Re: Making Debian available

[Timo Lindfors]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021, Marc Haber wrote:

Absolutely. The Installation Experience is one of the first contacts
with the distribution for most people¹, and since we all know that the


Yep. I think using the live environment for installation could be more 
user-friendly as the user is already familiar with how to use e.g. USB drive or 
browser during the installation if they need to search for help or copy 
some additional firmware files. The number of people who know how to do 
this in the current d-i images is much lower since you'd need to use the 
command-line with a really restricted set of tools.

Re: Bug#980312: RFP: gnome-notes — A note taking editor, designed for simplicity

[Simon McVittie]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 23:18:57 +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Du, 17 ian 21, 17:42:48, Marek Ľach wrote:
> > Package: gnome-notes
...
> > - formerly was known as ''Bijiben''.

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/bijiben already exists. Is that the package
you wanted?

smcv

Re: Bug#980312: RFP: gnome-notes — A note taking editor, designed for simplicity

[Andrei POPESCU]

Control: reassign -1 wnpp
Control: severity -1 wishlist

On Du, 17 ian 21, 17:42:48, Marek Ľach wrote:
> Package: gnome-notes
> Description: a note editor designed to remain simple to use
> Severity: wishlist
> - formerly was known as ''Bijiben''.Very useful for jotting down 
> thoughts quickly, without the need for titles, or categorizing. 
> Similar to Google Keep in spirit, with different colored backgrounds
> License: GPLv3
> Source: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-notes 
>
> P.S. Not to be confused with gnote, which is an entirely different 
> application!It'd be practical to also have this packaged for aarch64 
> (Armv8).A much sincere thanks!
> 

Reassigning to correct (pseudo-)package and fixing the missing line 
breaks.

Kind regards,
Andrei
-- 
Looking after bugs assigned to unknown or inexistent packages


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Bug#980320: ITP: syncplay -- Synchronize playback of various video players via internet

[Bruno Kleinert]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Bruno Kleinert 
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org, fu...@debian.org

* Package name: syncplay
  Version : 1.6.7
  Upstream Author : Syncplay team 
* URL : https://syncplay.pl/
* License : Apache-2.0, ISC, MIT, BSD-3-clause
  Programming Lang: Python
  Description : Synchronize playback of various video players via internet

 Allows you to watch movies with friends or family at different places
 synchronized via the internet.
 .
 When a viewer pauses/unpauses playback or seeks within their media player this
 will be replicated across all media players connected to the same server in
the
 same viewing session. A chat function is included so viewers can discuss the
 movie while watching it.
 .
 Technically, it synchronises the position and play states of multiple mpv,
VLC,
 MPC-HC and MPC-BEmedia player instances so viewers' players present the same
 movie at the same time.
 .
 It is interoperable and available on the upstream web page for other operating
 systems, too.


I stumbled across this tool and consider it useful, especially during the
pandemic situation, to support social distancing while friends and family can
still have movie nights via internet.

I've only done a rudimentary test, i.e., more testing and feedback can't hurt.
Feedback on python packaging mistakes is highly appreciated!

At the moment I've packaged it here https://salsa.debian.org/fuddl/syncplay and
consider to collaboratively maintain it in the Debian Multimedia Maintainers
team.

Cheers,
Bruno

Re: Making Debian available

[Andrey Rahmatullin]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 06:52:11PM +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
> I was not aware of that feature. It is good to have that, but I would
> be embarrassed to seriously suggest this way because we can't manage
> to get WLAN working in the installer for political reasons.
Indeed, hence the more serious suggestion of "use the non-free ISO".

-- 
WBR, wRAR


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Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 13:22:25 +, "Andrew M.A. Cater"
 wrote:
>On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 11:36:58AM +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
>> On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 10:58:33 +, "Andrew M.A. Cater"
>>  wrote:
>> >It already does: the second or third question gives you the option to 
>> >install
>> > non-free firmware, if needed, from a USB stick. That method does work but 
>> >very few people use it.
>> 
>> I have seen a site with thousands of Debian installations migrating
>> away from Debian to CentOS because a new generation of server hardware
>> would have needed netboot images with built-in firmware. Management
>> considered the operation I did on the image to make it work "black
>> wizardry" and decided that they wouldnt want to do that every time an
>> operating system update is released and ordered migrated away from
>> Debian instead.
>> 
>They might now be reconsidering: as noted on the Beowulf list. I had a similar
>smaller scale experience.

