Re: Re: Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
I also have some old hardware around that could have problems with booting from something other then the CD sets. But seriously... I should have thrown in away a decade ago. Also I can by more powerful used hardware that those (with DVD support) for a dozen of Euros. Therefore I think that such old hardware should not waste any time of Debians developer community. Your time is more valuable then all the theoretical hardware that would have problems with ditching the CD sets. -- Adam Walczak, a...@walczak.it, +48 604 188 992 WALCZAK.IT http://walczak.it/ - Custom IT systems for business and manufacturing
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 29/10/13 at 22:42 +0100, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote: On 24/10/13 18:31, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: What's the the status of XFCE regarding accessibility? That was a big strengh of GNOME for a long time, though I've heard rumors (sorry not to be more specific) that gnome-shell has some unsolved issues in that regard, which is a problem since GNOME classic/fallback mode is gone in 3.8. What are those problems? AFAIK a11y status in GNOME is pretty good. There were some issues in the early days of GNOME 3 but those are long solved. FYI, the state of accessibility in GNOME and XFCE is being discussed in https://lists.debian.org/debian-accessibility/2013/11/msg00011.html very short summary: 3.4 had some issues, the situation improved a lot since then; XFCE is behind. (all of this according to the poster, of course). Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131105191330.ga10...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Op 30-10-13 23:09, Steve McIntyre schreef: Having said that, I do think that providing a limited number of CD install images is useful for those cases of retrocomputing where installing off DVD is difficult. Other than that... So... In that situation, would you care about having more than just a netinst available for initial booting? Beyond that, people can get on the network to a mirror, or to other machines hosting the DVD images. I'm thinking we can cut down some more here. Maybe (as Steven suggested) we could keep a single bigger CD image around, but I'm not 100% convinced that it's likely to give us enough beyond the netinst to make me care about it. What else would we want/need on a CD to make it compelling here? I think having a live-CD (if that is at all possible) might be useful for those cases where you have an old system without DVD that doesn't boot anymore. This doesn't need a full desktop environment, just a shell with some utilities should do. I don't think you'd necessarily need more than the netinst CD for installation, either; but then, if you're going to write a CD image anyway, why not write the full one rather than waste a CD to half an image -- so I think having one 650MB image might be useful; I would suggest adding packages that have a high popcon rating, without necessarily trying to fit any kind of desktop environment on there. As an aside, it might be sensible to add a link to the two netboot mini.iso images which are found in the d-i FTP area for people to use, too; these contain just the booloader plus its configuration, a kernel and an initrd, and downloads everything else off the net. It is therefore even smaller than the netboot one (on amd64/sid currently 23M for the plain one, 30M for the GTK one), and is what I commonly use when I need an installer medium and PXE won't work. -- This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. -- http://xkcd.com/1133/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/527222c8.6080...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 31/10/13 09:30, Wouter Verhelst wrote: Op 30-10-13 23:09, Steve McIntyre schreef: So... In that situation, would you care about having more than just a netinst available for initial booting? Beyond that, people can get on the network to a mirror, or to other machines hosting the DVD images. I'm thinking we can cut down some more here. Maybe (as Steven suggested) we could keep a single bigger CD image around, but I'm not 100% convinced that it's likely to give us enough beyond the netinst to make me care about it. What else would we want/need on a CD to make it compelling here? I think having a live-CD (if that is at all possible) might be useful for those cases where you have an old system without DVD that doesn't boot anymore. This doesn't need a full desktop environment, just a shell with some utilities should do. I don't think you'd necessarily need more than the netinst CD for installation, either; but then, if you're going to write a CD image anyway, why not write the full one rather than waste a CD to half an image -- so I think having one 650MB image might be useful; I would suggest adding packages that have a high popcon rating, without necessarily trying to fit any kind of desktop environment on there. I would like a CD with as much of Required, Important and Standard and as many other popular packages as will fit. Whether installing or upgrading it's useful to be able to download a reasonable amount in advance, especially if you're doing more than one machine or on a slow link. It would also be useful able to install a minimal working system without needing network access, or is this what the netinst provides anyway? I've generally used CD1 for this in the past. Roger -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/d0raka-1n5@silverstone.rilynn.me.uk
Re: Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Hi, On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 13:31:23 +0100 Steve McIntyre wrote: We've had this discussion multiple times over the years. I've been told multiple times that we still have a non-negligible set of users owning/running hardware that can't do DVDs. I'm not 100% convinced myself of how large or critical this use case is, but that's the information I have. I still have such hardware lying around, I rarely use it, but a CD install might be the only way I could ever resurrect it for anything. During the final cdimage testing on Wheezy release day, I did test installs on a Compaq ProLiant DL360 (G1). They have a slim-line CD-ROM drive and AFAIK no way to boot from USB or the (non-free) onboard NICs. USB or network booting might fail for any number of reasons. This might be a standalone computer, not even networked to any others, and many will find it difficult setting up DHCP and a PXE server. If all options fail, one's only other option might be to install a different OS (at least, initially). A CD seems most likely to work, especially if the user doesn't know what type of optical drive they have. We *could* just drop all the CD sets and be done with it, just keeping the netinst CD and the DVDs. Is that what people really want? Please consider keeping at least: * a minimal netinst CD - for those who want to download as little as possible; I have plenty of blank CDs at hand, and is permanent once written, whereas most of my USB keys are constantly in use for things or have data on that makes it awkward to reformat them as install media. The CD would also work in DVD-ROM drives, and the .iso might be useful for network booting. Perhaps it will even fit on some businesscard CD or DVDs. * a single CD containing as much as possible, perhaps XFCE - if you're limited to slow connectivity and old hardware, this may be the most compatible and 'shareable' Debian disc; it should have everything a novice user will need to get to a friendly graphical desktop, get online and be able to surf the web, after which they can install any other software on demand. However, I don't see much point any more in the sets which span multiple CDs - especially if using only CD-1 would leave out essential stuff for getting online and downloading the rest. The larger desktops environments probably have system requirements beyond the kind of hardware I've mentioned here anyway. Thanks! Regards, -- Steven Chamberlain ste...@pyro.eu.org -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52715d0c.4010...@pyro.eu.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Wouter wrote: The last time I used the full stack of CDs where there was no decent alternative option was when I was helping a customer prepare a set of installation instructions for a code escrow situation. Since one of the requirements there was the ability to produce a 100% bit-for-bit equal system, anything that used download the current version from the Internet was out -- we had to provide actual media (CDs, at the time). That was over five years ago, though. Today, I doubt I'd still try to use CDs, probably at least DVDs instead. Yup, that's what I'm thinking too. Having said that, I do think that providing a limited number of CD install images is useful for those cases of retrocomputing where installing off DVD is difficult. Other than that... So... In that situation, would you care about having more than just a netinst available for initial booting? Beyond that, people can get on the network to a mirror, or to other machines hosting the DVD images. I'm thinking we can cut down some more here. Maybe (as Steven suggested) we could keep a single bigger CD image around, but I'm not 100% convinced that it's likely to give us enough beyond the netinst to make me care about it. What else would we want/need on a CD to make it compelling here? -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Support the Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression: http://www.eff.org/cafe/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1vbdxc-00016s...@mail.einval.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Zack wrote: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 11:57:29PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: I would not be opposed to changing the default for xfce for now, and reverting it if gnome's improvements make it a better choice. OK. I suggest that we *try* that for now. If we try, what will be the criteria for assessing whether the experiment has been successful (and hence worth keeping for Jessie) or a failure (and hence reverting it)? That's a good question. I'll admit that I don't really have a good answer for it myself. Anybody else? Hint: I don't think that the amount of opinionated posts anti-GNOME or anti-Xfce posted on debian-devel is a good success metric :-) Bah, now you're just making the job harder! :-P -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Support the Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression: http://www.eff.org/cafe/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1vbe2w-0001cz...@mail.einval.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 10:09:30PM +, Steve McIntyre wrote: Wouter wrote: The last time I used the full stack of CDs where there was no decent alternative option was when I was helping a customer prepare a set of installation instructions for a code escrow situation. Since one of the requirements there was the ability to produce a 100% bit-for-bit equal system, anything that used download the current version from the Internet was out -- we had to provide actual media (CDs, at the time). _VERY_ occasionally these days, I've tried to install Debian on an isolated system - DVDs normally - BluRay dd'ed to a USB stick would be more useful if a computer can boot from USB. That was over five years ago, though. Today, I doubt I'd still try to use CDs, probably at least DVDs instead. Yup, that's what I'm thinking too. Having said that, I do think that providing a limited number of CD install images is useful for those cases of retrocomputing where installing off DVD is difficult. Other than that... x86 32 bit / AMD64 netinst as one CD (like the multiarch DVD) Mac / ARMHF as another CD would be useful. So... In that situation, would you care about having more than just a netinst available for initial booting? Beyond that, people can get on the network to a mirror, or to other machines hosting the DVD images. It's a bit of a nuisance if you need non-free firmware for e.g. WiFi / server network cards (curse you Intel and Broadcom ...) Apropos that, the UEFI booting netinst appears not to be able to add in firmware read from a USB stick - but I could be being very stupid here ... :) I'm thinking we can cut down some more here. Maybe (as Steven suggested) we could keep a single bigger CD image around, but I'm not 100% convinced that it's likely to give us enough beyond the netinst to make me care about it. What else would we want/need on a CD to make it compelling here? Hope this helps, AndyC -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Support the Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression: http://www.eff.org/cafe/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131030222810.ga4...@galactic.demon.co.uk
