Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Leon Fauster via CentOS]

Am 27.02.21 um 16:28 schrieb James Szinger:

On Fri, 26 Feb 2021 09:40:06 -0600
Johnny Hughes  wrote:


https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/modularity/using-modules/


I find the modularity end-user documentation to be woefully
inadequate, especially for developers.



Yep!



Here are several basic to advanced question that I can’t see answers
for on that page.  All of this is from the perspective of a user of
Fedora or EL, installing and building software for my own use.  That
page seems aimed at those developing Fedora and using the Fedora build
system.

What modules are available, what are they for, and what’s in them?

What streams are available, what are they for, and what’s in them?
(https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/modularity/using-modules-switching-streams/
says “This page needs to be extended.”)

What profiles are available, what are they for, and what’s in them?

`yum module info` seems to be part of the answer, but it is not in
that doc.



Just some hints:

Try to read the modulemd repodata. It gives some insights :

$ curl -q 
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/8/AppStream/x86_64/os/repodata/1e7ee9bec2bcd56d5bff6e6ead9b71a41a244e6ffd6a88f6477a8f2f097f8f1b-modules.yaml.gz 
| gunzip | less





I have an RPM installed.  Which module and stream is it from?  Do
other modules also provide it?  The same version or different?

What is the modularity equivalent of `yum provides`?



dnf module provides




How do I examine the dependecies between modules?

I am trying to build an RPM that BuildRequires something from a
module.  How do I get mock to do this?  What if some of the
BuildRequires are private or hidden?




config_opts['module_enable'] = ['python27:2.7']




I am trying to patch and rebuild an RPM from a module.  How do I do
this?  How do I access the private BuildRequires?



Briefly: Modules are defined logically (modulemd). You need to build
a repo with modules defined that provide the same stream. This repo
overrides the default rpms then via higher NVRA (e.g. EPOCH).



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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[James Szinger]

On Fri, 26 Feb 2021 09:40:06 -0600
Johnny Hughes  wrote:
> 
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/modularity/using-modules/

I find the modularity end-user documentation to be woefully
inadequate, especially for developers.

Here are several basic to advanced question that I can’t see answers
for on that page.  All of this is from the perspective of a user of
Fedora or EL, installing and building software for my own use.  That
page seems aimed at those developing Fedora and using the Fedora build
system.

What modules are available, what are they for, and what’s in them?

What streams are available, what are they for, and what’s in them?
(https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/modularity/using-modules-switching-streams/
says “This page needs to be extended.”)

What profiles are available, what are they for, and what’s in them?

`yum module info` seems to be part of the answer, but it is not in
that doc.

I have an RPM installed.  Which module and stream is it from?  Do
other modules also provide it?  The same version or different?

What is the modularity equivalent of `yum provides`?

How do I examine the dependecies between modules?

I am trying to build an RPM that BuildRequires something from a
module.  How do I get mock to do this?  What if some of the
BuildRequires are private or hidden?

I am trying to patch and rebuild an RPM from a module.  How do I do
this?  How do I access the private BuildRequires?

I am trying to build an RPM that Requires something from a module.
How do I make yum automatically install the correct dependency?

I want to provide modules in my private repository.  How do I set this
up for building and distribution?

How do I install perl-DBD-Pg for perl:5.30 and postgresql:12?  If I
try it on CentOS 8

yum module enable perl:5.30 postgresql:12
yum module install perl-DBD-Pg

I get some conflicts and the docs do not explain how to resolve them.

Jim
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Lamar Owen]

On 2/26/21 11:38 AM, Leon Fauster via CentOS wrote:

https://pagure.io/fm-orchestrator


What an obvious package name. :-)


Thanks for the pointer!


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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Leon Fauster via CentOS]

Am 26.02.21 um 17:23 schrieb Lamar Owen:

On 2/26/21 10:40 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:

From a user perspective or a building perspective?


Builder.



https://pagure.io/fm-orchestrator

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Lamar Owen]

On 2/26/21 10:40 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:

From a user perspective or a building perspective?


Builder.

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 17:26, Gionatan Danti  wrote:

> Il 2021-02-25 22:35 Stephen John Smoogen ha scritto:
> > Mainly because customers don't want to pay for that work which is
> > considerable. If Red Hat builds it, it is expected to have all kinds of
> > 'promises' equivalent to its other products and that is expensive in
> > terms
> > of QA, engineering, documentation, various certifications, etc. Package
> > growth goes up quickly so if people are complaining about the cost of a
> > RHEL license for 4000 src rpms, then what would it be at 20,000 to
> > 30,000.
> > It is easier to allow the community to choose to do the work it wants
> > and
> > then 'consumers' of said repository get what they can.
>
> [Including Valeri] I doubt it. Price is mainly defined by offer and
> demand (which is, in turn, driven by how much value the customer put
> behind the product). While production/support cost can put a lower bound
> on it, I don't think this is the case for Red Hat.
>

The fun part about this doubt is that anyone should be able to prove it
right or wrong easily. All it takes is to set up a build system, recompile
all the code from Fedora wanted in it, and then offer support contracts to
cover work on it. If there is a market for it then they can set the price
to cover all 20,000 packages and then find out what is expected by the
customer for the prices charged.


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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Johnny Hughes]

On 2/26/21 9:40 AM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> On 2/25/21 4:44 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
>> On 2/24/21 3:49 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>>> Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for.  There
>>> are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc.
>>>
>>> It is much harder than EL7.
>> And that difficulty shows; more stable perhaps, but many fewer
>> packages.  Is there a reference anywhere to how modularity is supposed
>> to work?
> 
> From a user perspective or a building perspective?
> 
> 
> https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/modularity/using-modules/


I read this article all the time:

https://computingforgeeks.com/how-to-use-fedora-29-modular-repository/
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Johnny Hughes]

On 2/25/21 4:44 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> On 2/24/21 3:49 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>> Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for.  There
>> are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc.
>>
>> It is much harder than EL7.
> And that difficulty shows; more stable perhaps, but many fewer
> packages.  Is there a reference anywhere to how modularity is supposed
> to work?

From a user perspective or a building perspective?


https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/modularity/using-modules/
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Lamar Owen]

On 2/24/21 3:49 PM, Johnny Hughes wrote:

Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for.  There
are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc.

It is much harder than EL7.
And that difficulty shows; more stable perhaps, but many fewer 
packages.  Is there a reference anywhere to how modularity is supposed 
to work?


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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Gionatan Danti]

Il 2021-02-25 22:35 Stephen John Smoogen ha scritto:

Mainly because customers don't want to pay for that work which is
considerable. If Red Hat builds it, it is expected to have all kinds of
'promises' equivalent to its other products and that is expensive in 
terms

of QA, engineering, documentation, various certifications, etc. Package
growth goes up quickly so if people are complaining about the cost of a
RHEL license for 4000 src rpms, then what would it be at 20,000 to 
30,000.
It is easier to allow the community to choose to do the work it wants 
and

then 'consumers' of said repository get what they can.


[Including Valeri] I doubt it. Price is mainly defined by offer and 
demand (which is, in turn, driven by how much value the customer put 
behind the product). While production/support cost can put a lower bound 
on it, I don't think this is the case for Red Hat.


Anyway, Red Hat did not have to supporto EPEL packages the same as core 
one - even a best effort support would be enough in many cases. The 
point is that EPEL does not only contains nice-to-have packages, but 
sometimes provide really important packages.


As an (outdated) example, a decade ago Cyrus with mysql backend was only 
provided by EPEL. For a more up-to-date example, consider how difficult 
is to run a "plain" CentOS 7 system - it misses monit, mbuffer, smem, 
x2go, various Perl modules, etc.


You EPEL volunteers do an outstanding works - I would really than for 
all you did (free of charge) for the CentOS community. Red Hat should 
recognize and support your works.



I think the industry is entering another crux point where 'classical'
system administration will be in the same class as mainframe/miniframe
system administration were in the late 1980's and early 1990's with 
Unix
systems and then Linux. Our wor will remain incredibly important to 
various

industries but it will increasingly be a smaller amount of 'total
deployments'.  Which is why so many of our conversations echo so much 
of
the USEnet in the early-1990s, where mainframes/miniframes admins 
wondered

why companies were not focusing on their industries anymore.


Well, in a sense, the new cloud frenzy is something similar to a "remote 
mainframe" used with a new type of thin client (the browser). Yeah, I 
know this is a very stretched analogy...


I should say that I saw so many services deployed "to the cloud" that 
are plain broken/misbehaving that it sometime worries me. My (naive?) 
impression is that we are switching from "few specific services which 
correctly work unless something bad happen" to a 
"mess-which-more-or-happens-to-works but nobody know what to do if it 
does not" model.


I recently debugged an IPSec tunnel between an on-premise appliace and a 
Azure VPN services. The on premise appliance has extensive log and 
inspection tools, while on the Azure side we had litelly *nothing*. An 
Azure consultant was taken on board to help with specifig Powershell 
sniplet, to no avail. After 7+ days, a 3rd level Microsoft support 
engineer change a *private* setting on that VPN gateway service and the 
tunnel started working correctly.


On another case, a Win2008R2 machine stopped working in a AWS instance. 
No console, no logs. After 2+ weeks of paid "gold/premium" support from 
an Amazon enginer, my customer simply decided to detach the virtual disk 
and to attach it to another machine, reinstallaing the server.


Are we sure this is the way to go?

Don't get me wrong - "the cloud" is the natural places for things as web 
and mail server. A virtualized domain controller? Mmm... not so much.


