meant to read before (if I was a newbie) I wouldn’t panic?
Maybe I phrased that incorrectly.
The timer on that screen starts with the expected time for the action. It apparently counts down until for some reason it halts, but at the time it halts it still shows the expected time remaining. The expected time is not always accurate.
A user should not ever panic until after at least that expected amount of time has passed. A system which is performing updates in the background is almost 100% certain to cause file system corruption if it is interrupted while writing to disk.
There are several times where progress bars or timers halt even though the process is continuing in the background and this seems one example.
Another example is the progress bar when doing a new installation, which never seems to be accurate for the actual progress of the installation and configuration. Should the user assume the installation failed because the progress bar hangs at 40 - 45% of the scale for 5 minutes or so (It then suddenly jumps to 100% when the installation finishes)? No, the progress bar is not accurate and often does not reflect the actual progress.
One thing I have learned over the years of working with computers is that patience is a virtue and panic is almost 100% certain to cause problems.
New users may not understand that, but the first time panic causes problems it becomes a learning experience.