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Olav Vitters olav at vitters.nl writes: Most of systemd is not in pid1. This was explained by a blog references But (by the time of the jessie freeze, at least) it will need systemd to be pid1 to work. Same thing, really, just picking words. bye, //mirabilos -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/loom.20131029t093636...@post.gmane.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 08:37:02AM +, Thorsten Glaser wrote: Olav Vitters olav at vitters.nl writes: Most of systemd is not in pid1. This was explained by a blog references But (by the time of the jessie freeze, at least) it will need systemd to be pid1 to work. Same thing, really, just picking words. No, not at all. If you say that everything is in PID1, this implicates that there is a big potential for bugs. Bugs in PID1 is bad, you don't want an unreliable init system. Aside from that, having so much code in PID1 means the memory footprint is pretty big, likely security issues to be big as well. If someone suggests that whole of systemd is in PID1, I assume that *that* is the problem. Not anything else. What is meant instead is that systemd provides loads of building blocks. This is in pretty much any systemd talk that Lennart has given (except initially). That this is meant is not obvious to me, nor do I understand it. The PID 1 argument has lead to explanations such as: http://people.debian.org/~stapelberg/docs/systemd-dependencies.html A whole list just to explain that things are *not* in PID 1. This was based on feedback regarding everything being in PID1. Everything in PID1 I can discuss, because it is not true. But the building blocks is something entirely different. -- Regards, Olav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131029085523.ga18...@bkor.dhs.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 24/10/13 18:31, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: What's the the status of XFCE regarding accessibility? That was a big strengh of GNOME for a long time, though I've heard rumors (sorry not to be more specific) that gnome-shell has some unsolved issues in that regard, which is a problem since GNOME classic/fallback mode is gone in 3.8. What are those problems? AFAIK a11y status in GNOME is pretty good. There were some issues in the early days of GNOME 3 but those are long solved. Emilio -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/52702bc9.7060...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Olaf Titz o...@bigred.inka.de writes: Aeh, are you sure? I think you missed my point. I'm not involved with any init system, nor a Debian developer, yet by developing some random app and having it depend on a specific init system, I could (according to you) make that init system unsuitable for Debian? You would surely make _your app_ unsuitable for use as a default. That's what I would expect, but that's not what Neil is saying. Unless my English has abandoned my completely, he explicitly says it would make the depended-on init system unsuitable as a default for Debian. Best, Nikolaus -- Encrypted emails preferred. PGP fingerprint: 5B93 61F8 4EA2 E279 ABF6 02CF A9AD B7F8 AE4E 425C »Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a Banana.« -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87iowfohsh@rath.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 11:57:29PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: I would not be opposed to changing the default for xfce for now, and reverting it if gnome's improvements make it a better choice. OK. I suggest that we *try* that for now. If we try, what will be the criteria for assessing whether the experiment has been successful (and hence worth keeping for Jessie) or a failure (and hence reverting it)? Hint: I don't think that the amount of opinionated posts anti-GNOME or anti-Xfce posted on debian-devel is a good success metric :-) Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli . . . . . . . z...@upsilon.cc . . . . o . . . o . o Maître de conférences . . . . . http://upsilon.cc/zack . . . o . . . o o Former Debian Project Leader . . @zack on identi.ca . . o o o . . . o . « the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club » signature.asc Description: Digital signature
SD cards (was Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce)
Luca Capello luca at pca.it writes: My X60 (from late 2006) can not either, but IMHO the reason behind it that the SD reader it is not connected through the USB bus: = $ lspci | grep SD 15:00.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 18) Right, but that’s not an excuse to not boot from it. After all, hda, sda, xvda, vda, mmcblk0, etc. are not usually connected to a USB bus, either. (I think this ends this sub-thread, there’s nothing we can do about it after all, just for completeness. Followup-To: poster) bye, //mirabilos -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/loom.20131028t180633-...@post.gmane.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
you need something with big buttons that is finger-friendly, I'm surprised how much accuracy a capacitive multitouch mobile has when in touchscreen terms it is actually extremely poor (3-4mm) exacerbated by them not responding to nails (conductive), a trade-off for size and multitouch. Many have much better accuracy (infra-red, resistive) and certainly will have multitouch too in the future. Websites having big buttons represented by tiny ones visually on Android is certainly true due to this. My conclusion is that the right UI to choose is quite machine-specific and also user-specific. The 10 touch Baanto has very good accuracy ( mm) and is an example of an external infra-red that actually doesn't work with Linux due to an indirectly related bug last time I checked even though it is alleged to by Baanto. Some accurate single touch resistive touches also work as a standard mouse though they require detection and the movement being inverted, but it would be a very simple driver. The supplier had died but it seems to have been revived recently. -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) In Other Words - Don't design like polkit or systemd ___ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/106418.70388...@smtp117.mail.ir2.yahoo.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Op 25-10-13 14:45, Adam Sampson schreef: Steve McIntyre st...@einval.com writes: We *could* just drop all the CD sets and be done with it, just keeping the netinst CD and the DVDs. Is that what people really want? As a longtime Debian user, that would suit me fine -- I've not done a Debian installation using anything other than netinst (or debootstrap) in years. I'd be interested to know what the use cases for the full stack of CDs currently are... The last time I used the full stack of CDs where there was no decent alternative option was when I was helping a customer prepare a set of installation instructions for a code escrow situation. Since one of the requirements there was the ability to produce a 100% bit-for-bit equal system, anything that used download the current version from the Internet was out -- we had to provide actual media (CDs, at the time). That was over five years ago, though. Today, I doubt I'd still try to use CDs, probably at least DVDs instead. Having said that, I do think that providing a limited number of CD install images is useful for those cases of retrocomputing where installing off DVD is difficult. Other than that... -- This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. -- http://xkcd.com/1133/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/526ea410.5090...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
OK. I suggest that we *try* that for now. If we try, what will be the criteria for assessing whether the experiment has been successful (and hence worth keeping for Jessie) or a failure (and hence reverting it)? I think it should be considered that there has been much improvement upto 4.10 and 4.11 even has some useful multi desktop improvements (above and below) so it would be better if 4.10 or higher was the assessed version. -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) In Other Words - Don't design like polkit or systemd ___ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/390320.67774...@smtp127.mail.ir2.yahoo.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Aeh, are you sure? I think you missed my point. I'm not involved with any init system, nor a Debian developer, yet by developing some random app and having it depend on a specific init system, I could (according to you) make that init system unsuitable for Debian? You would surely make _your app_ unsuitable for use as a default. Olaf -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1vaql1-0001z1...@bigred.inka.de
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Op 25-10-13 12:10, Thomas Goirand schreef: On 10/25/2013 07:52 AM, Paul Wise wrote: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 7:47 AM, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote: Debian is the Universal OS, isn't it? Part of being a 'Universal OS' is being useful to as many people as possible, including people who don't know what a desktop is and people who don't have the ability to choose a desktop. Artificially limiting the range of people exposed to, using or working on Debian isn't a good idea. It's not as if those users would just stay, stuck on the screen forever, then give-up installing Debian because they don't know what to answer. They will eventually choose an option, and move on to the next screen, even if they don't understand what they are doing. There's a limited number of times people are prepared to do that (move on without understanding what they're doing) before they will give up and move on -- either to another distribution, or away from Linux entirely. That can't be the goal. We do need a default desktop, and I happen to think that having several variants of Debian (Debian Gnome, Debian KDE, Debian XFCE, etc, rather than KDE alternate CD 1, which is somewhat more involved and therefore less clear for non-native speakers) that only differ in their default choice of desktop would be a feature, not a bug. We can then make the choice of default desktop be something as simple as a symlink (or equivalent) on our download pages. I do agree with Russ that several people do not seem to understand that the difference between kubuntu and xubuntu is no more than the default set of packages -- in fact, I've had to explain that fact several times to different customers. -- This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. -- http://xkcd.com/1133/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/526ea941.7080...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Op 25-10-13 15:43, Olav Vitters schreef: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:41:23PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote: There is no good reason other than that's the way GNOME has been written. So change the code and get GNOME to behave properly. Because you raise this again: - No maintenance on ConsoleKit since 1.5 years, despite me/GNOME raising this as an issue end of Jan 2012 - XFCE relies on either ConsoleKit or logind Concretely, who will change the code? I mean a name and something in the git log of ConsoleKit (or fork it and call it something else). What's wrong with whoever needs this fooKit thing, whatever it is? Deciding to drop support for code I don't personally use, but other people depend on is just wrong on so many levels. -- This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. -- http://xkcd.com/1133/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/526eacee.4000...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Op 25-10-13 19:32, Sune Vuorela schreef: Why not consolidate on shared code rather than having several bits providing the similar functionality for fairly simple tasks ? That's a (very!) fair argument, but there's nothing in that argument which means it absolutely totally *has* to be part of a pid1 -- This end should point toward the ground if you want to go to space. If it starts pointing toward space you are having a bad problem and you will not go to space today. -- http://xkcd.com/1133/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/526eafeb.3010...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 07:41:47PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: That's a (very!) fair argument, but there's nothing in that argument which means it absolutely totally *has* to be part of a pid1 Most of systemd is not in pid1. This was explained by a blog references on debian-devel a while ago. -- Regards, Olav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131028184643.gb25...@bkor.dhs.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 07:29:02PM +0100, Wouter Verhelst wrote: Op 25-10-13 15:43, Olav Vitters schreef: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:41:23PM +0100, Neil Williams wrote: There is no good reason other than that's the way GNOME has been written. So change the code and get GNOME to behave properly. Because you raise this again: - No maintenance on ConsoleKit since 1.5 years, despite me/GNOME raising this as an issue end of Jan 2012 - XFCE relies on either ConsoleKit or logind Concretely, who will change the code? I mean a name and something in the git log of ConsoleKit (or fork it and call it something else). What's wrong with whoever needs this fooKit thing, whatever it is? Deciding to drop support for code I don't personally use, but other people depend on is just wrong on so many levels. GNOME has not removed support for ConsoleKit. Without continued maintenance a project will die. Plus this code will bitrot if not properly maintained. So to paraphrase what you said: GNOME is right on so many levels. :P -- Regards, Olav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131028185008.gc25...@bkor.dhs.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Sat, 2013-10-26 at 22:14 +0200, Marco d'Itri wrote: On Oct 26, Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote: This really pinpoints the whole problem: What happened to the Unix philosophy, with freedom of choice? We killed it for good in 2008: http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2008-January/msg00861.html I asked about Unix philosophy, this in not the same as Linux philosophy, fortunately. There are other OSes out there, like *BSD, Solaris, etc, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system#UNIX_and_UNIX-like_operating_systems -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1382891804.4094.15.camel@PackardBell-PC
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 02:12:11AM +0300, Jukka Ruohonen wrote: Indeed. And given the train wreck of contemporary Gnome, I fully welcome the discussion on alternative default desktops. Some people are keen to rule out the stakeholder issues, but a fact on the so-called agenda remains. I suggest you never try to do any stakeholder management with above trolling. -- Regards, Olav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131027183237.ga18...@bkor.dhs.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 02:23:42PM -0700, Steve Langasek wrote: Thanks, I hadn't seen that team mentioned before anywhere. It looks like the right place for this work to happen. Unfortunately it seems rather dormant, as the packages they do have in place date back to Ubuntu 12.04 (i.e., before any of the work on touch began in earnest). Yes, I was interested in helping out at one point but for whatever reason I don't seem to have followed through, but it seemed fairly dormant at the time. (Oh, I was probably put off by bzr, but that is a fairly good fit for these packages I must admit) -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131027200742.ga6...@bryant.redmars.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