As far as I know they're currently negotiating for RHEL. Red Hat
should be at least giving us a thank-you note.

Greetings
Marc
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 18:02:38 +0100, Philipp Kern 
wrote:
>On 17.01.21 14:19, Marc Haber wrote:
>> On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 18:16:04 +0500, Andrey Rahmatullin
>>  wrote:
>>> On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 11:33:28AM +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
 My workaround is to plug in a network cable for installation. But
 alas, I have up to now been able to avoid hardware without built-in
 Ethernet. I guess that many USB Ethernet interfaces will work out of
 the box without non-free, right?
>>> I think people on Reddit usually recommend USB-tethering the cell phone.
>> That works for IP?
>
>I'm not sure what the question here is. You get NAT. You even get NAT to
>your WiFi - i.e. you can use it as a glorified USB WiFi device (at least
>with Android). I have successfully either fixed or installed Debian
>through a cell phone in the past because there was no other way at hand.

I was not aware of that feature. It is good to have that, but I would
be embarrassed to seriously suggest this way because we can't manage
to get WLAN working in the installer for political reasons.

Greetings
Marc
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

Re: Making Debian available

[Philipp Kern]

On 17.01.21 14:19, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 18:16:04 +0500, Andrey Rahmatullin
>  wrote:
>> On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 11:33:28AM +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
>>> My workaround is to plug in a network cable for installation. But
>>> alas, I have up to now been able to avoid hardware without built-in
>>> Ethernet. I guess that many USB Ethernet interfaces will work out of
>>> the box without non-free, right?
>> I think people on Reddit usually recommend USB-tethering the cell phone.
> That works for IP?

I'm not sure what the question here is. You get NAT. You even get NAT to
your WiFi - i.e. you can use it as a glorified USB WiFi device (at least
with Android). I have successfully either fixed or installed Debian
through a cell phone in the past because there was no other way at hand.

Kind regards
Philipp Kern

Bug#980308: ITP: open-roms -- ROM files for retro computers

[Reiner Herrmann]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Reiner Herrmann 
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org, g...@debian.org

* Package name: open-roms
  Version : git snapshot
  Upstream Author : Roman Standzikowski, Paul Gardner-Stephen
* URL : https://github.com/MEGA65/open-roms
* License : LGPL-3+
  Programming Lang: 6502 assembly
  Description : ROM files for retro computers

 Using emulators for old retro computers (like the Commodore 64) requires
 code and data (kernal, basic, characters sets) that was stored in their
 ROM chips.
 .
 This project contains reverse-engineered fully open-source ROMs that can
 be used with emulators.
 .
 Currently the only supported platform is the C64, but as the code is very
 modular, support for additional platforms might be added in the future.


I tested the ROMs with a couple of games/applications, and many were
already working fine (though some are not starting or crashing).
With these ROM files in main, this would also allow vice (maintainer CC'ed)
to move from contrib to main, as it can then be used meaningfully with only
free software.


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Re: Making Debian available

[John Scott]

On Sunday, January 17, 2021 6:06:15 AM EST Bjørn Mork wrote:
> All these USB devices work only because they come with firmware on a largish
> flash.
That's not the complete case. Of the modern libre USB WiFi dongles I know of, 
carl9170 (firmware for AR9170 chips) is included in firmware-linux-free and 
should be in the installer. These devices are a little older, but support 
802.11n and even dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz connectivity for some.

The newer flagship chips for USB wireless dongles, ath9k_htc (AR7010/AR9271), 
have libre firmware released by Qualcomm Atheros upon request of ThinkPenguin, 
their employees, and other interested parties. This firmware isn't included in 
the installer or installed by default with firmware-linux-free yet, but is 
provided by the firmware-ath9k-htc package I maintain.