But hey - I understand this is not going to change. The very same CentOS 
switch was done to please the cloud vendors, which will have a more 
"dynamic" base to rebuild. But I don't like how Red Hat does not simply 
produce a different product or profile for the cloud needs, rather than 
actively adding complexity at every layer.


Regards.

--
Danti Gionatan
Supporto Tecnico
Assyoma S.r.l. - www.assyoma.it
email: g.da...@assyoma.it - i...@assyoma.it
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 16:10, Gionatan Danti  wrote:

> Il 2021-02-25 14:27 Simon Matter ha scritto:
> > EL on the other side has a very limited, supported package set and
> > therefore a lot of packages needed to build a lot of packages are just
> > missing.
>
> Yeah, same impressions here. EPEL really is a key package repository for
> RHEL - and I always wondered why they did not invest into maintaining
> (and extending) this excellent repo.
>
>
Mainly because customers don't want to pay for that work which is
considerable. If Red Hat builds it, it is expected to have all kinds of
'promises' equivalent to its other products and that is expensive in terms
of QA, engineering, documentation, various certifications, etc. Package
growth goes up quickly so if people are complaining about the cost of a
RHEL license for 4000 src rpms, then what would it be at 20,000 to 30,000.
It is easier to allow the community to choose to do the work it wants and
then 'consumers' of said repository get what they can.


> I think RH now is extremely focused on cloud and SaaS platform, which
> leave us "normal" sysadmin in an uncomfortable situation...
>
>
I think the industry is entering another crux point where 'classical'
system administration will be in the same class as mainframe/miniframe
system administration were in the late 1980's and early 1990's with Unix
systems and then Linux. Our wor will remain incredibly important to various
industries but it will increasingly be a smaller amount of 'total
deployments'.  Which is why so many of our conversations echo so much of
the USEnet in the early-1990s, where mainframes/miniframes admins wondered
why companies were not focusing on their industries anymore.



> Regards.
>
> --
> Danti Gionatan
> Supporto Tecnico
> Assyoma S.r.l. - www.assyoma.it
> email: g.da...@assyoma.it - i...@assyoma.it
> GPG public key ID: FF5F32A8
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>


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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Valeri Galtsev]

On 2/25/21 3:09 PM, Gionatan Danti wrote:

Il 2021-02-25 14:27 Simon Matter ha scritto:

EL on the other side has a very limited, supported package set and
therefore a lot of packages needed to build a lot of packages are just
missing.


Yeah, same impressions here. EPEL really is a key package repository for 
RHEL - and I always wondered why they did not invest into maintaining 
(and extending) this excellent repo.




How about this reason. Paid customers when have issue place support 
call, and their issue MUST be resolved promptly, it is part of contract 
with RedHat. To maintain as vast number of stuff as EPEL contains will 
require RedHat to charge customers proportionally higher, whereas these 
have only slim base of paid customers who use them.


Just a guess.

Whatever RedHat was doing [in the past] they knew how to do the business 
(until recently when they were bough out as a result of poor decisions - 
or maybe because they were doing business really well).


Valeri

I think RH now is extremely focused on cloud and SaaS platform, which 
leave us "normal" sysadmin in an uncomfortable situation...


Regards.



--

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Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Gionatan Danti]

Il 2021-02-25 14:27 Simon Matter ha scritto:

EL on the other side has a very limited, supported package set and
therefore a lot of packages needed to build a lot of packages are just
missing.


Yeah, same impressions here. EPEL really is a key package repository for 
RHEL - and I always wondered why they did not invest into maintaining 
(and extending) this excellent repo.


I think RH now is extremely focused on cloud and SaaS platform, which 
leave us "normal" sysadmin in an uncomfortable situation...


Regards.

--
Danti Gionatan
Supporto Tecnico
Assyoma S.r.l. - www.assyoma.it
email: g.da...@assyoma.it - i...@assyoma.it
GPG public key ID: FF5F32A8
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[J Martin Rushton via CentOS]

On 25/02/2021 20:56, Simon Matter wrote:



On 25/02/2021 18:18, Leon Fauster via CentOS wrote:

Am 25.02.21 um 15:12 schrieb J Martin Rushton via CentOS:



On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:






I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming"
from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX),
Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse
creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The likes
of Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I
really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of
management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do
ever more.



Well, do "ldd /bin/awk" and you see interconnected dependencies.

I see it the same way and if I want, I would see it the same way with
a broader view. Do one job well - interaction with the user, Gnome.
Do one job well - when a service is stopped, it is stopped (systemd).

So it depends of the scope of view. Sure, there are tools that try
to do everything. One that came into my mind is YasT from SuSE.
That one I would classify as not fitting into the common unix
philosophy.


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I don't want to get bogged down in arguments about which application has
the most dependencies.  It's really a matter of scale.  Depending upon a
few system libraries is reasonable, but when when the ramifications
extend to dozens then perhaps a pause for thought might be suggested?
Oh and BTW:

bash-4.2$ ldd /bin/awk
linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x7ffcc876a000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0x7fcd25995000)
libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x7fcd25693000)
libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x7fcd252c5000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x7fcd25b99000)



That's on which OS? Certainly not EL8, right?


C7
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

>
>
> On 25/02/2021 18:18, Leon Fauster via CentOS wrote:
>> Am 25.02.21 um 15:12 schrieb J Martin Rushton via CentOS:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>>> 
>

>>> I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming"
>>> from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX),
>>> Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse
>>> creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The likes
>>> of Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I
>>> really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of
>>> management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do
>>> ever more.
>>
>>
>> Well, do "ldd /bin/awk" and you see interconnected dependencies.
>>
>> I see it the same way and if I want, I would see it the same way with
>> a broader view. Do one job well - interaction with the user, Gnome.
>> Do one job well - when a service is stopped, it is stopped (systemd).
>>
>> So it depends of the scope of view. Sure, there are tools that try
>> to do everything. One that came into my mind is YasT from SuSE.
>> That one I would classify as not fitting into the common unix
>> philosophy.
>>
>>
>> --
>> Leon
>>
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>
> I don't want to get bogged down in arguments about which application has
> the most dependencies.  It's really a matter of scale.  Depending upon a
> few system libraries is reasonable, but when when the ramifications
> extend to dozens then perhaps a pause for thought might be suggested?
> Oh and BTW:
>
> bash-4.2$ ldd /bin/awk
>   linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x7ffcc876a000)
>   libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0x7fcd25995000)
>   libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x7fcd25693000)
>   libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x7fcd252c5000)
>   /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x7fcd25b99000)
>

That's on which OS? Certainly not EL8, right?

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[J Martin Rushton via CentOS]

On 25/02/2021 18:18, Leon Fauster via CentOS wrote:

Am 25.02.21 um 15:12 schrieb J Martin Rushton via CentOS:



On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:





I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming" 
from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX), 
Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse 
creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The likes 
of Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I 
really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of 
management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do 
ever more.



Well, do "ldd /bin/awk" and you see interconnected dependencies.

I see it the same way and if I want, I would see it the same way with
a broader view. Do one job well - interaction with the user, Gnome.
Do one job well - when a service is stopped, it is stopped (systemd).

So it depends of the scope of view. Sure, there are tools that try
to do everything. One that came into my mind is YasT from SuSE.
That one I would classify as not fitting into the common unix
philosophy.


--
Leon


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I don't want to get bogged down in arguments about which application has 
the most dependencies.  It's really a matter of scale.  Depending upon a 
few system libraries is reasonable, but when when the ramifications 
extend to dozens then perhaps a pause for thought might be suggested? 
Oh and BTW:


bash-4.2$ ldd /bin/awk
linux-vdso.so.1 =>  (0x7ffcc876a000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0x7fcd25995000)
libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x7fcd25693000)
libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x7fcd252c5000)
/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x7fcd25b99000)
bash-4.2$

-- which seems reasonable to me.

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Leon Fauster via CentOS]

Am 25.02.21 um 15:12 schrieb J Martin Rushton via CentOS:



On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:

They run into the same interdependency.. but because they have 
organically

grown their distro every day, those dependencies grew 1 at a time.

For EPEL and other EL repos you have to jump multiple Fedora releases to
catch up. So in EL6 we were Fedora Linux 12. In EL7.0 we had to jump and
rebuild from scratch a lot of Fedora Linux 18 and Fedora Linux 19 and 
then
progressed up to about Fedora 24 as various parts got rebased and 
upgraded

to 7.9. For EL8, we have to jump to Fedora Linux 28 and then each dot
release rebase parts while keeping other parts back because rebasing is
focused. [This means that if something needs glibc-2.32 you can't put 
it in
EL8 without a lot of patching to make it work with whatever changed... 
but

some other related components may be able to recompile fine.]

Thus you need people who enjoy that kind of work to do this because 
EPEL is
nearly all volunteer work. I had to work after hours or take vacation 
time

to work on getting EPEL-8 out so that I could get focused effort on it.
Most people don't have that 'luxury' and so the number of volunteers is
small but the expectation that it will be there is large.




Tony Schreiner
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I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming" 
from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX), 
Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse 
creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The likes of 
Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I 
really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of 
management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do 
ever more.



Well, do "ldd /bin/awk" and you see interconnected dependencies.

I see it the same way and if I want, I would see it the same way with
a broader view. Do one job well - interaction with the user, Gnome.
Do one job well - when a service is stopped, it is stopped (systemd).

So it depends of the scope of view. Sure, there are tools that try
to do everything. One that came into my mind is YasT from SuSE.
That one I would classify as not fitting into the common unix
philosophy.