]] Steve Langasek In the short term, this could be a committment from the systemd maintainers to hold the package at version 204 until the dust settles around cgroup manager interfaces[1]. With some time limit (3 months? 6 months?) I think I'd be ok with this. -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87r4b64fzw@xoog.err.no
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 2:15 AM, Joey Hess wrote: I do wish that some of the .. energy .. seen in these threads could be used for something more interesting. For example, find a way to detect touch screen systems, on which xfce is *not* pleasant, and don't install a desktop task there, but a separate task with whichever UI is currently best suited for tablets. The situation with touch screen systems is a bit more complicated than just install a tablet UI. By way of example; my primary computer is a Lenovo Thinkpad X201 Tablet. This is a normal Thinkpad laptop with a touchscreen where the screen can be rotated and therefore hide the keyboard with or without the touchscreen being hidden. Right now I'm using it as a desktop though, with external monitor, keyboard and mouse. For this particular machine, installing a normal desktop is the probably right way to go. Unfortunately none of them appear to have sane touch interaction; the touchscreen selects text instead of scrolling or buttons are tiny. I rarely use this device in tablet mode but I imagine the many artists using it would do that quite often. I seem to remember that with Windows 8 coming out and having pervasive support for touchscreens, there are even external monitors with touch support. Clearly on tower machines with a touch-screen monitor you aren't going to want a tablet OS. Another example; a while ago I installed Debian on a Samsung Galaxy S smartphone. While at the time the touchscreen didn't work in Debian due to Linux and Xorg driver issues, installing a tablet UI is clearly not the right choice there either; you need something with big buttons that is finger-friendly, at the time enlightenment had a UI that was designed for smartphones. I also have had an OpenMoko with Debian on it. For OpenMoko devices the enlightenment UI has issues due to the OpenMoko's screen inset meaning that UI elements close to the edge are unusable. The QtMoko UI however avoids that issue but isn't in Debian yet. http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2012/12/03/debian-mobile/ My conclusion is that the right UI to choose is quite machine-specific and also user-specific. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caktje6hsaxf1dvu07_pdjvhwm810r0cxtexkbe_n8bceatz...@mail.gmail.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 3:19 AM, Joey Hess wrote: I also wonder why unity is not being packaged in Debian.. Based on the logs for #609278 it appears there is a lot of interest and some people working on packaging it but it sounds like it is hard to build and requires patches in external components. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/caktje6eycj02kwkpndjgeem0_keu4pyofpx55wfd-bhajcu...@mail.gmail.com
gnucash dependencies (was Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce)
On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 12:19:53AM +0100, Kevin Chadwick wrote: I have Gnucash installed and it depends on udisks, trust me I have absolutely no need for udisks or polkit, so don't be so sure (I am not saying that I am sure that he is not). gnucash → libgnome2-0 → gvfs → gvfs-daemons → libgdu0 → udisks How do you suggest this was fixed? (There's an explanation for the libgnom2-0 → gvfs dependency in #550479). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131026100204.ga32...@bryant.redmars.org
Re: gnucash dependencies (was Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce)
On 26/10/13 12:02, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 12:19:53AM +0100, Kevin Chadwick wrote: I have Gnucash installed and it depends on udisks, trust me I have absolutely no need for udisks or polkit, so don't be so sure (I am not saying that I am sure that he is not). gnucash → libgnome2-0 → gvfs → gvfs-daemons → libgdu0 → udisks How do you suggest this was fixed? (There's an explanation for the libgnom2-0 → gvfs dependency in #550479). libgnome2 is long deprecated, port gnucash away from it! Emilio -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/526ba171.6000...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
[Please don't top post on this mailing list!] On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 06:45:02PM +0200, Zlatan Todoric wrote: And just bashing GNOME DE for systemd and GNOME Classic is not good enough point because probably the largest user base of Debian user use GNOME. That is because it is installed by default! (unless you explicitly opt-out.) -- If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing. --- Malcolm X -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131026112612.GR358@tal
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 14:58:34 -0700 Nikolaus Rath nikol...@rath.org wrote: Neil Williams codeh...@debian.org writes: If someone comes up with good reasons to consider systemd on it's own merit, I'm willing to consider it. With the current approach of a fait-accompli systemd is part of the GNOME dependency chain, so tough then I am quite happy to dismiss systemd as an option simply because of this insane top-down dependency. systemd simply cannot be a viable choice if it has to be forced down people's throats like this. Please reconsider this. If I wrote a little GUI calculator and made it depend on e.g. upstart, would that also make upstart unsuitable as a default init system because of the resulting insane top-down dependency? Yes. It is the tight coupling between desktop and init which is precisely the problem. *IF* the chosen init system is already the default, then by all means use the features provided. Desktop components cannot dictate how the rest of the system operates. The desktop is optional. Adding a desktop to a running system must not require a change of init, just as it cannot require a change of kernel or perl interpreter. I get to choose how I enable or disable mounting drives and other niceties which would require root access, not the desktop. Equally, user switching is something I've never considered useful, so that's easily omitted too. -- Neil Williams = http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: gnucash dependencies (was Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce)
Le samedi 26 octobre 2013 à 13:03 +0200, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort a écrit : On 26/10/13 12:02, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 12:19:53AM +0100, Kevin Chadwick wrote: I have Gnucash installed and it depends on udisks, trust me I have absolutely no need for udisks or polkit, so don't be so sure (I am not saying that I am sure that he is not). gnucash → libgnome2-0 → gvfs → gvfs-daemons → libgdu0 → udisks How do you suggest this was fixed? (There's an explanation for the libgnom2-0 → gvfs dependency in #550479). libgnome2 is long deprecated, port gnucash away from it! This is already done in the current development release (in experimental). -- .''`.Sébastien Villemot : :' :Debian Developer `. `' http://www.dynare.org/sebastien `- GPG Key: 4096R/381A7594 signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 26 Oct 2013, at 13:00, Neil Williams codeh...@debian.org wrote: Desktop components cannot dictate how the rest of the system operates. The gnome folks are free to do what they please. They don't answer to us and your repeated assertions that they're crossing a line just shine a light on your own hubris. Here, we decide what happens *in Debian*. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1438a3ea-7b25-4727-9dc7-905bedb02...@debian.org
Re: gnucash dependencies (was Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce)
Quoting Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (2013-10-26 13:03:13) On 26/10/13 12:02, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 12:19:53AM +0100, Kevin Chadwick wrote: I have Gnucash installed and it depends on udisks, trust me I have absolutely no need for udisks or polkit, so don't be so sure (I am not saying that I am sure that he is not). gnucash → libgnome2-0 → gvfs → gvfs-daemons → libgdu0 → udisks How do you suggest this was fixed? (There's an explanation for the libgnom2-0 → gvfs dependency in #550479). libgnome2 is long deprecated, port gnucash away from it! If that's the case, I believe the library should be moved to oldlibs: Please consider file a bugreport suggesting that to the package maintainer. (not filing bugreport about that myself, as I only know the issue from above post). - Jonas -- * 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: gnucash dependencies (was Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce)
On 26/10/13 16:38, Jonas Smedegaard wrote: Quoting Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (2013-10-26 13:03:13) On 26/10/13 12:02, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 12:19:53AM +0100, Kevin Chadwick wrote: I have Gnucash installed and it depends on udisks, trust me I have absolutely no need for udisks or polkit, so don't be so sure (I am not saying that I am sure that he is not). gnucash → libgnome2-0 → gvfs → gvfs-daemons → libgdu0 → udisks How do you suggest this was fixed? (There's an explanation for the libgnom2-0 → gvfs dependency in #550479). libgnome2 is long deprecated, port gnucash away from it! If that's the case, I believe the library should be moved to oldlibs: Please consider file a bugreport suggesting that to the package maintainer. Done in svn: libgnome (2.32.1-5) UNRELEASED; urgency=low * debian/control.in: + Move to section oldlibs. -- Emilio Pozuelo Monfort po...@debian.org Sat, 26 Oct 2013 16:54:53 +0200 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/526bd801.8020...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 11:44:48PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: Andy Cater wrote: I think it would be a good idea to have the netinst have an additional option to select desktop easily including the option for command line only, no graphical desktop as default. We already have that option right now - in fact, you can deselect the graphical desktop task readily tasksel from any of the installation media and just get a simple command line system. Or are you specifically asking for such an option directly on the isolinux/grub installer boot screen? That wouldbe my preference - a tasksel change for no desktop KDE GNOME LXDE XFCE etc. for the netinst - default being no desktop - ideal for a minimum install. snip Yes, it can. It should contain enough of the packages needed to be able to support all 4 of the recognised DEs. However, at current rates it won't take long for them to outgrow the 4GB of space available! Now that USB sticks at 16/32GB are (relatively) cheap - it is actually a much better bet to install the Blu-Ray .iso image in the same way :) Thanks for reading, All the best - hope to get myself sorted to come to the mini-Debconf in November - see you then, AndyC -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Support the Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression: http://www.eff.org/cafe/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131026150853.ga4...@galactic.demon.co.uk
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 26 Oct 2013, at 16:08, Andrew M.A. Cater amaca...@galactic.demon.co.uk wrote: That wouldbe my preference - a tasksel change for no desktop KDE GNOME LXDE XFCE etc. for the netinst - default being no desktop - ideal for a minimum install. I don't understand how that would work: I presume you don't mean an isolinux option that changed the meaning of Debian desktop environment to no desktop. I think the boot options make the situation more complicated. Why not have a selection of tasks XFCE desktop environment (default) LXDE desktop environment GNOME desktop environment KDE desktop environment Where the debian recommended is suffixed as I've indicated above, and to get no desktop, you deselect them all. My main concern about this would be the task selection screen having too many options. In which case the desktop questions could all have their own screen. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/485d0ad4-e982-4902-9f70-719daf1b3...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Of course, the gnome default makes adding gnome to the plot not currently useful. One nice side benefit of at least temporarily switching the default desktop to xfce would be that if a lot of people wanted gnome, rather than just picking it as the default, we'd see that reflected in the popcon data. I saw a general survey possibly on techrepublic that alleged reasonable data collection methods (though I don't recall how the data was collected) suggesting that xfce was very close or overtaken Gnome now and KDE was the most widely used desktop. On those grounds I would therefore advocate KDE as default, however I am not fond of the lack of modularity of KDE, whereas with xfce it is a primary goal making users able to shape their debian for whatever general usage easily and fast is fast on fast systems too. -- ___ 'Write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface' (Doug McIlroy) In Other Words - Don't design like polkit or systemd ___ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/770901.95358...@smtp135.mail.ir2.yahoo.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Sat, Oct 26, 2013 at 04:41:00PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On 26 Oct 2013, at 16:08, Andrew M.A. Cater amaca...@galactic.demon.co.uk wrote: That wouldbe my preference - a tasksel change for no desktop KDE GNOME LXDE XFCE etc. for the netinst - default being no desktop - ideal for a minimum install. This is for the netinst - so something that will install a minimum system from the network and is 400M at the moment. I don't understand how that would work: I presume you don't mean an isolinux option that changed the meaning of Debian desktop environment to no desktop. I think the boot options make the situation more complicated. Why not have a selection of tasks No, that is pretty much what I mean: it would be useful to have no desktop installed by default. If you select - Install a desktop environment then you get to select which one you want: if that changes init choices / software choices to pull in the appropriate DE package list before your first boot into the new system. Then if someone says - I need to install a DE because I forgot to install a DE at initial install time - one command is needed - something like dpkg-reconfigure desktop-environment -plow should do it. XFCE desktop environment (default) LXDE desktop environment GNOME desktop environment KDE desktop environment Where the debian recommended is suffixed as I've indicated above, and to get no desktop, you deselect them all. My main concern about this would be the task selection screen having too many options. In which case the desktop questions could all have their own screen. Yes - a desktop selection should probably have its own screen - that way you can add any number of DEs you need. AndyC -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131026164339.ga5...@galactic.demon.co.uk