A takeaway from Theo de Raadt and the OpenBSD Project's successes on wireless 
devices is that it doesn't hurt to ask. IMHO, a message in the Debian 
Installer should be clear to place blame on the device manufacturers, 
something I don't think the current message about nonfree firmware emphasizes,

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Re: Making Debian available

[Marco d'Itri]

On Jan 15, Emanuele Rocca  wrote:

> So the current situation is that we make an active effort to produce two
> different types of installation media: one that works for all users, and
> one broken for most laptops. Some sort of FOSS version of an
> anti-feature. Then we publish the broken version on the front page, and
> hide very carefully the version that works.
> 
> This absurdly damages our users without improving the state of Free
> Software in any way, while Ubuntu puts the firmware back into the images
> and can rightly claim to be easier to install.
Since I already wrote about all this in 2004 and before, I am not going 
to repeat myself in this thread: http://blog.bofh.it/id_33 .

It was as much obvious then and it still is now. Hopefully at this time 
there will be less DFSG-revisionists around so that we can reach 
a different outcome.

(And again, "editorial changes" weren't.)

-- 
ciao,
Marco


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Re: Making Debian available

[Holger Wansing]

[ Adding debian-www to the loop ]

Hi,

Marc Haber  wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 01:53:24 +, Paul Wise  wrote:
> >On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 11:52 PM Russell Stuart wrote:
> >
> >> Testing doesn't produce netinst with non-free firmware
> >
> >There are both daily and weekly testing netinsts with firmware:
> >
> >https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/daily-builds/sid_d-i/current/amd64/iso-cd/
> >https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/weekly-builds/amd64/iso-cd/
> 
> We should really at least mention them somewhere. We're losing
> installations each day because they are so hard to find.

So, to turn this discussion into a real change:

debian-www team: what do you think about adding some more hint/warning
banners pointing to firmware-including installation images?

We already have one at 
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/debian-installer/

So we could also add it to other pages (and re-use the translations as well):
https://www.debian.org/distrib/
https://www.debian.org/distrib/netinst
https://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/
https://www.debian.org/CD/torrent-cd/

Of course it's not optimal to be forced to add it to so many pages,
but the restructuring of the download / "getting-debian" section is 
already on the agenda, so in the long term we can hopefully reduce the amount 
of pages with that warning back to a low number like 2 or 3?

The above is for stable.
We could also do similar for the testing firmware-including images
(that's probably the more important part, since there is no mention of such
images at all on the website).


Should I try to work out a proposal/patch?
Or is there another plan for these issues already?

Holger



-- 
Holger Wansing 
PGP-Fingerprint: 496A C6E8 1442 4B34 8508  3529 59F1 87CA 156E B076

About lintian

[Norbert Preining]

Dear Felix, Chris,

(please Cc, I am not subscribed to d-d)

Here are a few questions regarding Lintian past and upcoming changes,
both as tool as well as infrastructure.

In the past year, many changes in lintian tag names occurred, along with some
tag removals. While it seems quite normal for lintian as a tool to evolve a
lot, with the upcoming freeze, do you see a reasonable time frame during which
these kind of changes could be postponed to help people having lintian-clean
packages remain lintian-clean till after release?

On the infrastructure side, you mentioned on #debian-qa that in your
opinion, lintian is best run in a CI pipeline instead of on the
lintian.d.o service. While this is certainly true, do you plan to keep
the functionality on your rework of lintian.d.o?

As part of this rework and the ongoing development, you said you have plans
to set up a test version of the Lintian web application on non-Debian
infrastructure. How is that going, Felix? Please if you need help or support,
don't hesitate to reach out.

Last, but clearly not least, a small disclaimer for debian-devel@. The
intention of this mail is to understand the current Lintian's maintainers POV
on what Lintian is and should be in their opinion, and potentially discuss it
should some people expect it to evolve differently.

While writing this mail, I'm aware of its potential for flaming discussions or
exhausting arguments. I tried to have it written the best possible way to avoid
that (and sorry in advance if I failed at it).

I send it to -devel because there are many Lintian users among us, and
henceforth, many interested parties. Please try avoiding making this thread a
harsh discussion.

Thanks in advance!

