ui: OS Upgrade "Download" button can be confused with Recovery "Update" button

[digitalcircuit]

In brief

• When both OS upgrade Download and Recovery Update buttons are active, they can be confused
  • Recovery update should be de-emphasized if both OS Upgrade and Recovery update are available
  • Only an issue when both a Recovery partition update and OS Upgrade are available

Rationale

Updating recovery before upgrading OS is redundant

The first step of upgrading the OS involves updating the recovery partition.

When opening OS Upgrade & Recovery from a notification prompt to upgrade the OS, there's no need to suggest via bright green color that the Recovery partition should be updated independently.

(It might be possible to simplify updating the recovery partition by making it a part of the refresh process itself - Windows prompts about fetching an updated recovery image at the time of resetting.)

Confusion from similar call-to-action buttons of equal prominence

Users don't tend to read if they're in a hurry, tired, distracted, etc:

• https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/4831/why-dont-people-read-instructions
• https://blog.codinghorror.com/teaching-users-to-read/
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/125269/how-would-you-handle-users-who-dont-read-dialog-boxes
• http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2008/10/31/nobody-reads/

See this screenshot from System76's official announcement blog post:

If someone's just glancing for a "make things happen" button after getting interrupted by a notification, Update may seem closer to "upgrade my PC" than Download.

Afterwards, if not reading closely the Refresh button is right below that previously-clicked Update button - and if it just downloaded something, why would one click Download again?

Though this may seem unlikely, as far as I can tell this exact scenario happened two days ago with a family member who was tired/distracted at the time. Yes, they clicked through the Refresh popup dialog, not reading that fully either. As a result, I had to reinstall all additional apps, WireGuard/SSH config for providing remote support, etc. Thankfully, I was available in person to help, and on the upside, the refresh process did a fantastic job undoing every systemwide change except for WiFi networks. 🙃

[digitalcircuit]

Someone else on Reddit got confused by this, assuming they had to Update the recovery image before doing the OS upgrade itself.

Thankfully they didn't run into the same oversight as my family member, and did the OS upgrade after instead of refreshing, but that's still effectively doubling the load on Pop!_OS's content delivery network and any home Internet data usage caps to download a recovery OS update (for 21.04) that is immediately replaced by a new recovery OS (for 21.10).

I still feel it's valuable to be able to update the recovery OS partition separate from committing to the OS upgrade, but that seems like a more advanced use case that should be deemphasized when the OS itself has an upgrade available.