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Sat, 2013-10-26 at 00:00 +0100, Kevin Chadwick wrote: Pros: * CD#1 will work again without size worries * Smaller, simpler desktop * Works well/better on all supported kernels (?) * Does not depend on replacing init * Users can pick and choose components and drop down the size significantly such as for debian embedded or security reasons as it is designed to be modular and follow the unix philosophy. This really pinpoints the whole problem: What happened to the Unix philosophy, with freedom of choice? If you want a locked-in OS, with no choices, choose Mac* or Windows*. This question is really getting out of hand: We are talking Unix system freedom here, with all that follows with it :) Please, freedom of choice, and (preferably free) software! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1382816708.4094.9.camel@PackardBell-PC
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Oct 26, Svante Signell svante.sign...@gmail.com wrote: This really pinpoints the whole problem: What happened to the Unix philosophy, with freedom of choice? We killed it for good in 2008: http://www.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list/2008-January/msg00861.html -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Hi there! On Sat, 26 Oct 2013 08:08:53 -0700, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 11:44:48PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: Yes, it can. It should contain enough of the packages needed to be able to support all 4 of the recognised DEs. However, at current rates it won't take long for them to outgrow the 4GB of space available! Now that USB sticks at 16/32GB are (relatively) cheap - it is actually a much better bet to install the Blu-Ray .iso image in the same way :) A small note: does anyone consider that there are still people on not-so-fast Internet connections? I am still on a consumer 5000/500kbps ADSL at home and on a professional 4000/512kbps at one of the company I work for. And it seems that where I am now (visiting a friend) is even worse: = $ wget http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.2.0/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-7.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso --2013-10-26 13:23:12-- http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/7.2.0/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-7.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso Resolving cdimage.debian.org (cdimage.debian.org)... 130.239.18.163, 130.239.18.173, 2001:6b0:e:2018::173, ... Connecting to cdimage.debian.org (cdimage.debian.org)|130.239.18.163|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found Location: http://gemmei.acc.umu.se/debian-cd/7.2.0/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-7.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso [following] --2013-10-26 13:23:13-- http://gemmei.acc.umu.se/debian-cd/7.2.0/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-7.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso Resolving gemmei.acc.umu.se (gemmei.acc.umu.se)... 130.239.18.137, 2001:6b0:e:2018::137 Connecting to gemmei.acc.umu.se (gemmei.acc.umu.se)|130.239.18.137|:80... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: 3934945280 (3.7G) [application/x-iso9660-image] Saving to: ‘debian-7.2.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso’ 0% [ ] 410,076 107KB/s eta 8h 55m ^C = I am full in favor of dropping CDs, but not with the reasoning that no one use them anymore. Despite I usually prefer the netinst multi-arch *CD*, I always have the default CD1 in my laptop bag, it could be useful to install Debian with no Internet connection at all (maybe I am a bit too old in this regard). Thx, bye, Gismo / Luca signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Oct 26, Luca Capello l...@pca.it wrote: A small note: does anyone consider that there are still people on not-so-fast Internet connections? Yes: unless they need to install multiple computers (unusual, I think) and do not know how to share the downloaded packages among them, then netinstall is the most efficient choice in this scenario. I used to do this with 56k modems... -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Neil Williams codeh...@debian.org writes: Please reconsider this. If I wrote a little GUI calculator and made it depend on e.g. upstart, would that also make upstart unsuitable as a default init system because of the resulting insane top-down dependency? Yes. Aeh, are you sure? I think you missed my point. I'm not involved with any init system, nor a Debian developer, yet by developing some random app and having it depend on a specific init system, I could (according to you) make that init system unsuitable for Debian? That doesn't make any sense at all. Best, Nikolaus -- Encrypted emails preferred. PGP fingerprint: 5B93 61F8 4EA2 E279 ABF6 02CF A9AD B7F8 AE4E 425C »Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a Banana.« -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87r4b7xtif@vostro.rath.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 2013-10-24 22:24:05, James McCoy wrote: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 12:57:37AM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: James wrote: On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Steve McIntyre st...@einval.com wrote: This falsely implies that sticking with Gnome requires replacing the init system. The only requirement is that systemd is installed, not that it is used as the init system. That may be the case today, but I personally think it's abundantly clear from the current path of Gnome development that sooner or later it's going to have a hard dependency on using systemd. That doesn't contradict what I stated. One can use systemd (the package) without using systemd (the binary) as PID 1. Why should I have installed packages I'm not using and I don't want to use? I know it's rhetorical question but not all systems are having enough disk space besides I don't like have packages I'm not using on my systems. So it's not a solution to anything just kind a nasty workaround. I don't see any reason why Gnome would care what init system is used, while I do see reasons why they want to use the various other tools that come along with systemd (the package). -- |_|0|_| | |_|_|0| Heghlu'Meh QaQ jajVam | |0|0|0| kuLa - | gpg --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 0x58C338B3 3DF1 A4DF C732 4688 38BC F121 6869 30DD 58C3 38B3 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 06:48:03AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote: I agree with the people who suggest getting rid of the concept of a 'default' desktop but I don't know how practical it is since not all users will be capable of choosing a desktop. So we need to develop some guidance for them. In the netinst image and web pages a list of desktop blends would need to be presented, perhaps with screenshots. You may well be right but I'd love it if we had better data to go on with regards what our users (or desired userbase) did or felt or thought rather than just hunches. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025074434.gb23...@bryant.redmars.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 08:39:58AM +0100, Marcin Kulisz wrote: Why should I have installed packages I'm not using and I don't want to use? I know it's rhetorical question but not all systems are having enough disk space besides I don't like have packages I'm not using on my systems. So it's not a solution to anything just kind a nasty workaround. But you would be using it, if you've got it installed as a GNOME dependency and you are using GNOME. It does more than one thing: it's an init, and it does other bits, and the other bits are what GNOME needs. It's not a superfluous dependency. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025075431.gc23...@bryant.redmars.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:47:00AM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote: On Fri, 2013-10-25 at 10:40 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Why force *every* user of the installer to make that choice, when many of them find the very question to be a needless imposition which makes the installer incrementally less helpful? Sorry, but we're talking about Debian! I don't think that our target audience are people who cannot make such choices, and even if that would be our desired audience (a feeling which I have with *buntu) than our actual audience is probably another one. I taught Linus Torvalds some aspects of the C language in 1991. I wrote a little bit of code for the kernel in 1991. I installed Linux on my PC using boot floppies and a hex editor on the boot sector. I built most of the software I needed to run myself, until distros started happening. I maintained the Linux Software Map for a while, and moderated comp.os.linux.announce. I co-founded and wrote a book for the Linux Documentation Project. I've been involved in Debian for nearly two decades, working on a variety of parts of the system. I've worked for Canonical on various aspects of Ubuntu. I now work for a new company on a completely new, from-scratch way to develop embedded and appliance Linuxes, and yes, we include a desktop system. I've used twm, vtwm, fvwm1, fvwm2, various proprietary window managers/desktop systems, CDE, KDE, GNOME, and am now on GNOME+xmonad. I know how to make the choice. I don't fucking want to. Unless I'm needing to do a customised install for particular needs, I want Debian to provide me with defaults that just work. I don't care if the default choices are the ones I would choose myself, I can make changes later on. -- http://www.cafepress.com/trunktees -- geeky funny T-shirts http://gtdfh.branchable.com/ -- GTD for hackers -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025080026.GN4353@holywood
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 08:39:58AM +0100, Marcin Kulisz wrote: This falsely implies that sticking with Gnome requires replacing the init system. The only requirement is that systemd is installed, not that it is used as the init system. That may be the case today, but I personally think it's abundantly clear from the current path of Gnome development that sooner or later it's going to have a hard dependency on using systemd. That doesn't contradict what I stated. One can use systemd (the package) without using systemd (the binary) as PID 1. Why should I have installed packages I'm not using and I don't want to use? I know it's rhetorical question but not all systems are having enough disk space besides I don't like have packages I'm not using on my systems. Do you also want to recompile packages to get rid of optional library dependencies you don't need? -- WBR, wRAR -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025090259.gc15...@belkar.wrar.name
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Steve McIntyre steve at einval.com writes: Pros: * CD#1 will work again without size worries * Smaller, simpler desktop * Works well/better on all supported kernels (?) * Does not depend on replacing init Cons: * please fill in here IMHO you forgot the crucial part here - why is there a default at all: so that people who don't have the information to make a choice don't have to. The arguments that come up here are from people who *have* made a choice. But if you have made a choice, you're not in the target group for the default. Right? As I see it, when you install Debian you're either an archetypical Debian hacker running some weirdo^Wperfect setup you've refined over the years (or soon-to-be version of the same), or you just don't care. For people who just don't care, are you doing them a favour by installing xfce rather than GNOME? I don't think so. Most of the things people hate about GNOME are things that GNOME is doing to specifically target people who just don't care. Are you doing the archetypical (perhaps still wannabe) Debian hacker a favour by choosing xfce? Possibly - but I think it's wrong to confound these two populations. Catering for the hackers is the same as saying that Debian is for Debian hackers, don't-cares go home. IMHO. Of course you can change the installer UI, etc., but when we're talking about the default, that's the message. Another side of the coin is momentum. Both GNOME and KDE have a lot of momentum. They are drivers for the Linux application landscape. E.g. they both are actively being ported to Wayland. IMHO a don't-care is in a much better long-term position with GNOME or KDE on his computer than one of the smaller environments. Ole -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/loom.20131025t104930-...@post.gmane.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 09:00 +0100, Lars Wirzenius wrote: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:47:00AM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote: On Fri, 2013-10-25 at 10:40 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Why force *every* user of the installer to make that choice, when many of them find the very question to be a needless imposition which makes the installer incrementally less helpful? Sorry, but we're talking about Debian! I don't think that our target audience are people who cannot make such choices, and even if that would be our desired audience (a feeling which I have with *buntu) than our actual audience is probably another one. […] I know how to make the choice. I don't fucking want to. Unless I'm needing to do a customised install for particular needs, I want Debian to provide me with defaults that just work. I don't care if the default choices are the ones I would choose myself, I can make changes later on. I think that choosing a desktop environment is one of the *very few* things that a completely new user would actually be interested in and I believe that we should strive to make it easy and pleasant for them to do so. Keep in mind that even choosing a desktop environment on a whim would yield good results if all blessed desktop environments (gnome, kde, xfce and lxde) are well maintained and users can still switch later on. As a new user I would welcome a webpage or installer menu that shows one screenshot with a short description of the environment in question. Experienced users will already know what they want and can select that right away. -- Wolodja deb...@babilen5.org 4096R/CAF14EFC 081C B7CD FF04 2BA9 94EA 36B2 8B7F 7D30 CAF1 4EFC signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