(Reminder: please Cc, I am not subscribed to d-d)


Norbert
(and a team of lintian enthusiasts)

--
PREINING Norbert  https://www.preining.info
Accelia Inc. + IFMGA ProGuide + TU Wien + JAIST + TeX Live + Debian Dev
GPG: 0x860CDC13   fp: F7D8 A928 26E3 16A1 9FA0 ACF0 6CAC A448 860C DC13

Re: Making Debian available

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 11:36:58AM +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 10:58:33 +, "Andrew M.A. Cater"
>  wrote:
> >It already does: the second or third question gives you the option to install
> > non-free firmware, if needed, from a USB stick. That method does work but 
> >very few people use it.
> 
> I have seen a site with thousands of Debian installations migrating
> away from Debian to CentOS because a new generation of server hardware
> would have needed netboot images with built-in firmware. Management
> considered the operation I did on the image to make it work "black
> wizardry" and decided that they wouldnt want to do that every time an
> operating system update is released and ordered migrated away from
> Debian instead.
> 
They might now be reconsidering: as noted on the Beowulf list. I had a similar
smaller scale experience.

Interestingly: di-netboot-assistant has a toggle switch to include firmware or 
not.


> This still brings me in a state of mental turmoil between rage and
> sadness.
> 
> Greetings
> Marc
> -- 
> -- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
> Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
> Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
> Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834
> 

Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 18:16:04 +0500, Andrey Rahmatullin
 wrote:
>On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 11:33:28AM +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
>> My workaround is to plug in a network cable for installation. But
>> alas, I have up to now been able to avoid hardware without built-in
>> Ethernet. I guess that many USB Ethernet interfaces will work out of
>> the box without non-free, right?
>I think people on Reddit usually recommend USB-tethering the cell phone.

That works for IP?

Greetings
Marc
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

Re: Making Debian available

[Andrey Rahmatullin]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2021 at 11:33:28AM +0100, Marc Haber wrote:
> My workaround is to plug in a network cable for installation. But
> alas, I have up to now been able to avoid hardware without built-in
> Ethernet. I guess that many USB Ethernet interfaces will work out of
> the box without non-free, right?
I think people on Reddit usually recommend USB-tethering the cell phone.

-- 
WBR, wRAR


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Re: testing/bullseye: Still installing vino when we really should be installing gnome-remote-desktop

[Philip Wyett]

On Sun, 2021-01-17 at 12:53 +, Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 11:49:00 +, Philip Wyett wrote:
> > I am no Pipewire expert like you
> 
> Please don't mistake me for a Pipewire expert! I'm only doing drive-
> by
> uploads because we need it for GNOME. I do not have the bandwidth to
> be
> responsible for Pipewire and you'll notice I have deliberately not
> added
> myself to its Uploaders.
> 
> Sorry,
> smcv

Sorry, should have expanded that sentence. I am no Pipewire expert like
you declare yourself not to be one. :-)

Regards

Phil

-- 
*** Playing the game for the games own sake. ***

WWW: https://kathenas.org

Twitter: @kathenasorg

IRC: kathenas

GPG: 724AA9B52F024C8B


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Re: testing/bullseye: Still installing vino when we really should be installing gnome-remote-desktop

[Simon McVittie]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 11:49:00 +, Philip Wyett wrote:
> I am no Pipewire expert like you

Please don't mistake me for a Pipewire expert! I'm only doing drive-by
uploads because we need it for GNOME. I do not have the bandwidth to be
responsible for Pipewire and you'll notice I have deliberately not added
myself to its Uploaders.

Sorry,
smcv

Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 12:08:35 +0100, Philipp Kern 
wrote:
>It's not very relevant today anymore, but my first Linux distributions
>(including Debian) were actually store-bought. If we had needed to rely
>on firmware back then (which we did not) and would it not have been
>included in the box, the user would have been pretty much out of luck.
>Especially on the networking side. I guess the end result is the
>equivalent of shipping a separate driver disk with all the non-free bits. :(

The only worse experience I can think of was late Windows XP, when
having floppy disk drives was already out of fashion, but the only
praticable¹ way of getting the drivers needed for the installer to see
the disks into the installer was a floppy disk.

Greetings
Marc

¹ short of having a second CD-ROM drive
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

Bug#980290: ITP: dde-clipboard -- DDE optional clipboard manager component

[stan clay]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: clay stan 
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

* Package name: dde-clipboard
  Version : 5.3.0.5
  Upstream Author : linuxdeepin
* URL : https://github.com/linuxdeepin/dde-clipboard
  License : GPL-3+
  Programming Lang:  C++
  Description : DDE optional clipboard manager component

DDE optional clipboard manager component.
This is a part of DDE.