--
Leon
















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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[J Martin Rushton via CentOS]

On 25/02/2021 16:54, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:



On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 10:07, J Martin Rushton 
mailto:martinrushto...@btinternet.com>> 
wrote:




On 25/02/2021 14:49, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
 >
 >
 > On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 09:13, J Martin Rushton via CentOS
 > mailto:centos@centos.org>
>> wrote:
 >
 >
 >
 >     On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
 >
 >     I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX
Programming"
 >     from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of
UNIX),
 >     Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse
 >     creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The
 >     likes of
 >     Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this
philosophy.  I
 >     really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of
 >     management over the last 20 years as applications are
stretched to do
 >     ever more.
 >
 >
 > Maybe but everytime someone says "I think these are too complex"
they
 > then turn around and say "but I really need this to do this one more
 > thing." Also the complexity of tools is generational. The oldschool
 > 1970's Unix people were screaming that the 1980's software was too
 > complex because various flags had been added to central commands.
The
 > 1980's people complained that even early Linux was too complex
because
 > it had so much more software that depended on each other. And so
forth.
 >
 > In the X11 world, there were as many people saying FVWM was way too
 > complex when twm was all you needed and it was making software
too hard
 > to build. BUT could you get twm to work on our new monitor which
has a
 > different view screen feature that made the fonts look like crap.
 >
 > The counter argument I heard from a 1970's Unix era person was
"Software
 > gets more complicated over time as we find that more problems
need to be
 > solved. You either keep up with it, or get out of software." He was
 > working in software until his death a short while ago in his 80's.
 >
 >     --
 >     J Martin Rushton MBCS
 >     ___
 >     CentOS mailing list
 > CentOS@centos.org 
>
 > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos

 >     >
 >
 >
 >
 > --
 > Stephen J Smoogen.
 >
The irony being that moving to UNIX I had it drummed into me that the
one tool-one job ethos was a great advance upon the rigidly defined and
integrated monolith of VMS.  Oh, and that was in the 1990s.
-- 
J Martin Rushton MBCS



And everyone I worked with told me that Unix was a poor reinvention of 
TSX-11 where you could get real work done. But since VMS came out over a 
decade after Unix, I can't say Unix is an advance over VMS.


In any case this is devolving into the 4 Yorkshiremen skit so I am done 
here.


--
Stephen J Smoogen.


Oi! Lay off Yorkshiremen.  It'll only be envy that you weren't born one. :-)
--
J Martin Rushton MBCS
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 10:07, J Martin Rushton <
martinrushto...@btinternet.com> wrote:

>
>
> On 25/02/2021 14:49, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 09:13, J Martin Rushton via CentOS
> > mailto:centos@centos.org>> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> >
> > I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX
> Programming"
> > from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX),
> > Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse
> > creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The
> > likes of
> > Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I
> > really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of
> > management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do
> > ever more.
> >
> >
> > Maybe but everytime someone says "I think these are too complex" they
> > then turn around and say "but I really need this to do this one more
> > thing." Also the complexity of tools is generational. The oldschool
> > 1970's Unix people were screaming that the 1980's software was too
> > complex because various flags had been added to central commands. The
> > 1980's people complained that even early Linux was too complex because
> > it had so much more software that depended on each other. And so forth.
> >
> > In the X11 world, there were as many people saying FVWM was way too
> > complex when twm was all you needed and it was making software too hard
> > to build. BUT could you get twm to work on our new monitor which has a
> > different view screen feature that made the fonts look like crap.
> >
> > The counter argument I heard from a 1970's Unix era person was "Software
> > gets more complicated over time as we find that more problems need to be
> > solved. You either keep up with it, or get out of software." He was
> > working in software until his death a short while ago in his 80's.
> >
> > --
> > J Martin Rushton MBCS
> > ___
> > CentOS mailing list
> > CentOS@centos.org 
> > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> > 
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Stephen J Smoogen.
> >
> The irony being that moving to UNIX I had it drummed into me that the
> one tool-one job ethos was a great advance upon the rigidly defined and
> integrated monolith of VMS.  Oh, and that was in the 1990s.
> --
> J Martin Rushton MBCS
>

And everyone I worked with told me that Unix was a poor reinvention of
TSX-11 where you could get real work done. But since VMS came out over a
decade after Unix, I can't say Unix is an advance over VMS.

In any case this is devolving into the 4 Yorkshiremen skit so I am done
here.

-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Valeri Galtsev]

On 2/25/21 8:28 AM, Simon Matter wrote:



On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:


They run into the same interdependency.. but because they have
organically
grown their distro every day, those dependencies grew 1 at a time.

For EPEL and other EL repos you have to jump multiple Fedora releases to
catch up. So in EL6 we were Fedora Linux 12. In EL7.0 we had to jump and
rebuild from scratch a lot of Fedora Linux 18 and Fedora Linux 19 and
then
progressed up to about Fedora 24 as various parts got rebased and
upgraded
to 7.9. For EL8, we have to jump to Fedora Linux 28 and then each dot
release rebase parts while keeping other parts back because rebasing is
focused. [This means that if something needs glibc-2.32 you can't put it
in
EL8 without a lot of patching to make it work with whatever changed...
but
some other related components may be able to recompile fine.]

Thus you need people who enjoy that kind of work to do this because EPEL
is
nearly all volunteer work. I had to work after hours or take vacation
time
to work on getting EPEL-8 out so that I could get focused effort on it.
Most people don't have that 'luxury' and so the number of volunteers is
small but the expectation that it will be there is large.




Tony Schreiner
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I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming"
from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX),
Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse
creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The likes of
Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I
really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of
management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do
ever more.
--
J Martin Rushton MBCS


Or you can say it with Henry Spencers words:

Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.



Alas, the whole thing stems from more global trend. The world became 
ruled pretty much on all levels by bureaucrats. They have no real 
knowledge or hands on experience in the field they rule. The paradigm 
for them is: they can find and hire (and replace on the whim) those who 
will do actual job. Without knowledge the only way they can select whom 
to hire is by looking at the number of certificates.Those are abundant 
mostly in relation to MS products.The judgement of how well systems are 
maintained is based on checked boxes in questionnaires such as "is 
antivirus installed?" (which is irrelevant to UNIX, Linux or MacOS 
systems)... And, of course, they are willing the "anti-virus style" 
scanner run [with root privileges] from their [much less secure] box on 
your UNIX machines. Whereas long ago it was established that anti-virus 
idea is logically flawed: you can not enumerate bad, you can enumerate 
good and prohibit everything else.


And the list goes on and on...

Which pretty much explains the deficiencies we observe today in the 
state of the art.


Just my $0.02

Valeri

--

Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[J Martin Rushton via CentOS]

On 25/02/2021 14:49, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:



On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 09:13, J Martin Rushton via CentOS 
mailto:centos@centos.org>> wrote:




On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:

I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming"
from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX),
Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse
creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The
likes of
Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I
really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of
management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do
ever more.


Maybe but everytime someone says "I think these are too complex" they 
then turn around and say "but I really need this to do this one more 
thing." Also the complexity of tools is generational. The oldschool 
1970's Unix people were screaming that the 1980's software was too 
complex because various flags had been added to central commands. The 
1980's people complained that even early Linux was too complex because 
it had so much more software that depended on each other. And so forth.


In the X11 world, there were as many people saying FVWM was way too 
complex when twm was all you needed and it was making software too hard 
to build. BUT could you get twm to work on our new monitor which has a 
different view screen feature that made the fonts look like crap.


The counter argument I heard from a 1970's Unix era person was "Software 
gets more complicated over time as we find that more problems need to be 
solved. You either keep up with it, or get out of software." He was 
working in software until his death a short while ago in his 80's.


-- 
J Martin Rushton MBCS

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--
Stephen J Smoogen.

The irony being that moving to UNIX I had it drummed into me that the 
one tool-one job ethos was a great advance upon the rigidly defined and 
integrated monolith of VMS.  Oh, and that was in the 1990s.

--
J Martin Rushton MBCS
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 09:13, J Martin Rushton via CentOS 
wrote:

>
>
> On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>
> I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming"
> from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX),
> Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse
> creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The likes of
> Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I
> really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of
> management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do
> ever more.
>

Maybe but everytime someone says "I think these are too complex" they then
turn around and say "but I really need this to do this one more thing."
Also the complexity of tools is generational. The oldschool 1970's Unix
people were screaming that the 1980's software was too complex because
various flags had been added to central commands. The 1980's people
complained that even early Linux was too complex because it had so much
more software that depended on each other. And so forth.

In the X11 world, there were as many people saying FVWM was way too complex
when twm was all you needed and it was making software too hard to build.
BUT could you get twm to work on our new monitor which has a different view
screen feature that made the fonts look like crap.

The counter argument I heard from a 1970's Unix era person was "Software
gets more complicated over time as we find that more problems need to be
solved. You either keep up with it, or get out of software." He was working
in software until his death a short while ago in his 80's.


> --
> J Martin Rushton MBCS
> ___
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Jonathan Billings]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 02:12:39PM +, J Martin Rushton via CentOS wrote:
> I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming" from
> 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX), Kernigham (C
> and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse creating "little tools"
> that do one job reliably and well.  The likes of Gnome or systemd certainly
> would never fit into this philosophy.  I really think we have lost a lot of
> maintainability and ease of management over the last 20 years as
> applications are stretched to do ever more.

If every tool we used were self-contained, build-it-all-from-scratch,
our desktops would be a huge mess.  Nothing would work with another
tool, you'd have widely varying user interfaces, you'd never have
something like X11 or Wayland.