* Lars Wirzenius l...@liw.fi [2013-10-25 10:01]: (...) I know how to make the choice. I don't fucking want to. Unless I'm needing to do a customised install for particular needs, I want Debian to provide me with defaults that just work. I don't care if the default choices are the ones I would choose myself, I can make changes later on. +1 Martin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025085927.gw15...@anguilla.debian.or.at
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 10/25/2013 07:52 AM, Paul Wise wrote: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 7:47 AM, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote: Debian is the Universal OS, isn't it? Part of being a 'Universal OS' is being useful to as many people as possible, including people who don't know what a desktop is and people who don't have the ability to choose a desktop. Artificially limiting the range of people exposed to, using or working on Debian isn't a good idea. It's not as if those users would just stay, stuck on the screen forever, then give-up installing Debian because they don't know what to answer. They will eventually choose an option, and move on to the next screen, even if they don't understand what they are doing. And probably those who don't know are trying Linux for the first time, because they are curious to know a new thing. If we point them to a wiki.d.o entry, explaining everything, then we're good. Also, I would find it very bad, if we made such an important design decisions based on the most ignorant group of our user base, pretending it would be a blocker for them, or because they would have the feeling it's harder to use (I'm convince it's not the case with good enough help text). I'm sure that the majority (if not all) of us in this thread would enjoy having such an option to choose from. Thomas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/526a43b1.6010...@debian.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:21:15 + (UTC) Ole Laursen o...@hardworking.dk wrote: Steve McIntyre steve at einval.com writes: Pros: * CD#1 will work again without size worries * Smaller, simpler desktop * Works well/better on all supported kernels (?) * Does not depend on replacing init Cons: * please fill in here IMHO you forgot the crucial part here - why is there a default at all: so that people who don't have the information to make a choice don't have to. Please read Steve's reply to this which he posted a few hours before you replied... https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/10/msg00577.html There will need to be a default, it's a question of how that is chosen. For people who just don't care, are you doing them a favour by installing xfce rather than GNOME? To quote Lars - to just get something that works - yes, I think it is better to install XFCE instead but that is because I actually think it is important that people can *get things done* on Debian. A desktop is akin to a place of work - it's not an entertainment system all jazzy and full of eye-candy but lacking all the functionality necessary to actually do useful stuff. That's a media centre or games console. I know this goes against the flow of pandering to tablets and touch-based systems but that's the core of the issue. Is Debian about supporting people doing useful stuff or is Debian about providing an eye-candy interface to the web and local media only? If we want to do both, then which gets the default? Many Debian installations lack a desktop entirely, many Debian developers have heavily customised desktop environments. Personally, if I'm going to recommend Debian to people, I want those people to be able to continue doing the useful stuff they do on other platforms. Currently that involves explaining how to override the default desktop choice and it would be nice to not have to do that. A smaller desktop is a good idea - it doesn't get in the way or get ideas beyond it's scope, something which I feel both KDE and GNOME have been doing for quite some time. I just think it should be more obvious that Debian has multiple desktop environments available, that there are environments to suit different needs and that the default is chosen on the basis of the one which is the most flexible and which makes it easiest to work on Debian. (In both senses - using Debian at work and using Debian to develop stuff.) Just as an aside, IMHO the battle for the touch-based, Linux tablet type OS has already been lost to Android and that is not necessarily a bad thing. It's not just down to Debian, it's a lack of appropriate software. Case in point: I'm removing GPE from Debian simply because it tried to be a touch-based environment but never had the upstream input to keep up with touch-based devices. It got stuck in the world of iPAQ and never made it to tablets. Maybe some GNOME people would like the chance to develop GNOME in their own way without the pressure of being the default desktop? Maybe that will allow GNOME to become so touchy-feely and UI driven that it might be usable on a tablet. -- Neil Williams = http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Lars Wirzenius l...@liw.fi writes: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:47:00AM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote: On Fri, 2013-10-25 at 10:40 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: Why force *every* user of the installer to make that choice, when many of them find the very question to be a needless imposition which makes the installer incrementally less helpful? Sorry, but we're talking about Debian! I don't think that our target audience are people who cannot make such choices, and even if that would be our desired audience (a feeling which I have with *buntu) than our actual audience is probably another one. I taught Linus Torvalds some aspects of the C language in 1991. I wrote a little bit of code for the kernel in 1991. I installed Linux on my PC using boot floppies and a hex editor on the boot sector. I built most of the software I needed to run myself, until distros started happening. I maintained the Linux Software Map for a while, and moderated comp.os.linux.announce. I co-founded and wrote a book for the Linux Documentation Project. I've been involved in Debian for nearly two decades, working on a variety of parts of the system. I've worked for Canonical on various aspects of Ubuntu. I now work for a new company on a completely new, from-scratch way to develop embedded and appliance Linuxes, and yes, we include a desktop system. I've used twm, vtwm, fvwm1, fvwm2, various proprietary window managers/desktop systems, CDE, KDE, GNOME, and am now on GNOME+xmonad. I know how to make the choice. I don't fucking want to. Unless I'm needing to do a customised install for particular needs, I want Debian to provide me with defaults that just work. I don't care if the default choices are the ones I would choose myself, I can make changes later on. Absolutely right. It seems to me that very little effort is required to install an alternative desktop. Once a new one is installed, the user ought to be able to flip between them at login with as little effort as it takes to decide whether one is having tea or coffee with one's breakfast, That being the case it's completely fine for us to choose whatever default makes practical sense for the CDs, as long as we actually have _some_ default (for those that don't know or care what they want). You get tea unless you ask for coffee, or chocolate, or a glass of water (xmonad?), and you're allowed to ask for your preference when you sit down (d-i's boot menu) or any time after that. Also, I think we can do some good by selecting XFCE as the default. Clearly XFCE appeals to a significant minority of people, so it's a shame that it's in need of some love at present. If we default to XFCE it will get more attention, and so will almost certainly get better maintenance. I seriously doubt that us switching away from Gnome will have a detectable negative impact on Gnome's rate of development, so the average quality of our offerings on the desktop, and the quality of that choice for all Free Software users, seems likely to improve as a result of such a change. Cheers, Phil. P.S. Just in case you think I'm arguing for my preference as default: I use xmonad. When installing for others, I go with the default (so Gnome for now) unless they express a preference or the default fails to work well on the target hardware (which seems to more often be the case with Gnome3 than previously, and XFCE has been my fall-back lately). -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]http://www.hands.com/ |-| HANDS.COM Ltd.http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ |(| 10 Onslow Gardens, South Woodford, London E18 1NE ENGLAND pgpHhhs86TQBU.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Le jeudi 24 octobre 2013 à 18:50 +0200, Lucas Nussbaum a écrit : An even stronger reason to move away from Gnome if the classic mode disappears. That's a set of gnome-shell extensions that reproduce the look feel of GNOME 2 and GNOME 3 classic/fallback mode, not a separate window manager. The old “classic/fallback” mode has not disappeared, it has been renamed to GNOME Flashback. And it will most likely be available in jessie. -- .''`. Josselin Mouette : :' : `. `' `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1382697186.4794.757.camel@pi0307572
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Le vendredi 25 octobre 2013 à 00:57 +0100, Steve McIntyre a écrit : That may be the case today, but I personally think it's abundantly clear from the current path of Gnome development that sooner or later it's going to have a hard dependency on using systemd. How is that a problem? I mean, apart from the pain of seeing a bunch of people who do not understand what systemd is rant about it? -- .''`. Josselin Mouette : :' : `. `' `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1382697274.4794.758.camel@pi0307572
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, 2013-10-25 at 12:33 +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: The old “classic/fallback” mode has not disappeared, it has been renamed to GNOME Flashback. But it became less and less usable... even in 3.4 now... many minor bugs that have accumulated and which you Debian maintainers probably cannot fix all since due to the amount of work/effort needed. Due to some nasty bugs in whatever component of GNOME (I guess it's metacity), -fallback is for me personally only usable at all with Compiz (which has been dropped already)... So to me the classc/fallback frontier seems to be a rather dark field... it's nice that you guys try to keep it working in Debian, but quite apparently GNOME upstream wants to ultimately get rid of it, and that *will* happen sooner or later. Cheers, Chris. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Le jeudi 24 octobre 2013 à 16:40 +0100, Steve McIntyre a écrit : This goes back to during the wheezy release cycle. There was a little discussion around a change in tasksel [1], but rather too late in the day for the change to make sense. Now we have rather more time, I feel. Let's change the default desktop for installation to xfce. What are the reasons exactly for deliberately depriving the default installation’s users of a more complete and featureful desktop? So far, in this discussion, I only read “I don’t like systemd” (which is irrelevant) and “fallback mode is going away” (which is false). Can we have a discussion of what we expect from a default desktop installation? Can this discussion be driven by user needs and features, and not about technical nitpicking? Thanks, -- .''`. Josselin Mouette : :' : `. `' `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1382697686.4794.763.camel@pi0307572