Re: testing/bullseye: Still installing vino when we really should be installing gnome-remote-desktop

[Philip Wyett]

On Sun, 2021-01-17 at 10:31 +, Simon McVittie wrote:
> On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 05:01:30 +, Philip Wyett wrote:
> > Installing Debian testing and now also using bullseye-DI-alpha3,
> > the
> > default desktop install/gnome is still installing vino and not
> > installing gnome-remote-desktop by default.
> 
> The version of meta-gnome3 in GNOME team git Suggests gnome-remote-
> desktop
> and does not have a dependency relationship with vino, although
> nobody
> has got round to uploading this change yet.
> 
> If you are interested in remote desktop support, your help with
> testing
> and if necessary backporting gnome-remote-desktop changes would be
> welcome
> (we have the latest upstream release, but there have been various
> commits
> upstream since then, and I don't have a good picture of which if any
> are
> important). At the moment it's only a Suggests for the gnome
> metapackage,
> because I'm not sure how mature it is.
> 
> The Pipewire-based/Wayland-compatible stack does support other
> implementations of remote desktop viewing/control: if web browsers
> are
> linked to Pipewire client libraries, then web APIs can provide
> desktop
> sharing, for example on videoconferencing platforms.
> 
> I've been sporadically uploading Pipewire because nobody else was
> doing it,
> but I am absolutely not an expert on Pipewire, and I would be
> delighted for
> someone else to take over.
> 
> smcv


Hi Simon,

I am no Pipewire expert like you and some of the remote connectivity
technologies that are available for use. However, I am happy to add
gnome-remote-desktop to my watch packages for testing and helping out
where I am able. I will look at upstream in due course and work with
any other like minded individuals on this be that in the GNOME and
remote teams.

Regards

Phil

-- 
*** Playing the game for the games own sake. ***

WWW: https://kathenas.org

Twitter: @kathenasorg

IRC: kathenas

GPG: 724AA9B52F024C8B


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Bug#980287: ITP: python-telethon -- asyncio Python 3 MTProto library

[Dominik George]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Dominik George 
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA512

* Package name: python-telethon
  Version : 1.19.0
  Upstream Author : Lonami Exo 
* URL : https://github.com/LonamiWebs/Telethon
* License : MIT
  Programming Lang: Python
  Description : asyncio Python 3 MTProto library

Telethon is an asyncio Python 3 MTProto library to interact with Telegram's API
as a user or through a bot account (bot API alternative).


It is needed for the matrix-telegram bridge, and I intend to maintain it
within the Python packaging team.

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Re: Making Debian available

[Philipp Kern]

On 17.01.21 11:51, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 20:20:56 +0100, Andreas Tille 
> wrote:
>> IMHO the fact that people claim that
>> "Ubuntu is easy to use but Debian is not" is to quite some amount based
>> on this kind of experience of users who do not know that kind of basics
>> and are not able to fix a rudimentary system afterwards.
> 
> Absolutely. The Installation Experience is one of the first contacts
> with the distribution for most people¹, and since we all know that the
> first five seconds decide whether it's gonna be love or hate, we
> should not be trying THIS hard to be a failure in this very important
> part of the relationship our product is building with the user.

It's not very relevant today anymore, but my first Linux distributions
(including Debian) were actually store-bought. If we had needed to rely
on firmware back then (which we did not) and would it not have been
included in the box, the user would have been pretty much out of luck.
Especially on the networking side. I guess the end result is the
equivalent of shipping a separate driver disk with all the non-free bits. :(

The FSF also kinda muddied the waters with its stance on it being ok to
have soft-updatable firmware in EEPROMs but insisting that it is not ok
to load firmware on demand post-boot. At the same time efforts like SOF
which try to offer open firmware are interesting. But then we still end
up with the firmware in non-free, of course, as it needs to be signed
for the most common DSPs - and cannot be rebuilt reproducibly. I guess
we are not the target here either but instead it's for vendors basing
their firmware on one common architecture. So even when we get close, we
don't seem to get all the way. :(

Kind regards
Philipp Kern

Re: Making Debian available

[Bjørn Mork]

Marc Haber  writes:

> My workaround is to plug in a network cable for installation. But
> alas, I have up to now been able to avoid hardware without built-in
> Ethernet. I guess that many USB Ethernet interfaces will work out of
> the box without non-free, right?