Sure, that attitude is fine for command line tools, but a huge part of
the open source world is taking advantage of toolkits provided to make
life easier for the programmer.  The world is a lot more complicated
than in the K days.  When I worked at Princeton, Kernighan was
teaching courses using Python (and Go now, I think).  (Really cool
guy) 

Heck, 'systemd' is a really complicated beast, but it doesn't have a
huge number of interconnected dependencies.  I think bringing it up
isn't really appropriate for this thread, since it actually does a
pretty good job of keeping the requirements down, so it can run in
minimal instances.

-- 
Jonathan Billings 
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

>
>
> On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> 
>> They run into the same interdependency.. but because they have
>> organically
>> grown their distro every day, those dependencies grew 1 at a time.
>>
>> For EPEL and other EL repos you have to jump multiple Fedora releases to
>> catch up. So in EL6 we were Fedora Linux 12. In EL7.0 we had to jump and
>> rebuild from scratch a lot of Fedora Linux 18 and Fedora Linux 19 and
>> then
>> progressed up to about Fedora 24 as various parts got rebased and
>> upgraded
>> to 7.9. For EL8, we have to jump to Fedora Linux 28 and then each dot
>> release rebase parts while keeping other parts back because rebasing is
>> focused. [This means that if something needs glibc-2.32 you can't put it
>> in
>> EL8 without a lot of patching to make it work with whatever changed...
>> but
>> some other related components may be able to recompile fine.]
>>
>> Thus you need people who enjoy that kind of work to do this because EPEL
>> is
>> nearly all volunteer work. I had to work after hours or take vacation
>> time
>> to work on getting EPEL-8 out so that I could get focused effort on it.
>> Most people don't have that 'luxury' and so the number of volunteers is
>> small but the expectation that it will be there is large.
>>
>>
>>
>>> Tony Schreiner
>>> ___
>>> CentOS mailing list
>>> CentOS@centos.org
>>> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>>>
>>
>>
> I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming"
> from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX),
> Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse
> creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The likes of
> Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I
> really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of
> management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do
> ever more.
> --
> J Martin Rushton MBCS

Or you can say it with Henry Spencers words:

Those who don't understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[J Martin Rushton via CentOS]

On 25/02/2021 13:37, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:


They run into the same interdependency.. but because they have organically
grown their distro every day, those dependencies grew 1 at a time.

For EPEL and other EL repos you have to jump multiple Fedora releases to
catch up. So in EL6 we were Fedora Linux 12. In EL7.0 we had to jump and
rebuild from scratch a lot of Fedora Linux 18 and Fedora Linux 19 and then
progressed up to about Fedora 24 as various parts got rebased and upgraded
to 7.9. For EL8, we have to jump to Fedora Linux 28 and then each dot
release rebase parts while keeping other parts back because rebasing is
focused. [This means that if something needs glibc-2.32 you can't put it in
EL8 without a lot of patching to make it work with whatever changed... but
some other related components may be able to recompile fine.]

Thus you need people who enjoy that kind of work to do this because EPEL is
nearly all volunteer work. I had to work after hours or take vacation time
to work on getting EPEL-8 out so that I could get focused effort on it.
Most people don't have that 'luxury' and so the number of volunteers is
small but the expectation that it will be there is large.




Tony Schreiner
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I was recently looking at Raymond's book "The Art of UNIX Programming" 
from 2003.  He, along with contributors Thompson (inventor of UNIX), 
Kernigham (C and AWK), Korn and others of that callibre, espouse 
creating "little tools" that do one job reliably and well.  The likes of 
Gnome or systemd certainly would never fit into this philosophy.  I 
really think we have lost a lot of maintainability and ease of 
management over the last 20 years as applications are stretched to do 
ever more.

--
J Martin Rushton MBCS
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 08:18, Tony Schreiner 
wrote:

> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 7:31 AM Stephen John Smoogen 
> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 02:11, Simon Matter 
> wrote:
> >
> > > >>
> > > >> Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL
> > has
> > > >> a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with,
> amongst
> > > >> other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon
> to
> > > >> EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more
> difficult
> > to
> > > >> get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
> > > >> long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm
> -ba'
> > > >>  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot
> > wasn't a
> > > >> cardinal sin.
> > > >>
> > > >
> > > > Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for.  There
> > > > are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc.
> > > >
> > > > It is much harder than EL7.
> > >
> > > Thanks Johnny for reminding. I was wondering why the situation for EL8
> is
> > > so much worse than for EL7 and that was true before CentOS Stream came
> > up.
> > >
> > > In the end I have never been happy with the new modules system and how
> it
> > > makes packaging much more difficult than it was and than it should be.
> > >
> > > IMHO the hurdles to build high quality packages should be as simple as
> > > possible but the difficulties to do so went in the wrong direction. The
> > > result we see now. Today we have an unstable distribution (Fedora)
> with a
> > > quite good and comprehensive package set, and we have stable (EL) with
> an
> > > unstable and lacking package set.
> > >
> > >
> > Even without modules (A person wrote a program which undid some of those
> > problems for us in EPEL), EL8 is not easy to build. Packages and software
> > themselves have gotten more interdependent and complex. This leads to a
> > larger and larger chain of 'buildrequires' and 'requires' for each
> package.
> > To get some of the XFCE packages into EPEL you need to bring into EPEL
> all
> > kinds of quaternary packages so you can build the tertiary packages which
> > are needed for the secondary packages which allow you to get something
> like
> > xfce4-cpufreq-plugin-1.2.1-7.fc33.src.rpm built. Each of those packages
> > needs a maintainer who wants to deal with them in EPEL which requires
> them
> > to run an EL to test.
> >
> > I tried an experiment during the RHEL-8 beta to see what it would take to
> > get EPEL-8 1:1 with EPEL-7.. I gave up after adding nearly a thousand
> > packages to the 'build chain' which were not in EPEL-7 nor even in the
> > RHEL-8 beta or its 'buildroot'. These were mainly packages that are in
> > Fedora already and would need to be maintained in EPEL and no one wants
> to
> > do that.
> >
> > This was supposed to be a problem modularity was to fix.. so you need 100
> > packages not in EPEL for your 1 application set, and you don't  want to
> > maintain those extra packages? Just put them inside your module build
> chain
> > and deliver what you wanted. Of course that is still a monumental task
> and
> > most packagers would say 'meh I got better things to do, like do a root
> > canal without anesthesia.'
> >
>
> Does package building for debian and derivatives not run into this same
> issue of interdependency? Is it because they have more packages to begin
> with?
> Not judging, I'm curious.
>
>
They run into the same interdependency.. but because they have organically
grown their distro every day, those dependencies grew 1 at a time.

For EPEL and other EL repos you have to jump multiple Fedora releases to
catch up. So in EL6 we were Fedora Linux 12. In EL7.0 we had to jump and
rebuild from scratch a lot of Fedora Linux 18 and Fedora Linux 19 and then
progressed up to about Fedora 24 as various parts got rebased and upgraded
to 7.9. For EL8, we have to jump to Fedora Linux 28 and then each dot
release rebase parts while keeping other parts back because rebasing is
focused. [This means that if something needs glibc-2.32 you can't put it in
EL8 without a lot of patching to make it work with whatever changed... but
some other related components may be able to recompile fine.]

Thus you need people who enjoy that kind of work to do this because EPEL is
nearly all volunteer work. I had to work after hours or take vacation time
to work on getting EPEL-8 out so that I could get focused effort on it.
Most people don't have that 'luxury' and so the number of volunteers is
small but the expectation that it will be there is large.



> Tony Schreiner
> ___
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>


-- 
Stephen J Smoogen.
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 7:31 AM Stephen John Smoogen 
> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 02:11, Simon Matter 
>> wrote:
>>
>> > >>
>> > >> Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in
>> EPEL
>> has
>> > >> a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with,
>> amongst
>> > >> other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon
>> to
>> > >> EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more
>> difficult
>> to
>> > >> get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm
>> as
>> > >> long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm
>> -ba'
>> > >>  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot
>> wasn't a
>> > >> cardinal sin.
>> > >>
>> > >
>> > > Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for.
>> There
>> > > are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc.
>> > >
>> > > It is much harder than EL7.
>> >
>> > Thanks Johnny for reminding. I was wondering why the situation for EL8
>> is
>> > so much worse than for EL7 and that was true before CentOS Stream came
>> up.
>> >
>> > In the end I have never been happy with the new modules system and how
>> it
>> > makes packaging much more difficult than it was and than it should be.
>> >
>> > IMHO the hurdles to build high quality packages should be as simple as
>> > possible but the difficulties to do so went in the wrong direction.
>> The
>> > result we see now. Today we have an unstable distribution (Fedora)
>> with a
>> > quite good and comprehensive package set, and we have stable (EL) with
>> an
>> > unstable and lacking package set.
>> >
>> >
>> Even without modules (A person wrote a program which undid some of those
>> problems for us in EPEL), EL8 is not easy to build. Packages and
>> software
>> themselves have gotten more interdependent and complex. This leads to a
>> larger and larger chain of 'buildrequires' and 'requires' for each
>> package.
>> To get some of the XFCE packages into EPEL you need to bring into EPEL
>> all
>> kinds of quaternary packages so you can build the tertiary packages
>> which
>> are needed for the secondary packages which allow you to get something
>> like
>> xfce4-cpufreq-plugin-1.2.1-7.fc33.src.rpm built. Each of those packages
>> needs a maintainer who wants to deal with them in EPEL which requires
>> them
>> to run an EL to test.
>>
>> I tried an experiment during the RHEL-8 beta to see what it would take
>> to
>> get EPEL-8 1:1 with EPEL-7.. I gave up after adding nearly a thousand
>> packages to the 'build chain' which were not in EPEL-7 nor even in the
>> RHEL-8 beta or its 'buildroot'. These were mainly packages that are in
>> Fedora already and would need to be maintained in EPEL and no one wants
>> to
>> do that.
>>
>> This was supposed to be a problem modularity was to fix.. so you need
>> 100
>> packages not in EPEL for your 1 application set, and you don't  want to
>> maintain those extra packages? Just put them inside your module build
>> chain
>> and deliver what you wanted. Of course that is still a monumental task
>> and
>> most packagers would say 'meh I got better things to do, like do a root
>> canal without anesthesia.'
>>
>>
>>
>> > Simon
>> >
>> > ___
>> > CentOS mailing list
>> > CentOS@centos.org
>> > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>> >
>>
>>
>> --
>> Stephen J Smoogen.
>> ___
>> CentOS mailing list
>> CentOS@centos.org
>> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>
>
> Does package building for debian and derivatives not run into this same
> issue of interdependency? Is it because they have more packages to begin
> with?
> Not judging, I'm curious.
>
> Tony Schreiner

Both Debian and Fedora have a much larger package base and try to keep
those alive step by step.