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Hi, Ansgar Burchardt ans...@debian.org writes: How about renaming CD1 to GNOME CD1 and make the minimal installers prompt which desktop to install? That is no longer having a default desktop. The downside would be that one download link would no longer be enough. By now I no longer think this is really worth much. There shouldn't be more unclear options when people want to download Debian. I also don't think changing the default desktop to XFCE is a good idea: there is the accessibility issue Lucas mentioned[1] and another mail indicating that XFCE is short of maintainers[2]. The default desktop should in my opinion really be a well maintained one. [1] http://lists.debian.org/20131024163152.gb20...@xanadu.blop.info [2] http://lists.debian.org/ca+k2i_1y-rf2433hhdqnd0dzywtv3f-5vnyecb6drofcq3_...@mail.gmail.com Finally this seems to be the wrong time and/or place to discuss these changes. Both this thread and the systemd effectively mandatory now due to GNOME[3] look like a train wreck to me where any constructive critique will be lost by now. I'm wondering if [4] is related as quite a lot of people complaining about GNOME depending on systemd state they don't even use it (and thus aren't affected anyway). [3] http://lists.debian.org/1382560241.6924.6.ca...@heisenberg.scientia.net [4] http://xkcd.com/386/ Ansgar -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87li1h8wf6@eisei.43-1.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, 2013-10-25 at 12:34 +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: I mean, apart from the pain of seeing a bunch of people who do not understand what systemd is rant about it? Taking out the people just rant and/or don't understand it club simply doesn't help... Debian should continue to offer free choice of the init system, and not everything about systemd is already working or great as it is planned to be. And in reality it seems to be far less modular than what the Lennart and friends keep up claiming (just have a look at Tollef's post above). And what about non-Linux arches (both in and not within Debian) which won't have systemd? Cheers, Chris. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Andrei POPESCU andreimpope...@gmail.comwrote: Would LXDE still fit on the same CD? I'm guessing yes, but I'd rather have it explicit. Why are we still talking about CDs? Didn't everybody move to DVDs a century ago? People who want to install Debian on old machines which only have a CD reader can use USB or an external DVD unit and let the project move to DVDs. -- Pau Garcia i Quiles http://www.elpauer.org (Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Le vendredi 25 octobre 2013 à 12:43 +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer a écrit : Debian should continue to offer free choice of the init system Why? “Multiple init systems” is not a feature that any of our users should care of. It is not a functional goal. And in reality it seems to be far less modular than what the Lennart and friends keep up claiming (just have a look at Tollef's post above). You just don’t have the same definition of “modular”. Systemd is extremely modular in its architecture. It doesn’t mean, though, that it is possible to pick random pieces to use without the others. -- .''`. Josselin Mouette : :' : `. `' `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1382698099.4794.766.camel@pi0307572
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 12:43:04PM +0200, Pau Garcia i Quiles wrote: Would LXDE still fit on the same CD? I'm guessing yes, but I'd rather have it explicit. Why are we still talking about CDs? Didn't everybody move to DVDs a century ago? And then they moved away from DVDs too. I guess we are talking about install images to download (where you usually don't want to download entire DVD1), not about ISOs to actually burn. -- WBR, wRAR -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025105016.ge15...@belkar.wrar.name
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Steve McIntyre steve at einval.com writes: * Does not depend on replacing init Wasn’t there some mention of xfce needing gnome-settings-daemon as well, which would kinda defeat the point? I’d be for IceWM as default setup, as opposed to a full Desktop Environment, and then people can either add/mix packages from DEs as needed or choose a different one in the installer. (It’s currently nontrivial to do so, the task list has only one entry for DE. This ought to change.) I fully agree with the statement that choosing the interface is one of the very few choices that newcomers would *indeed* want to make. And IceWM is a small, fast, usable default choice which will be familiar to everyone who used a GUI computer in the last decades, except maybe for the last 3-4 years when everyone went crazy over swish-to-do-stuff inter- faces, phones, etc. And then present Debian with all DEs, with the theme-du-release, to the media, so that people truly get that Debian is the Universal OS, not just “another GNOME ship”. bye, //mirabilos -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/loom.20131025t125552-...@post.gmane.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Josselin Mouette joss at debian.org writes: Debian should continue to offer free choice of the init system Why? “Multiple init systems” is not a feature that any of our users should care of. It is not a functional goal. Of course! • Developers are users, too. • The upstart crowd has got valid arguments for choosing it. • Someone might want to use cgroups for themselves instead of having an init system to manage it, e.g. on a very light-weight VM host. • Run kernels without cgroups support on RAM-constrained hardware. • Your primary use case appears to be “the desktop”, whereas Debian, as opposed to some of its downstreams and Pure Blends, is a Universal OS, which means it’s got much more servers in use, which don’t benefit from systemd either at all or at least not that much. • On a VM, I might want to run very low-consuming software only, to lower the cost of separating things into VMs of their own. (I’ll be writing a syslog dæmon some day because sysklogd (three processes, c’mon!) is now removed from the archive and both rsyslog and syslog-ng are way too heavy-weight for this, for example.) Note I’m trying to be constructive here for a change. And in reality it seems to be far less modular than what the Lennart and friends keep up claiming (just have a look at Tollef's post above). You just don’t have the same definition of “modular”. Systemd is extremely modular in its architecture. It doesn’t mean, though, that it is possible to pick random pieces to use without the others. I’ll not say anything here but just let this stand of its own, complete with context, until it sinks in… bye, //mirabilos -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/loom.20131025t130253-...@post.gmane.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:41 +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: Wolodja wrote: On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 16:40 +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: This goes back to during the wheezy release cycle. There was a little discussion around a change in tasksel [1], but rather too late in the day for the change to make sense. Now we have rather more time, I feel. Let's change the default desktop for installation to xfce. Do we really need a default desktop? The only arguments in favour of it I can think of is that it spares users to make an informed decision (which might be overwhelming to a user new to Linux) and that the content of CD2 depends on it. (thanks ansgar) I guess not everybody understands the reasons for Debian choosing a default desktop, so I'll explain/expand them here. 1. We have several types of installation media (netboot, netinst, DVD, BD) […] The choice was made years ago to *not* ask users which desktop they prefer during the tasksel phase, to reduce the number of questions that new users would have to answer. 2. Secondly, our first full-size CD image is not big enough to contain all the desktops. In fact, it's not big enough any more to contain even a fairly minimal Gnome alone, but let's not digress. Thank you Steve for elaborating and I am happy that you did as it allowed me to focus to the core of *this* discussion. 1. How will new users pick a desktop environment? 2. How can be produce sets of CDs that are of use to our users and do not put too much stress on the mirrors. No default DE?! --- I believe that the question which desktop environment to use is one of the *very few* that a new user actually wants to answer and we should enable users to do that in a pleasant and informed way. Old users will know already what they want and they can choose that more easily. I also believe that not choosing a default DE but treating all blessed DEs as equal is a very strong and positive statement the Debian project could make in the sense of We do support all of Gnome, KDE, LXDE, XFCE, ... to the same high standard. You might disagree with this and I can happily accept that, but I personally think that this is at least worth considering. Another aspect I like about this decision is that it would free us from the need to have this discussion ever again. Once a desktop environment is well maintained and packaged it could (should?) be offered. The implementation could be as easy as providing a short description, screenshots, maybe a short video and a link to the upstream project for each DE on the website and in the installer. (naturally not all of these are appropriate everywhere). But what about CD images? - The actual technical argument against not choosing a default DE is based on the perceived inability (due to size constraints) to offer suitable CD image sets for each flavour. Choosing, say, XFCE as opposed to Gnome allows us to survive yet another release in which we will be able to offer a CD1 for each of XFCE (default), Gnome, KDE and LXDE and then CD2-CD? tailored for XFCE. I am not sure if this constraint is one that can be upheld forever and the problems to create CD1 images that contain all packages to install the respective Desktop task during the last two (?) releases underline this. It seems as if there will be the need to create, say, CD1+CD2 specific to a desktop environment and then CD3-CD? for the remaining packages. (or CD1, CD2 + CD3 specifically) soon and that the choice to offer CD images limits our options. What's the point of shipping a Gnome CD1 if it's not big enough any more to contain even a fairly minimal Gnome? (likewise for KDE or XFCE and LXDE in 2, 4, 6, 10 years) -- Wolodja deb...@babilen5.org 4096R/CAF14EFC 081C B7CD FF04 2BA9 94EA 36B2 8B7F 7D30 CAF1 4EFC signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, 2013-10-25 at 12:48 +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: Why? “Multiple init systems” is not a feature that any of our users should care of. It is not a functional goal. Well I guess users *do* care... just look at the posts from the last few days. We had users who said stick with sysvinit, the *ubuntu-fraction prefers upstream, some people like file-rc for their needs and we have systemd. Personally I also tend towards systemd, but even for my use cases it's a no-go (at least yet). But now we're in the unfortunate position that GNOME already forces the installation of at least the package... and we've basically heard that no-one can guarantee whether the parts needed will actually work in all cases when it is not used as init=. And I think it's also a political question: Just look around the posts in this thread, you will find many people who are absolutely unhappy with both, political/philosophical behaviour (look at Gunnar's post, where he brings it down to antithetical to the Unix culture IMO) of GNOME and technical and/or design issues (NM, GNOME Shell, too little features). Sure there are always some people who rant, but that's a minority here, most people actually bring up good arguments. When I say I can't live with GNOME Shell, I don't just simply say that because I want to spread hate - I tried it for a week or so, it absolutely didn't fit my work schemas... so for *me* it does not fit. It's fine if it does for others. Same with NM - I don't have nothing against NM per se,... but there are so many issues with it (which I've reported upstream, and which they've simply closed because of obscure reasons) What I try to tell is, one can't just always come a long and say that people who don't like some things, live in the past or have no idea what they're talking about. And that's the actual political point... if the community more or less silently accepts this all the time, things will get worse and worse. Take the NM example... the idea of having an abstraction of networking for GUI is nice... but in reality,... integration of NM with the native tools (ifupdown, vpnc, ppp/chatscripts) sucks or is non-existant... all that should have been fixed by upstream *before* NM was made mandatory... now it is more or less mandatory and we can't get easily rid of it anymore and upstream has apparently little to no interest to fix the issues. You just don’t have the same definition of “modular”. Systemd is extremely modular in its architecture. It doesn’t mean, though, that it is possible to pick random pieces to use without the others. Well sure,... but you can always find a definition of modular that just fits your purpose... And I guess what most people expect is that you can really use components of it independently of others. Cheers, Chris. smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Hi, * Does not depend on replacing init Wasn’t there some mention of xfce needing gnome-settings-daemon as well, which would kinda defeat the point? Not as far as I can tell: nik@keks:~ $ apt-rdepends xfce4 | grep gnome Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 1|nik@keks:~ $ And IceWM is a small, fast, usable default choice which will be familiar to everyone who used a GUI computer in the last decades, except maybe for the last 3-4 years when everyone went crazy over swish-to-do-stuff inter- faces, phones, etc. As a matter of fact, IceWM comes, in icewm-themes, with a Windows XP theme :D. On the other hand, XFCE4 is more or less what GNOME used to be; it can, with some exceptions, be seen as a drop-in replacement for GNOME 2, but it sucks less than GNOME 2 ever did. I like IceWM as well, but XFCE is a good decision. And then present Debian with all DEs, with the theme-du-release, to the media, so that people truly get that Debian is the Universal OS, not just “another GNOME ship”. Full ACK! -nik -- * concerning Mozilla code leaking assertion failures to tty without D-BUS * mirabilos That means, D-BUS is a tool that makes software look better than it actually is. PGP-Fingerprint: 3C9D 54A4 7575 C026 FB17 FD26 B79A 3C16 A0C4 F296 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 12:50 PM, Andrey Rahmatullin w...@wrar.name wrote: Why are we still talking about CDs? Didn't everybody move to DVDs a century ago? And then they moved away from DVDs too. I guess we are talking about install images to download (where you usually don't want to download entire DVD1), not about ISOs to actually burn. In that case, enhancing jigdo so that the user can create and download a customized install image would IMHO be more useful than deciding which desktop becomes/remains default. Maybe a web version would help too: you choose what (broad) features you want in the install image, dependencies are automagically added, install image is generated and downloaded. -- Pau Garcia i Quiles http://www.elpauer.org (Due to my workload, I may need 10 days to answer)