Yes, even integrated LTE/5G modems could "work out of the box without
non-free", if the GPLd userspace tools were included with the installer.

This demonstrates how ridiculous the WiFi firmware restrictons are.  All
these USB devices work only because they come with firmware on a largish
flash.  In the LTE modem case, the firmware is a complete source-less
Linux installation with big binary-only blobs for the radio/signal
processors.

This is obviously not more "free" than downloading a firmware blob for
the processor in the WiFi module would be. I believe it's about time
Debian gets rid of the double standard.  Just admit that non-free
firmware is required to run Debian on any modern system.  Making it hard
to install Debian over WiFi does not change anything. It just makes it
hard to install Debian.


Bjørn

Bug#980286: RFP: signald -- A daemon that facilitates communication via Signal Private Messenger

[Dominik George]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
X-Debbugs-Cc: debian-devel@lists.debian.org

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA512

* Package name: signald
  Version : 0.11.1
  Upstream Author : Finn Herzfeld 
* URL : https://gitlab.com/signald/signald
* License : GPL
  Programming Lang: Java
  Description : A daemon that facilitates communication via Signal Private 
Messenger


signald is needed for mautrix-signal, the Matrix to Signal bridge, which I 
intend to package.

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Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 20:20:56 +0100, Andreas Tille 
wrote:
>But my personal experience is that random users
>do not even try Debian since they know from "competent friends" that
>Debian is way harder to install than Ubuntu.  I admit I'm a bit bored by
>this discussion and I do not really want to open that can of worms of
>the relation between Debian and Ubuntu but I'm pretty sure that
>providing an installer to the masses that has a high probability to
>create extra work is not the best idea to attract users.


We are not going to solve THIS one with providing non-free drivers.
What people want is an installatin that doesn't ask questions. Even a
single question beyond "which color do you want for your screen
background" is one too much. People don't want that.

It is our design principle to give the users the power to actually
DECIDE what ends up on their machine, and it is my firm belief that
this is the way to make technically experienced people happy, but it's
total hell for newbies.

Greetings
Marc
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 20:20:56 +0100, Andreas Tille 
wrote:
> IMHO the fact that people claim that
>"Ubuntu is easy to use but Debian is not" is to quite some amount based
>on this kind of experience of users who do not know that kind of basics
>and are not able to fix a rudimentary system afterwards.

Absolutely. The Installation Experience is one of the first contacts
with the distribution for most people¹, and since we all know that the
first five seconds decide whether it's gonna be love or hate, we
should not be trying THIS hard to be a failure in this very important
part of the relationship our product is building with the user.

Greetings
Marc

¹ modulo those who start working with a system already installed, but
this is most probably the vast minority
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

Re: Making Debian available

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Quoting Marc Haber (2021-01-17 11:33:28)
> On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 09:27:28 -0800, Russ Allbery 
> wrote:
> >"Andrew M.A. Cater"  writes:
> >> It already does: the second or third question gives you the option 
> >> to install non-free firmware, if needed, from a USB stick. That 
> >> method does work but very few people use it.
> >
> >This is the method that I personally always use, but I install 
> >systems infrequently and every time I install a new system I have to 
> >work out again from scratch how to make this work.  It sounds like it 
> >should be simple, and yet it never is.
> 
> Amen. I have the same experience.
> 
> My workaround is to plug in a network cable for installation. But 
> alas, I have up to now been able to avoid hardware without built-in 
> Ethernet. I guess that many USB Ethernet interfaces will work out of 
> the box without non-free, right?

I always carry at least one USB ethernet dongle for install parties.

In my experience, USB ethernet dongles where some well-established 
company dare put their name on it also happen to use a chipset supported 
in Linux.

My advice¹ is to buy a prominently branded Gigabit dongle - not 100Mbit 
even if your device cannot really benefit from the higher speed, and not 
2.5Gigabit which is less likely to be supported yet.