EL on the other side has a very limited, supported package set and
therefore a lot of packages needed to build a lot of packages are just
missing.

It's my impression that most development power goes into the limited base
system and cloud, container and all the newer fancy stuff.

Simon



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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Tony Schreiner]

On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 7:31 AM Stephen John Smoogen 
wrote:

> On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 02:11, Simon Matter  wrote:
>
> > >>
> > >> Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL
> has
> > >> a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst
> > >> other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon to
> > >> EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more difficult
> to
> > >> get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
> > >> long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm -ba'
> > >>  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot
> wasn't a
> > >> cardinal sin.
> > >>
> > >
> > > Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for.  There
> > > are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc.
> > >
> > > It is much harder than EL7.
> >
> > Thanks Johnny for reminding. I was wondering why the situation for EL8 is
> > so much worse than for EL7 and that was true before CentOS Stream came
> up.
> >
> > In the end I have never been happy with the new modules system and how it
> > makes packaging much more difficult than it was and than it should be.
> >
> > IMHO the hurdles to build high quality packages should be as simple as
> > possible but the difficulties to do so went in the wrong direction. The
> > result we see now. Today we have an unstable distribution (Fedora) with a
> > quite good and comprehensive package set, and we have stable (EL) with an
> > unstable and lacking package set.
> >
> >
> Even without modules (A person wrote a program which undid some of those
> problems for us in EPEL), EL8 is not easy to build. Packages and software
> themselves have gotten more interdependent and complex. This leads to a
> larger and larger chain of 'buildrequires' and 'requires' for each package.
> To get some of the XFCE packages into EPEL you need to bring into EPEL all
> kinds of quaternary packages so you can build the tertiary packages which
> are needed for the secondary packages which allow you to get something like
> xfce4-cpufreq-plugin-1.2.1-7.fc33.src.rpm built. Each of those packages
> needs a maintainer who wants to deal with them in EPEL which requires them
> to run an EL to test.
>
> I tried an experiment during the RHEL-8 beta to see what it would take to
> get EPEL-8 1:1 with EPEL-7.. I gave up after adding nearly a thousand
> packages to the 'build chain' which were not in EPEL-7 nor even in the
> RHEL-8 beta or its 'buildroot'. These were mainly packages that are in
> Fedora already and would need to be maintained in EPEL and no one wants to
> do that.
>
> This was supposed to be a problem modularity was to fix.. so you need 100
> packages not in EPEL for your 1 application set, and you don't  want to
> maintain those extra packages? Just put them inside your module build chain
> and deliver what you wanted. Of course that is still a monumental task and
> most packagers would say 'meh I got better things to do, like do a root
> canal without anesthesia.'
>
>
>
> > Simon
> >
> > ___
> > CentOS mailing list
> > CentOS@centos.org
> > https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> >
>
>
> --
> Stephen J Smoogen.
> ___
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos


Does package building for debian and derivatives not run into this same
issue of interdependency? Is it because they have more packages to begin
with?
Not judging, I'm curious.

Tony Schreiner
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 25 Feb 2021 at 02:11, Simon Matter  wrote:

> >>
> >> Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL has
> >> a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst
> >> other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon to
> >> EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more difficult to
> >> get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
> >> long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm -ba'
> >>  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot wasn't a
> >> cardinal sin.
> >>
> >
> > Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for.  There
> > are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc.
> >
> > It is much harder than EL7.
>
> Thanks Johnny for reminding. I was wondering why the situation for EL8 is
> so much worse than for EL7 and that was true before CentOS Stream came up.
>
> In the end I have never been happy with the new modules system and how it
> makes packaging much more difficult than it was and than it should be.
>
> IMHO the hurdles to build high quality packages should be as simple as
> possible but the difficulties to do so went in the wrong direction. The
> result we see now. Today we have an unstable distribution (Fedora) with a
> quite good and comprehensive package set, and we have stable (EL) with an
> unstable and lacking package set.
>
>
Even without modules (A person wrote a program which undid some of those
problems for us in EPEL), EL8 is not easy to build. Packages and software
themselves have gotten more interdependent and complex. This leads to a
larger and larger chain of 'buildrequires' and 'requires' for each package.
To get some of the XFCE packages into EPEL you need to bring into EPEL all
kinds of quaternary packages so you can build the tertiary packages which
are needed for the secondary packages which allow you to get something like
xfce4-cpufreq-plugin-1.2.1-7.fc33.src.rpm built. Each of those packages
needs a maintainer who wants to deal with them in EPEL which requires them
to run an EL to test.

I tried an experiment during the RHEL-8 beta to see what it would take to
get EPEL-8 1:1 with EPEL-7.. I gave up after adding nearly a thousand
packages to the 'build chain' which were not in EPEL-7 nor even in the
RHEL-8 beta or its 'buildroot'. These were mainly packages that are in
Fedora already and would need to be maintained in EPEL and no one wants to
do that.

This was supposed to be a problem modularity was to fix.. so you need 100
packages not in EPEL for your 1 application set, and you don't  want to
maintain those extra packages? Just put them inside your module build chain
and deliver what you wanted. Of course that is still a monumental task and
most packagers would say 'meh I got better things to do, like do a root
canal without anesthesia.'



> Simon
>
> ___
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS@centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>


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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

>>
>> Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL has
>> a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst
>> other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon to
>> EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more difficult to
>> get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
>> long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm -ba'
>>  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot wasn't a
>> cardinal sin.
>>
>
> Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for.  There
> are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc.
>
> It is much harder than EL7.

Thanks Johnny for reminding. I was wondering why the situation for EL8 is
so much worse than for EL7 and that was true before CentOS Stream came up.

In the end I have never been happy with the new modules system and how it
makes packaging much more difficult than it was and than it should be.

IMHO the hurdles to build high quality packages should be as simple as
possible but the difficulties to do so went in the wrong direction. The
result we see now. Today we have an unstable distribution (Fedora) with a
quite good and comprehensive package set, and we have stable (EL) with an
unstable and lacking package set.

Simon

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Johnny Hughes]

On 2/11/21 2:13 PM, Lamar Owen wrote:
> On 2/11/21 11:18 AM, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
>> For the past couple years, my solution has been to use RHEL clones
>> (CentOS and Oracle Linux) on servers only (multi-user.target). I've
>> moved all my graphical installations (workstation, laptops, desktop
>> clients) to OpenSUSE Leap + KDE. 
> 
> For a really long time I was pretty successful in running EL on both the
> desktop and the server.  It HAS been getting way harder to do this.  The
> EPEL, ELrepo, and RPMfusion repositories do a fantastic job overall, but
> there were way too many things missing from EPEL8 especially where the
> desktop experience was becoming a pretty sizable drain on my time
> building the packages I needed from Fedora.  KiCAD and Sigrok were the
> toughest.
> 
> I greatly prefer running the same OS version on my desktops and servers;
> makes management a lot easier.  So this is part of why I am in the midst
> of evaluating a wholesale migration to Debian 10.  On the server it
> works well, if somewhat different in setup; on the desktop it works so
> much better, with a huge and maintained repository, where I haven't had
> to dip into a PPA but once, and that was for a quick one-off package. 
> It's in the virtualization arena where I am gobsmacked; I'm evaluating
> Proxmox, which is based on Debian 10, using the no-subscription
> repositories.  Let me tell you, Proxmox has one more slick and highly
> integrated experience. Relative to running a KVM host with only the
> stock CentOS 8 cockpit and virt-manager, the Proxmox experience blew me
> away.
> 
> I didn't realize just how much time I was spending finding third-party
> packages for EL8 until I didn't have to.
> 
> Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL has
> a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst
> other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon to
> EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more difficult to
> get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
> long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm -ba'
>  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot wasn't a
> cardinal sin.
> 

Not that it matters .. BUT .. EL8 is much harder to build for.  There
are modular components, not all the Devel files exist, etc.

It is much harder than EL7.