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:29:34PM +0200, Pau Garcia i Quiles wrote: Why are we still talking about CDs? Didn't everybody move to DVDs a century ago? And then they moved away from DVDs too. I guess we are talking about install images to download (where you usually don't want to download entire DVD1), not about ISOs to actually burn. In that case, enhancing jigdo so that the user can create and download a customized install image would IMHO be more useful than deciding which desktop becomes/remains default. I'm afraid even enhanced jigdo is immensely less convenient than a download link :) Maybe a web version would help too: you choose what (broad) features you want in the install image, dependencies are automagically added, install image is generated and downloaded. This may be better though I can't discuss the details as I'm not a part of the target audience, just voicing my thoughts. -- WBR, wRAR -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025113759.gf15...@belkar.wrar.name
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:13:48PM +0200, Dominik George wrote: Wasn’t there some mention of xfce needing gnome-settings-daemon as well, which would kinda defeat the point? Not as far as I can tell: nik@keks:~ $ apt-rdepends xfce4 | grep gnome Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 1|nik@keks:~ $ xfswitch-plugin - gdm3 - gnome-settings-daemon -- ᛊᚨᚾᛁᛏᚣ᛫ᛁᛊ᛫ᚠᛟᚱ᛫ᚦᛖ᛫ᚹᛖᚨᚲ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025114248.ga15...@angband.pl
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 2013-10-25, Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org wrote: What are the reasons exactly for deliberately depriving the default installation’s users of a more complete and featureful desktop? I've said that for years, but we still haven't changed to KDE Plasma Desktop as the default. /troll /Sune -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/slrnl6kms1.j8.nos...@sshway.ssh.pusling.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 25/10/13 at 12:33 +0200, Josselin Mouette wrote: Le jeudi 24 octobre 2013 à 18:50 +0200, Lucas Nussbaum a écrit : An even stronger reason to move away from Gnome if the classic mode disappears. I just wanted to point out that this quote is not mine, but Svante's. https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/10/msg00508.html I'm personally not advocating moving away from GNOME (nor the contrary :-) ). Lucas -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025115345.ga15...@xanadu.blop.info
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Quoting Adam Borowski (2013-10-25 13:42:48) On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:13:48PM +0200, Dominik George wrote: Wasn’t there some mention of xfce needing gnome-settings-daemon as well, which would kinda defeat the point? Not as far as I can tell: nik@keks:~ $ apt-rdepends xfce4 | grep gnome Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done 1|nik@keks:~ $ xfswitch-plugin - gdm3 - gnome-settings-daemon xfswitch-plugin is suggested by xfce4-goodies, so irrelevant for this discussion. - Jonas -- * 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: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
xfswitch-plugin - gdm3 - gnome-settings-daemon xfswitch-plugin is suggested by xfce4-goodies, so irrelevant for this discussion. However, I must admit that even if the standard XFCE installation does not depend on systemd, it would be even worse if a user came along and wanted to extend their user experience by installing some XFCE addon and *that* would magically switch their init system. So, either systemd has to become the global default, while sysv-init *still has to be maintained, by all means*, or we enter another discussion round about icewm ;). -nik -- Wer den Grünkohl nicht ehrt, ist der Mettwurst nicht wert! PGP-Fingerprint: 3C9D 54A4 7575 C026 FB17 FD26 B79A 3C16 A0C4 F296 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Jonas Smedegaard dr at jones.dk writes: xfswitch-plugin is suggested by xfce4-goodies, so irrelevant for this discussion. Fair enough, but http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.general/187596 suggests that, given a ConsoleKit removal, xfce still depends on systemd just like GNOME. That’s why I’d say xfce is *not* a valid default desktop *either*. Sure, why not KDE except for the size (which is an issue with GNOME too)? It even works, and is decent fast, on m68k (SCNR). But honestly, why a DE at all? rra said, for example, he doesn’t even use it, but due to DEs he’s probably not even thought of not using one. And IceWM, of which I have fond memories as it’s the first WM I ever used too, works just fine. And it’s not as hard to use as evilwm (my current personal favourite), fvwm2, *box, twm, or the tiling window managers. bye, //mirabilos -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/loom.20131025t140210...@post.gmane.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 02:02:48PM +0200, Dominik George wrote: However, I must admit that even if the standard XFCE installation does not depend on systemd, it would be even worse if a user came along and wanted to extend their user experience by installing some XFCE addon and *that* would magically switch their init system. Installing systemd does not magically switch your init system. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025120602.ga25...@bryant.redmars.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 2013-10-25, Dominik George n...@naturalnet.de wrote: However, I must admit that even if the standard XFCE installation does not depend on systemd, it would be even worse if a user came along and wanted to extend their user experience by installing some XFCE addon and *that* would magically switch their init system. apparantly no one is actually reading what has been written earlier, so let me try write it in larger letters: m ## mmmm mmmmm mm#mm mmm # #mmmm mm ## # # # ## # ## # # # ## # m#m## # ## # # # mm#mm # # mmmmm mm#mmmm mm#mm # # #m# m # m # mmm m m mmm mm#mm mmm m mmm# mmmmmm # m m # ## # # # # # # # # # # m #m#m## # # # # # # # m# # mmm #mmmmm #mm # # # #m## ##m# mm# #mm m # # # # m mmm mmm mmm# mmmmmmmmm m mm # m # # # # # # # # # # # ## # ##m# # # # # # # # # m # # # m mm# #m# #mm #m## #m# #mm mmm # # m # m m # mmm mm#mm mmm m m mmmmm#mm mmm # mm mmm # ## #m m m # ### # # # ##m #m#m## ## # # # #m#mm mmm # # mm#mmmm #mm # # mm#mm m m m mm mmmmm#mm mmm m m mmm mm#mm mmm m mmm # ## # # m m # ## # # # # # # ## #m #m#m## # # # m # # mm#mmmm mmm #mmmmm #mm # # # mmm m /Sune -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/slrnl6knoe.j8.nos...@sshway.ssh.pusling.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 12:40:35PM +0200, Christoph Anton Mitterer wrote: So to me the classc/fallback frontier seems to be a rather dark field... it's nice that you guys try to keep it working in Debian, but quite apparently GNOME upstream wants to ultimately get rid of it, and that *will* happen sooner or later. Fallback mode has been dropped as of GNOME 3.8. At the same time, gnome-panel maintenance has been taken over by a Flashback team. There is *no* intention to prevent anyone working on any component that we deprecated / aren't using anymore. It could be difficult, but no idea. Note that also various MATE developers have git.gnome.org accounts (I set that up for them). IIRC they took over one of the deprecated components. -- Regards, Olav -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025115205.gc7...@bkor.dhs.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Jonathan Dowland jmtd at debian.org writes: Installing systemd does not magically switch your init system. Not *yet*. But it will, shortly. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.general/187556 bye, //mirabilos, explicitly omitting his own guesses on the timeframe -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/loom.20131025t142639-...@post.gmane.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:06:02PM +0100, Jonathan Dowland wrote: On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 02:02:48PM +0200, Dominik George wrote: However, I must admit that even if the standard XFCE installation does not depend on systemd, it would be even worse if a user came along and wanted to extend their user experience by installing some XFCE addon and *that* would magically switch their init system. Installing systemd does not magically switch your init system. It doesn't *right now*, but from [0] I conclude that it would very much like to do so and so possibly, in the future, will. -nik [0]: https://wiki.debian.org/systemd#Issue_.231:_sysvinit_vs._systemd-sysv -- Wer den Grünkohl nicht ehrt, ist der Mettwurst nicht wert! PGP-Fingerprint: 3C9D 54A4 7575 C026 FB17 FD26 B79A 3C16 A0C4 F296 signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Thorsten Glaser tg at mirbsd.de writes: • Your primary use case appears to be “the desktop”, whereas Debian, as opposed to some of its downstreams and Pure Blends, is a Universal OS, which means it’s got much more servers in use, which don’t benefit from systemd either at all or at least not that much. I humbly disagree. I'm mainly interested in the perspectives of systemd on servers. For instance: I have in the past had downtime on servers I maintain because Debian out of the box doesn't babysit processes. Apache or MySQL hit by a random once-in-a-year irreproducible crash? Boom. The day of better systemd integration in Debian, where I can uninstall monit, or at least relegate it to application level testing (does this page return 200 OK), I'm a happy camper. If you take a look at the systemd feature set, much of it is aimed towards servers, not desktops. Ole -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/loom.20131025t140418-...@post.gmane.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Pau Garcia i Quiles wrote: On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 6:52 PM, Andrei POPESCU andreimpope...@gmail.comwrote: Would LXDE still fit on the same CD? I'm guessing yes, but I'd rather have it explicit. Why are we still talking about CDs? Didn't everybody move to DVDs a century ago? People who want to install Debian on old machines which only have a CD reader can use USB or an external DVD unit and let the project move to DVDs. We've had this discussion multiple times over the years. I've been told multiple times that we still have a non-negligible set of users owning/running hardware that can't do DVDs. I'm not 100% convinced myself of how large or critical this use case is, but that's the information I have. We *could* just drop all the CD sets and be done with it, just keeping the netinst CD and the DVDs. Is that what people really want? -- Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.st...@einval.com Support the Campaign for Audiovisual Free Expression: http://www.eff.org/cafe/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/e1vzgxz-0008px...@mail.einval.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 12:41:26 +0200 Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org wrote: Le jeudi 24 octobre 2013 à 16:40 +0100, Steve McIntyre a écrit : This goes back to during the wheezy release cycle. There was a little discussion around a change in tasksel [1], but rather too late in the day for the change to make sense. Now we have rather more time, I feel. Let's change the default desktop for installation to xfce. What are the reasons exactly for deliberately depriving the default installation’s users of a more complete and featureful desktop? From Steve's original email: * CD#1 will work again without size worries * Smaller, simpler desktop * Works well/better on all supported kernels (?) For me, a smaller, simpler desktop is *much* better and a worthwhile goal in and of itself. I want the default desktop to be one which is sufficiently flexible to support using Debian at work and for work. The kernel support issue touches on systemd but also has implications for some of the other desktop environment options. Steve added the bit about not requiring a change of init which is specifically aimed at systemd. Personally, I'm not at all sure whether systemd is a good choice but I do know that I'm not willing to put up with a desktop environment like GNOME any longer. It simply does not support my workflow and it sounds like there are a number of people who feel the same way. Enough to warrant discussion of whether GNOME has sufficient support in Debian to be a justifiable default. I firmly believe that GNOME threw away that justification with GNOME Shell and if GNOME persists in the eye-candy approach and then adds an entirely unjustifiable dependency from a *desktop* to an *init* system then I have no reason to respect GNOME or GNOME maintainers ever again. To be clear, I'm not sold on the systemd issues - what I *do* object to is that a desktop environment expects to dictate my choice of init. That length of dependency chain is utterly unacceptable to me. Encapsulation is a good thing. The desktop has no business getting out of it's GUI box and dabbling with the base system. It should use what it is given and push for standard interfaces so that anyone can work on the layers in between. What GNOME is doing is akin to the worst excesses of proprietary lock-in. I should be able to write apps in whatever language I like and have them integrate with whatever desktop I like, based on whatever base system is in use. Until GNOME gets back into it's box and starts behaving like a good citizen, I will continue to rail against it. GNOME is not an os and it needs to live with what the base os provides, not try to circumvent it. If someone comes up with good reasons to consider systemd on it's own merit, I'm willing to consider it. With the current approach of a fait-accompli systemd is part of the GNOME dependency chain, so tough then I am quite happy to dismiss systemd as an option simply because of this insane top-down dependency. systemd simply cannot be a viable choice if it has to be forced down people's throats like this. If it's good enough, it should have been a fully fledged alternative in Wheezy and then desktops could provide optional support in Jessie and could consider switching to it in Jessie+1. For now, I think GNOME either invents support for other init systems and supports them all properly or it gets consigned to the bin as too insane to live. GNOME has no business dictating the init system, end of discussion IMHO. So far, in this discussion, I only read “I don’t like systemd” (which is irrelevant) and “fallback mode is going away” (which is false). GNOME is unusable as a desktop to actually get things done. Too much eye-candy, pointless 3D acceleration, removed functionality and a presumption that the DE is always right. No, GNOME, the DE is a service and it needs to start the way *I* tell it to start and do what *I* tell it to do, the way I want it done. That is flexible, that's useful. All the rest is a mixture of feature creep, eye-candy, interface bloat and monopolist propaganda. I know you disagree with all of that or you wouldn't be a GNOME maintainer, I accept that you presumably find GNOME usable for your own work but the underpinning of this ongoing debate is that this is becoming a minority view and does not warrant GNOME remaining to be the default desktop. Can we have a discussion of what we expect from a default desktop installation? Can this discussion be driven by user needs and features, and not about technical nitpicking? Yes, we can. See my reply: https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2013/10/msg00608.html -- Neil Williams = http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Oct 25, Steve McIntyre st...