 - Jonas


¹ My actual simplified advice is to point to a specific widely available 
dongle: http://box.redpill.dk/hardware.html

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

signature.asc
Description: signature

Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 01:53:24 +, Paul Wise  wrote:
>On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 11:52 PM Russell Stuart wrote:
>
>> Testing doesn't produce netinst with non-free firmware
>
>There are both daily and weekly testing netinsts with firmware:
>
>https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/daily-builds/sid_d-i/current/amd64/iso-cd/
>https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/weekly-builds/amd64/iso-cd/

We should really at least mention them somewhere. We're losing
installations each day because they are so hard to find.

cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCckware (German Language
Wikipedia entry which doesn't have an equivalent in the English
Wikipedia, refering to German post-WWII situations where some
merchandise is readily available _if_ you happen to be friends with
the merchant).

Greetings
Marc
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 10:58:33 +, "Andrew M.A. Cater"
 wrote:
>It already does: the second or third question gives you the option to install
> non-free firmware, if needed, from a USB stick. That method does work but 
>very few people use it.

I have seen a site with thousands of Debian installations migrating
away from Debian to CentOS because a new generation of server hardware
would have needed netboot images with built-in firmware. Management
considered the operation I did on the image to make it work "black
wizardry" and decided that they wouldnt want to do that every time an
operating system update is released and ordered migrated away from
Debian instead.

This still brings me in a state of mental turmoil between rage and
sadness.

Greetings
Marc
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 09:27:28 -0800, Russ Allbery 
wrote:
>"Andrew M.A. Cater"  writes:
>> It already does: the second or third question gives you the option to
>> install non-free firmware, if needed, from a USB stick. That method does
>> work but very few people use it.
>
>This is the method that I personally always use, but I install systems
>infrequently and every time I install a new system I have to work out
>again from scratch how to make this work.  It sounds like it should be
>simple, and yet it never is.

Amen. I have the same experience.

My workaround is to plug in a network cable for installation. But
alas, I have up to now been able to avoid hardware without built-in
Ethernet. I guess that many USB Ethernet interfaces will work out of
the box without non-free, right?

Greetings
Marc
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834

Re: testing/bullseye: Still installing vino when we really should be installing gnome-remote-desktop

[Simon McVittie]

On Sun, 17 Jan 2021 at 05:01:30 +, Philip Wyett wrote:
> Installing Debian testing and now also using bullseye-DI-alpha3, the
> default desktop install/gnome is still installing vino and not
> installing gnome-remote-desktop by default.

The version of meta-gnome3 in GNOME team git Suggests gnome-remote-desktop
and does not have a dependency relationship with vino, although nobody
has got round to uploading this change yet.

If you are interested in remote desktop support, your help with testing
and if necessary backporting gnome-remote-desktop changes would be welcome
(we have the latest upstream release, but there have been various commits
upstream since then, and I don't have a good picture of which if any are
important). At the moment it's only a Suggests for the gnome metapackage,
because I'm not sure how mature it is.

The Pipewire-based/Wayland-compatible stack does support other
implementations of remote desktop viewing/control: if web browsers are
linked to Pipewire client libraries, then web APIs can provide desktop
sharing, for example on videoconferencing platforms.

I've been sporadically uploading Pipewire because nobody else was doing it,
but I am absolutely not an expert on Pipewire, and I would be delighted for
someone else to take over.

smcv

Re: Making Debian available

[Marc Haber]

On Sat, 16 Jan 2021 10:58:33 +, "Andrew M.A. Cater"
 wrote:
>Video drivers: we have some basic video modes that work for text mode on 
>nearly all cards / embedded chipsets. Other than that, almost everything 
>requires a non-free driver. AMD/Intel/Nvidia are all, in their own ways, 
>equally bad. Video chipsets change fairly frequently: invariably, newest 
>laptops are always a pain.  

I have not needed a single non-free video driver since I ditched the
nVidia Accident that I bought in 2008 to have dual DVI output.

The only non-free thing I _need_ is network/wifi firmware and
microcode. I do not even know whethre my video cards require firmware
downloads to work.

Greetings
Marc
-- 
-- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -
Marc Haber |   " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany  | Beginning of Wisdom " | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834