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 12:04, Simon Matter  wrote:

> > On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 04:47, Simon Matter 
> wrote:
> >
> >> >
> >> > Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL
> >> has
> >> > a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst
> >> > other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon to
> >> > EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more difficult
> >> to
> >> > get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
> >> > long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm -ba'
> >> >  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot wasn't
> >> a
> >> > cardinal sin.
> >> >
> >>
> >> I've just started reading https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ and
> >> realized this became a problem which hurts EPEL much more than Fedora.
> >>
> >> IMHO it simply got too difficult to maintain packages for quite a number
> >> of software tools. It explains why there are so many missing, outdated
> >> or
> >> dead packages in Fedora and more so in EPEL.
> >>
> >> What worries me even more is that things have changed to be worse with
> >> every release than becoming better.
> >>
> >>
> > To put it bluntly, is that there are multiple issues going on:
> >
> > 1. We have a large number of people who have gotten used to someone else
> > doing the work for them and not having to care about the software
> > themselves. In doing so they have this idea that building the software is
> > exactly like it was when they got into computers. [* This isn't a new
> > phenomena]
> > 2. Software gets more complicated and more interdependent to do the many
> > things software consumers expect it to accomplish.
> > 3. Software changes more rapidly because more people are able to work on
> > code and people have this odd thing of deciding that whoever wrote the
> > code
> > last was a complete idiot and this new method/language is much better.
> > [The
> > only time it is funny is the once a week where a git blame shows you that
> > the last idiot was you.]
> > 4. With millions of software consumers, there are millions of 'opinions'
> > of
> > what they need and Linux being a system which allows you to shoot your
> > foot
> > in a billion ways tries to accomplish all of them.
> >
> > * When I was getting into software in the 1990's there were a lot of
> > people
> > who had been using Unix systems from the 1970's who found 'modern'
> > software
> > to be too complicated to build and coders were out of their minds for
> > adding in such complexity when no one needed an editor more than ed. At
> > the
> > time I thought they were 'joking' but when I went to work at various
> > places
> > I found they were dead serious. The change is that where in the 1990's
> > there were only hundreds of people like that, now there are maybe a low
> > million.
> >
> > Trying to build large amounts of divergent code and make it stay working
> > is
> > very hard. As much as modules are a bane of my existence, something like
> > them is absolutely necessary for many complicated stacks from desktop
> > software to web applications. Writing basic rpms is even more complicated
> > than in 1999 because there are so many corner cases which have to be
> dealt
> > with. Writing modules is adding more layers of indirection on top of that
> > because it is trying to keep the Rube Goldberg machine of each
> individuals
> > 'choices' going.
> >
> > Frankly unless someone can figure out a way to make the packaging
> > janitorial work sexy enough to have people interested in it.. or people
> > who
> > need this stuff actually pay people to do it.. this is all going to fall
> > apart like all infrastructure which was 'someone else's problem'.
>
> Well, unfortunately yes, EPEL is on a good way to go where DAG, ATrpms,
> NUX, freshrpms and all the others already are.
>
>
Many of those ran out of steam because software got more and more
complicated, and consumers demanded MORE of it but put less into it. "There
is no such thing as a free lunch" but it doesn't seem to stop people
assuming there has to be.



> Ironically, CentOS was the reason for other clones like Scientific Linux
> to vanish, now CentOS Linux vanishes itself. The same goes with EPEL, it
>

CentOS was not the primary reason Scientific Linux (and some other
rebuilds) vanished, it was the convenient excuse. The staff who were
working on Scientific Linux had continual budget cuts over a decade while
also an increase in what people wanted from it. There were several 'your
team has been told to retire' before they combined with CentOS. It is a
problem that the other past clones ran into and I expect the future ones
will also have to grapple. It takes a lot of resources to build an OS even
if it is recompiling the source code others made available to you. Without
a constant renewal and growth of those resources, the people volunteering
(or even being paid) to do the work run out of 

Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

> On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 04:47, Simon Matter  wrote:
>
>> >
>> > Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL
>> has
>> > a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst
>> > other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon to
>> > EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more difficult
>> to
>> > get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
>> > long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm -ba'
>> >  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot wasn't
>> a
>> > cardinal sin.
>> >
>>
>> I've just started reading https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ and
>> realized this became a problem which hurts EPEL much more than Fedora.
>>
>> IMHO it simply got too difficult to maintain packages for quite a number
>> of software tools. It explains why there are so many missing, outdated
>> or
>> dead packages in Fedora and more so in EPEL.
>>
>> What worries me even more is that things have changed to be worse with
>> every release than becoming better.
>>
>>
> To put it bluntly, is that there are multiple issues going on:
>
> 1. We have a large number of people who have gotten used to someone else
> doing the work for them and not having to care about the software
> themselves. In doing so they have this idea that building the software is
> exactly like it was when they got into computers. [* This isn't a new
> phenomena]
> 2. Software gets more complicated and more interdependent to do the many
> things software consumers expect it to accomplish.
> 3. Software changes more rapidly because more people are able to work on
> code and people have this odd thing of deciding that whoever wrote the
> code
> last was a complete idiot and this new method/language is much better.
> [The
> only time it is funny is the once a week where a git blame shows you that
> the last idiot was you.]
> 4. With millions of software consumers, there are millions of 'opinions'
> of
> what they need and Linux being a system which allows you to shoot your
> foot
> in a billion ways tries to accomplish all of them.
>
> * When I was getting into software in the 1990's there were a lot of
> people
> who had been using Unix systems from the 1970's who found 'modern'
> software
> to be too complicated to build and coders were out of their minds for
> adding in such complexity when no one needed an editor more than ed. At
> the
> time I thought they were 'joking' but when I went to work at various
> places
> I found they were dead serious. The change is that where in the 1990's
> there were only hundreds of people like that, now there are maybe a low
> million.
>
> Trying to build large amounts of divergent code and make it stay working
> is
> very hard. As much as modules are a bane of my existence, something like
> them is absolutely necessary for many complicated stacks from desktop
> software to web applications. Writing basic rpms is even more complicated
> than in 1999 because there are so many corner cases which have to be dealt
> with. Writing modules is adding more layers of indirection on top of that
> because it is trying to keep the Rube Goldberg machine of each individuals
> 'choices' going.
>
> Frankly unless someone can figure out a way to make the packaging
> janitorial work sexy enough to have people interested in it.. or people
> who
> need this stuff actually pay people to do it.. this is all going to fall
> apart like all infrastructure which was 'someone else's problem'.

Well, unfortunately yes, EPEL is on a good way to go where DAG, ATrpms,
NUX, freshrpms and all the others already are.

Ironically, CentOS was the reason for other clones like Scientific Linux
to vanish, now CentOS Linux vanishes itself. The same goes with EPEL, it
was one nail in the coffin of so many third party repositories, now it
seems to go there as well.

What is even more sad is the fact that everybody is now waiting for Navy
Linux, Rocky Linux and AlmaLinux to get their huge work done to produce
three, technically mostly identical systems. They'll still all lack the
same thing which is a good package repository for things not found in
RHEL.

Doesn't it mean burning a huge amount of CPU cycles and storage for little
additional gain in the end?

Sadly, that's not how open source works best.

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 18 Feb 2021 at 04:47, Simon Matter  wrote:

> >
> > Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL has
> > a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst
> > other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon to
> > EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more difficult to
> > get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
> > long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm -ba'
> >  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot wasn't a
> > cardinal sin.
> >
>
> I've just started reading https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ and
> realized this became a problem which hurts EPEL much more than Fedora.
>
> IMHO it simply got too difficult to maintain packages for quite a number
> of software tools. It explains why there are so many missing, outdated or
> dead packages in Fedora and more so in EPEL.
>
> What worries me even more is that things have changed to be worse with
> every release than becoming better.
>
>
To put it bluntly, is that there are multiple issues going on:

1. We have a large number of people who have gotten used to someone else
doing the work for them and not having to care about the software
themselves. In doing so they have this idea that building the software is
exactly like it was when they got into computers. [* This isn't a new
phenomena]
2. Software gets more complicated and more interdependent to do the many
things software consumers expect it to accomplish.
3. Software changes more rapidly because more people are able to work on
code and people have this odd thing of deciding that whoever wrote the code
last was a complete idiot and this new method/language is much better. [The
only time it is funny is the once a week where a git blame shows you that
the last idiot was you.]
4. With millions of software consumers, there are millions of 'opinions' of
what they need and Linux being a system which allows you to shoot your foot
in a billion ways tries to accomplish all of them.

* When I was getting into software in the 1990's there were a lot of people
who had been using Unix systems from the 1970's who found 'modern' software
to be too complicated to build and coders were out of their minds for
adding in such complexity when no one needed an editor more than ed. At the
time I thought they were 'joking' but when I went to work at various places
I found they were dead serious. The change is that where in the 1990's
there were only hundreds of people like that, now there are maybe a low
million.

Trying to build large amounts of divergent code and make it stay working is
very hard. As much as modules are a bane of my existence, something like
them is absolutely necessary for many complicated stacks from desktop
software to web applications. Writing basic rpms is even more complicated
than in 1999 because there are so many corner cases which have to be dealt
with. Writing modules is adding more layers of indirection on top of that
because it is trying to keep the Rube Goldberg machine of each individuals
'choices' going.

Frankly unless someone can figure out a way to make the packaging
janitorial work sexy enough to have people interested in it.. or people who
need this stuff actually pay people to do it.. this is all going to fall
apart like all infrastructure which was 'someone else's problem'.


> Regards,
> Simon
>
> ___
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>


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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

>
> Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL has
> a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst
> other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon to
> EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more difficult to
> get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as
> long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm -ba'
>  back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot wasn't a
> cardinal sin.
>

I've just started reading https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL/FAQ and
realized this became a problem which hurts EPEL much more than Fedora.