@einval.com wrote: We've had this discussion multiple times over the years. I've been told multiple times that we still have a non-negligible set of users owning/running hardware that can't do DVDs. I'm not 100% convinced I can pull random statistics out of my ass as well, if you think it would help. :-) myself of how large or critical this use case is, but that's the information I have. We *could* just drop all the CD sets and be done with it, just keeping the netinst CD and the DVDs. Is that what people really want? Yes please. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, 2013-10-25 at 13:31 +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: We've had this discussion multiple times over the years. I've been told multiple times that we still have a non-negligible set of users owning/running hardware that can't do DVDs. I'm not 100% convinced myself of how large or critical this use case is, but that's the information I have. We *could* just drop all the CD sets and be done with it, just keeping the netinst CD and the DVDs. Is that what people really want? I'd be fine it,... CD's can probably dropped anyway Which end-user (who cannot bootstrap Debian via other means) has really only CD drives, that are not able to read DVDs? And many new notebooks (not to talk about servers) have no CD/DVD at all. Cheers, Chris. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1382704778.21620.6.ca...@heisenberg.scientia.net
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On 2013-10-25, Steve McIntyre st...@einval.com wrote: We've had this discussion multiple times over the years. I've been told multiple times that we still have a non-negligible set of users owning/running hardware that can't do DVDs. I'm not 100% convinced myself of how large or critical this use case is, but that's the information I have. We *could* just drop all the CD sets and be done with it, just keeping the netinst CD and the DVDs. Is that what people really want? I think it is fine to keep the CD's as long as you want to do them, but I don't see that it is that important to ensure that there is something special about CD 1 and trying to squeeze stuff on to it by cutting features. /Sune -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/slrnl6kpn8.j8.nos...@sshway.ssh.pusling.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, 25 Oct 2013 12:34:34 +0200 Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org wrote: Le vendredi 25 octobre 2013 à 00:57 +0100, Steve McIntyre a écrit : That may be the case today, but I personally think it's abundantly clear from the current path of Gnome development that sooner or later it's going to have a hard dependency on using systemd. How is that a problem? What right does a desktop environment have to assert what init system is chosen? There is no good reason other than that's the way GNOME has been written. So change the code and get GNOME to behave properly. -- Neil Williams = http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/ signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Oct 25, Neil Williams codeh...@debian.org wrote: If someone comes up with good reasons to consider systemd on it's own merit, I'm willing to consider it. With the current approach of a The arguments for a modern init system have been discussed over and over. I do not mind replacing gnome with something else, I am a fvwm user. But if systemd is the problem then we should first choose an init system. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Oct 25, Thorsten Glaser t...@mirbsd.de wrote: • Your primary use case appears to be “the desktop”, whereas Debian, as opposed to some of its downstreams and Pure Blends, is a Universal OS, which means it’s got much more servers in use, which don’t benefit from systemd either at all or at least not that much. This is totally wrong. Servers greatly benefit from a modern init system as well, often even more than desktops. Think about netboot, SAN support, SCSI LUNs which come and go, etc. • On a VM, I might want to run very low-consuming software only, to lower Just because you /want/ something it does not mean that it is worth supporting it for Debian. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Oct 25, Christoph Anton Mitterer cales...@scientia.net wrote: Why? “Multiple init systems” is not a feature that any of our users should care of. It is not a functional goal. Well I guess users *do* care... just look at the posts from the last few days. Just because some people have different personal preferences it does not mean that we have to accomodate them at all costs. Just because some people believe that we should support multiple init systems it does not mean that they are right. Just look around the posts in this thread, you will find many people who are absolutely unhappy with both, political/philosophical behaviour (look at Gunnar's post, where he brings it down to antithetical to the Unix culture IMO) of GNOME and technical and/or design issues (NM, GNOME Shell, too little features). I am so much unhappy with GNOME that I use gnome-session with fvwm. But still, I see the need for a modern init system no matter what the GNOME developers want to do. -- ciao, Marco signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
]] Thorsten Glaser Jonathan Dowland jmtd at debian.org writes: Installing systemd does not magically switch your init system. Not *yet*. But it will, shortly. No, it won't. http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.debian.devel.general/187556 I'm not saying that in that article. Please don't twist my words. -- Tollef Fog Heen UNIX is user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/87wql1y0c7@qurzaw.varnish-software.com
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
On Fri, 2013-10-25 at 13:31 +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: We've had this discussion multiple times over the years. I've been told multiple times that we still have a non-negligible set of users owning/running hardware that can't do DVDs. The set of hardware which can't boot from DVDs *or* boot from a USB stick must surely be pretty tiny. (AIUI it is the DVD ISOs which can be thrown onto a stick, so throwing away CDs wont hurt that) Add in or boot from network and it must be a minuscule set. Ian. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1382706599.22417.155.ca...@hastur.hellion.org.uk
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Hi Steve, thanks for starting this discussion. I was quite intrigued by the responses which challenged whether we need a default at all, but if we accept that a default is required (as you outline and as others have said), I have two separate thoughts to ponder about proceeding: • we define some technical criteria that a desktop environment must meet in order to be picked for default (as we have architecture criteria for example) and we then see what DEs remain after applying that filter. I intuitively like this idea but I suspect it won't work. • we define and maintain a Debian Desktop Environment which is a superset of an upstream DE, perhaps with things added, things removed, policies changed. We already use the term Debian Desktop Environment in tasksel but it has little meaning at the moment. The teams packaging upstream DEs (quite rightly) try to make sure that the DEs are packaged as faithfully as possible, whereas a Debian Desktop Environment may wish to diverge from upstream on a technical or policy matter. This could fold in the debian-desktop effort (which, afaik, mostly focusses on producing a mega-theme for releases so that software across DEs and toolkits have some UI similarity/Debian release branding). I suspect this is too much work and all the DE teams are screaming out for more help already. On Fri, Oct 25, 2013 at 01:41:42AM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote: 1. We have several types of installation media (netboot, netinst, DVD, BD) where we can happily install any desktop - they either contain *all* of the bits needed for any of the desktops, or *none*. The choice was made years ago to *not* ask users which desktop they prefer during the tasksel phase, to reduce the number of questions that new users would have to answer. Hence, we chose a default. Since that point, we've added options in the boot menus on these generic media (where possible, via isolinux or grub) to make it easier to make a desktop choice, but to the best of my knowledge most people just take the default option. We *could* revisit the tasksel design choice to not list all the desktops if people want - that's another discussion to have, maybe. I was very curious about how the boot menu stuff worked, so I took a look and here's a summary for anyone else not clear. (I'll not pass judgement on the current situation in this thread, I guess feedback would be better sent to debian-boot). Using debian-7.2.0-i386-netinst.iso, The relevant parts of the ISOLINUX boot menu structure are: (root) → Install → Advanced Options → Alternative desktop environments → KDE LXDE XFCE Notably absent is GNOME, here. Proceeding with an install, tasksel has Debian Desktop Environment. This installs a different desktop environment depending on the boot options selected: GNOME by default, KDE/LXDE/XFCE instead if you selected those options in the boot menu. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025133645.gb25...@bryant.redmars.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
That looked unintentionally *great* in my mutt, half of it got interpreted and coloured as quotes, giving a chrome feel. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20131025133928.gb28...@bryant.redmars.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Steve McIntyre st...@einval.com writes: We *could* just drop all the CD sets and be done with it, just keeping the netinst CD and the DVDs. Is that what people really want? As a longtime Debian user, that would suit me fine -- I've not done a Debian installation using anything other than netinst (or debootstrap) in years. I'd be interested to know what the use cases for the full stack of CDs currently are... -- Adam Sampson a...@offog.org http://offog.org/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/y2atxg51ptt@cartman.at.offog.org
Re: Proposal: switch default desktop to xfce
Ole Laursen olau at hardworking.dk writes: For instance: I have in the past had downtime on servers I maintain because Debian out of the box doesn't babysit processes. Apache or MySQL hit by a random once-in-a-year irreproducible crash? Boom. Hm, fun. I don’t usually run into those, but then I regularily reboot machines, especially after upgrades. This can very finely be solved without changing init though, for example with DJB dæmontools. Just saying. And note that, as opposed to the systemd people and Md, I’m not opposed to having systemd *available*. It can even be default if it’s possible to keep running the others, and I’d not mind GNOME depending on it either. I just want the user, any user (including myself), to be able to choose. Jonathan Dowland wrote: Notably absent is GNOME, here. Proceeding with an install, tasksel has Debian Desktop Environment. This installs a different desktop environment depending on the boot options selected: GNOME by default, KDE/LXDE/XFCE instead if you selected those options in the boot menu. Yes, that’s ridiculous. For that matter, if I were a skilled user coming from, say, another distro or unixoid operating system, and wanted to actually install GNOME, I’d never select “Debian Desktop Environment” either, but try to figure out what’s the name of the correct metapackage to use after the installation either (for that matter, I think tasksel in its entirety has to simply go), since I’d want to install GNOME, not some, to be honest, unknown entity. Oh, and what’s with this automatically installing dictionaries just because I select en_GB.UTF-8 as default locale, too? And some other packages that aren’t installed when skipping the tasksel d-i step entirely… I’d have to test-install a system to find out the exact set, but while at d-i issues I thought I mention it, at the danger of it getting even more OT… bye, //mirabilos -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-devel-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/loom.20131025t155111-...@post.gmane.org