IMHO it simply got too difficult to maintain packages for quite a number
of software tools. It explains why there are so many missing, outdated or
dead packages in Fedora and more so in EPEL.

What worries me even more is that things have changed to be worse with
every release than becoming better.

Regards,
Simon

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

> On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 13:39, Simon Matter  wrote:
>
>> > On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 12:31, Simon Matter 
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> > Le 11/02/2021 à 17:08, Simon Matter a écrit :
>> >> >> But, I'm a bit shocked to find EPEL 8 in such a bad shape of
>> >> brokenness
>> >> >> and incompleteness
>> >> >
>> >> > I've come to the same conclusion.
>> >> >
>> >> > For the past couple years, my solution has been to use RHEL clones
>> >> (CentOS
>> >> > and
>> >> > Oracle Linux) on servers only (multi-user.target).
>> >> >
>> >> > I've moved all my graphical installations (workstation, laptops,
>> >> desktop
>> >> > clients) to OpenSUSE Leap + KDE.
>> >>
>> >> In our situation it's not so easy to say server or client. We're
>> running
>> >> remote desktops over nx-libs, so, a server is also a client at the
>> same
>> >> time.
>> >>
>> >> I always new EPEL is not perfect but it was usable to some degree and
>> >> that's why Red Hat told their customers about it and how to use it.
>> But
>> >> the current state of EPEL is sad.
>> >>
>> >>
>> > EPEL is a volunteer driven repository and not many volunteers have
>> been
>> > available for EL8. Many of the past volunteers have retired or been
>> > promoted out of positions they actually have time to do the work
>> anymore.
>> > Asking for replacements is not easy because most people who are
>> interested
>> > in EPEL just want the packages built. They have no want or clue to do
>> the
>> > work themselves and want someone else to do the work for them. This
>> leads
>> > to a lot of people expecting packages without anyone doing the work.
>>
>> I know what you mean but my case is a bit different. For ~ two decades
>> I'm
>> using Red Hat based distributions and built a large number of packages.
>> There are even packages in RHEL which they took over from me with my
>> permission. I'm maintaining quite a number of packages which sometimes
>> also exist in EPEL but I always keep them up to date and available with
>> the same version on all Red Hat based distributions of the past, even
>> after EOL. Many of the packages are available as SRPMs to those
>> interested. Usually we didn't use any critical package from EPEL because
>> of the state of support it has. But it was handy to consume some slowly
>> changing things like XFCE from EPEL. To find out now that even such
>> things
>> are now in a bad state is a bit sad.
>>
>>
> My apologies, you did not deserve the rant, but the word 'sad' seems to
> make me see red. I have been told things were 'sad' for EPEL from May of

I didn't know others also called the current state 'sad' but that's what
came to my mind when thinking about it.

> 2019 until now over and over again. Unlike you, most of the people are
> ones
> who never volunteered a package but thought it was a 'given' that EPEL
> would have all their packages for them. After more than a year of it.. it
> is a tick and I should count to 100 before replying versus 50.
>
> In the end, it is a bad state of affairs, but I also think that it is how
> things are going. There are a LOT of people who seem to expect that this
> is
> all for them FREE and that they can make as many demands as they want.
> That
> tires out volunteers and eventually you end up with what happened to all
> the previous 3rd party repositories.. the volunteers stop showing up to
> help out. So without a reason for people to volunteer or someone paying
> the
> 4+ people needed to do the work day in and day out, the repositories end
> up
> in a bad state.

I'm just wondering why Red Hat as a company doesn't care more about what
their paying customers get when using packages not found in RHEL. I think
it's the worst experience of all compared to their competitors like
Debian, Ubuntu or OpenSUSE. I'm quite sure this will drive more people
away from RHEL in future than they think today.

Simon

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Lamar Owen]

On 2/11/21 11:18 AM, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
For the past couple years, my solution has been to use RHEL clones 
(CentOS and Oracle Linux) on servers only (multi-user.target). I've 
moved all my graphical installations (workstation, laptops, desktop 
clients) to OpenSUSE Leap + KDE. 


For a really long time I was pretty successful in running EL on both the 
desktop and the server.  It HAS been getting way harder to do this.  The 
EPEL, ELrepo, and RPMfusion repositories do a fantastic job overall, but 
there were way too many things missing from EPEL8 especially where the 
desktop experience was becoming a pretty sizable drain on my time 
building the packages I needed from Fedora.  KiCAD and Sigrok were the 
toughest.


I greatly prefer running the same OS version on my desktops and servers; 
makes management a lot easier.  So this is part of why I am in the midst 
of evaluating a wholesale migration to Debian 10.  On the server it 
works well, if somewhat different in setup; on the desktop it works so 
much better, with a huge and maintained repository, where I haven't had 
to dip into a PPA but once, and that was for a quick one-off package.  
It's in the virtualization arena where I am gobsmacked; I'm evaluating 
Proxmox, which is based on Debian 10, using the no-subscription 
repositories.  Let me tell you, Proxmox has one more slick and highly 
integrated experience. Relative to running a KVM host with only the 
stock CentOS 8 cockpit and virt-manager, the Proxmox experience blew me 
away.


I didn't realize just how much time I was spending finding third-party 
packages for EL8 until I didn't have to.


Smooge, you know I feel your pain, but becoming a maintainer in EPEL has 
a pretty high bar (lots of new tools and methods to work with, amongst 
other things) -- as it SHOULD, given that it's intended as an addon to 
EL and needs to be very tightly controlled.  It's just more difficult to 
get started these days relative to when anyone could build an rpm as 
long as they had a copy of Maximum RPM and knew how to drive 'rpm -ba' 
 back when building as root in a non-reproducible buildroot wasn't a 
cardinal sin.


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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 13:39, Simon Matter  wrote:

> > On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 12:31, Simon Matter 
> wrote:
> >
> >> > Le 11/02/2021 à 17:08, Simon Matter a écrit :
> >> >> But, I'm a bit shocked to find EPEL 8 in such a bad shape of
> >> brokenness
> >> >> and incompleteness
> >> >
> >> > I've come to the same conclusion.
> >> >
> >> > For the past couple years, my solution has been to use RHEL clones
> >> (CentOS
> >> > and
> >> > Oracle Linux) on servers only (multi-user.target).
> >> >
> >> > I've moved all my graphical installations (workstation, laptops,
> >> desktop
> >> > clients) to OpenSUSE Leap + KDE.
> >>
> >> In our situation it's not so easy to say server or client. We're running
> >> remote desktops over nx-libs, so, a server is also a client at the same
> >> time.
> >>
> >> I always new EPEL is not perfect but it was usable to some degree and
> >> that's why Red Hat told their customers about it and how to use it. But
> >> the current state of EPEL is sad.
> >>
> >>
> > EPEL is a volunteer driven repository and not many volunteers have been
> > available for EL8. Many of the past volunteers have retired or been
> > promoted out of positions they actually have time to do the work anymore.
> > Asking for replacements is not easy because most people who are
> interested
> > in EPEL just want the packages built. They have no want or clue to do the
> > work themselves and want someone else to do the work for them. This leads
> > to a lot of people expecting packages without anyone doing the work.
>
> I know what you mean but my case is a bit different. For ~ two decades I'm
> using Red Hat based distributions and built a large number of packages.
> There are even packages in RHEL which they took over from me with my
> permission. I'm maintaining quite a number of packages which sometimes
> also exist in EPEL but I always keep them up to date and available with
> the same version on all Red Hat based distributions of the past, even
> after EOL. Many of the packages are available as SRPMs to those
> interested. Usually we didn't use any critical package from EPEL because
> of the state of support it has. But it was handy to consume some slowly
> changing things like XFCE from EPEL. To find out now that even such things
> are now in a bad state is a bit sad.
>
>
My apologies, you did not deserve the rant, but the word 'sad' seems to
make me see red. I have been told things were 'sad' for EPEL from May of
2019 until now over and over again. Unlike you, most of the people are ones
who never volunteered a package but thought it was a 'given' that EPEL
would have all their packages for them. After more than a year of it.. it
is a tick and I should count to 100 before replying versus 50.

In the end, it is a bad state of affairs, but I also think that it is how
things are going. There are a LOT of people who seem to expect that this is
all for them FREE and that they can make as many demands as they want. That
tires out volunteers and eventually you end up with what happened to all
the previous 3rd party repositories.. the volunteers stop showing up to
help out. So without a reason for people to volunteer or someone paying the
4+ people needed to do the work day in and day out, the repositories end up
in a bad state.


-- 
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Jonathan Billings]

On Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 05:18:19PM +0100, Nicolas Kovacs wrote:
> Le 11/02/2021 à 17:08, Simon Matter a écrit :
> > But, I'm a bit shocked to find EPEL 8 in such a bad shape of brokenness
> > and incompleteness
> 
> I've come to the same conclusion.
> 
> For the past couple years, my solution has been to use RHEL clones (CentOS and
> Oracle Linux) on servers only (multi-user.target).
> 
> I've moved all my graphical installations (workstation, laptops, desktop
> clients) to OpenSUSE Leap + KDE.

Its mostly fine if you use GNOME on RHEL/CentOS.  They're packaged by
Red Hat, they accept bug reports about issues and stuff like missing
dependencies are worked out pretty quickly.

In my experience, Red Hat doesn't do a ton of Desktop testing, they
lean on Fedora ironing out all the bugs and lifting the fixes from
there. 

Almost all of my bugs filed against desktop-related issues are either
dropped as WONTFIX or are fixed when RHEL bumps their GNOME version to
a newer release.  For example:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1365967

It's too bad that RH doesn't really have much focus on
Desktop/Workstation systems, because an enteprise workstation is
actually a useful thing for people who need long term support (1-2
years at least) of a workstation.  Ubuntu manages to do it, but
unfortunately, most of our engineering software isn't supported on
Ubuntu. 

-- 
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

> On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 12:31, Simon Matter  wrote:
>
>> > Le 11/02/2021 à 17:08, Simon Matter a écrit :
>> >> But, I'm a bit shocked to find EPEL 8 in such a bad shape of
>> brokenness
>> >> and incompleteness
>> >
>> > I've come to the same conclusion.
>> >
>> > For the past couple years, my solution has been to use RHEL clones
>> (CentOS
>> > and
>> > Oracle Linux) on servers only (multi-user.target).
>> >
>> > I've moved all my graphical installations (workstation, laptops,
>> desktop
>> > clients) to OpenSUSE Leap + KDE.
>>
>> In our situation it's not so easy to say server or client. We're running
>> remote desktops over nx-libs, so, a server is also a client at the same
>> time.
>>
>> I always new EPEL is not perfect but it was usable to some degree and
>> that's why Red Hat told their customers about it and how to use it. But
>> the current state of EPEL is sad.
>>
>>
> EPEL is a volunteer driven repository and not many volunteers have been
> available for EL8. Many of the past volunteers have retired or been
> promoted out of positions they actually have time to do the work anymore.
> Asking for replacements is not easy because most people who are interested
> in EPEL just want the packages built. They have no want or clue to do the
> work themselves and want someone else to do the work for them. This leads
> to a lot of people expecting packages without anyone doing the work.

I know what you mean but my case is a bit different. For ~ two decades I'm
using Red Hat based distributions and built a large number of packages.
There are even packages in RHEL which they took over from me with my
permission. I'm maintaining quite a number of packages which sometimes
also exist in EPEL but I always keep them up to date and available with
the same version on all Red Hat based distributions of the past, even
after EOL. Many of the packages are available as SRPMs to those
interested. Usually we didn't use any critical package from EPEL because
of the state of support it has. But it was handy to consume some slowly
changing things like XFCE from EPEL. To find out now that even such things
are now in a bad state is a bit sad.

Simon

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Stephen John Smoogen]

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 at 12:31, Simon Matter  wrote:

> > Le 11/02/2021 à 17:08, Simon Matter a écrit :
> >> But, I'm a bit shocked to find EPEL 8 in such a bad shape of brokenness
> >> and incompleteness
> >
> > I've come to the same conclusion.
> >
> > For the past couple years, my solution has been to use RHEL clones
> (CentOS
> > and
> > Oracle Linux) on servers only (multi-user.target).
> >
> > I've moved all my graphical installations (workstation, laptops, desktop
> > clients) to OpenSUSE Leap + KDE.
>
> In our situation it's not so easy to say server or client. We're running
> remote desktops over nx-libs, so, a server is also a client at the same
> time.
>
> I always new EPEL is not perfect but it was usable to some degree and
> that's why Red Hat told their customers about it and how to use it. But
> the current state of EPEL is sad.
>
>
EPEL is a volunteer driven repository and not many volunteers have been
available for EL8. Many of the past volunteers have retired or been
promoted out of positions they actually have time to do the work anymore.
Asking for replacements is not easy because most people who are interested
in EPEL just want the packages built. They have no want or clue to do the
work themselves and want someone else to do the work for them. This leads
to a lot of people expecting packages without anyone doing the work.

That rant aside, if people are interested in helping out, there is a weekly
EPEL IRC SIG meeting (irc.freenode.net #fedora-meeting 22:00 UTC Friday).
THere is the #epel mailing list and there are several people who are trying
to get volunteers to work on packages and such.


-- 
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Peter]

On 11/02/21 11:54 pm, Simon Matter wrote:

# dnf group install "Xfce"
Last metadata expiration check: 0:05:02 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 11:45:57 CET.
No match for group package "NetworkManager-gnome"
No match for group package "thunar-archive-plugin"
Dependencies resolved.

  PackageArch  VersionRepository
Size

Installing group/module packages:

...

Installing Groups:
  Xfce

Transaction Summary

Install  21 Packages

Total size: 10 M
Installed size: 48 M
Is this ok [y/N]:


Indeed I actually get the same output.  Those are soft dependencies, you 
should be able to answer "Y" here and go ahead and install XFCE.  Feel 
free to file a bug with EPEL about the missing deps.



Peter
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

> Le 11/02/2021 à 17:08, Simon Matter a écrit :
>> But, I'm a bit shocked to find EPEL 8 in such a bad shape of brokenness
>> and incompleteness
>
> I've come to the same conclusion.
>
> For the past couple years, my solution has been to use RHEL clones (CentOS
> and
> Oracle Linux) on servers only (multi-user.target).
>
> I've moved all my graphical installations (workstation, laptops, desktop
> clients) to OpenSUSE Leap + KDE.

In our situation it's not so easy to say server or client. We're running
remote desktops over nx-libs, so, a server is also a client at the same
time.

I always new EPEL is not perfect but it was usable to some degree and
that's why Red Hat told their customers about it and how to use it. But
the current state of EPEL is sad.

Simon

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Nicolas Kovacs]

Le 11/02/2021 à 17:08, Simon Matter a écrit :
> But, I'm a bit shocked to find EPEL 8 in such a bad shape of brokenness
> and incompleteness

I've come to the same conclusion.

For the past couple years, my solution has been to use RHEL clones (CentOS and
Oracle Linux) on servers only (multi-user.target).

I've moved all my graphical installations (workstation, laptops, desktop
clients) to OpenSUSE Leap + KDE.

Cheers,

Niki

-- 
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7, place de l'église - 30730 Montpezat
Site : https://www.microlinux.fr
Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

> On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 16:53:47 +0100
> Simon Matter wrote:
>
>> Are my mirrors broken or incomplete?
>
> I just tried dnf search kmail and it didn't find anything, so I guess that
> stuff is simply not there.
>
> I personally use the Mate desktop from
> https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/stenstorp/MATE/ on all of my
> computers and it works fine, if Mate is lightweight enough for your
> purposes.

Thanks, I'll have a look. Maybe I'll also find XFCE or LXQt in copr?

But, I'm a bit shocked to find EPEL 8 in such a bad shape of brokenness
and incompleteness :(

Simon

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Frank Cox]

On Thu, 11 Feb 2021 16:53:47 +0100
Simon Matter wrote:

> Are my mirrors broken or incomplete?

I just tried dnf search kmail and it didn't find anything, so I guess that 
stuff is simply not there.

I personally use the Mate desktop from 
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/stenstorp/MATE/ on all of my computers 
and it works fine, if Mate is lightweight enough for your purposes.

-- 
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

> On 11/02/21 10:24 pm, Simon Matter wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is anyone here running XFCE desktop on CentOS 8? If so, how did you
>> install it?
>>
>> I just tried to install it from EPEL and this is what I got:
>>
>> # dnf group install Xfce
>> Last metadata expiration check: 0:14:01 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 10:05:47
>> CET.
>> No match for group package "NetworkManager-gnome"
>> No match for group package "thunar-archive-plugin"
>
> I run the command and it resolves the dependencies just fine, but does
> not want to install any of the above two packages.
>
>> I'm unable to find packages for NetworkManager-gnome or
>> thunar-archive-plugin anywhere in CentOS 8 or EPEL 8.
>
> Can you please show the full output of your command, please?  Also the
> output of:
>
> dnf repolist -v epel

I also tried KDE and get this:

# dnf group install "KDE Plasma Workspaces"
Last metadata expiration check: 2:43:17 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 14:06:32 CET.
no group '3d-printing' from environment 'kde-desktop-environment'
no group 'cloud-management' from environment 'kde-desktop-environment'
no group 'firefox' from environment 'kde-desktop-environment'
no group 'kde-telepathy' from environment 'kde-desktop-environment'
No match for group package "dnfdragora"
No match for group package "kmail"
No match for group package "korganizer"
No match for group package "kget"
No match for group package "kaddressbook"
No match for group package "plasma-discover"
No match for group package "akregator"
No match for group package "kontact"
No match for group package "qt-at-spi"
No match for group package "pinentry-qt"
No match for group package "NetworkManager-config-connectivity-fedora"
Error:
 Problem 1: conflicting requests
  - nothing provides xmessage needed by
plasma-workspace-5.18.4.1-2.el8.x86_64
 Problem 2: package sddm-breeze-5.18.4.1-2.el8.noarch requires
plasma-workspace = 5.18.4.1-2.el8, but none of the providers can be
installed
  - conflicting requests
  - nothing provides xmessage needed by
plasma-workspace-5.18.4.1-2.el8.x86_64
 Problem 3: package plasma-desktop-5.18.4.1-2.el8.1.x86_64 requires
plasma-workspace >= 5.18, but none of the providers can be installed
  - conflicting requests
  - nothing provides xmessage needed by
plasma-workspace-5.18.4.1-2.el8.x86_64
 Problem 4: package kde-print-manager-19.12.3-2.el8.x86_64 requires
plasma-workspace, but none of the providers can be installed
  - conflicting requests
  - nothing provides xmessage needed by
plasma-workspace-5.18.4.1-2.el8.x86_64
(try to add '--skip-broken' to skip uninstallable packages or '--nobest'
to use not only best candidate packages)


Are my mirrors broken or incomplete? I just can't find out what happens.

Simon

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

I'm also on C7 for the same reason but wanted to see how XFCE is supported
on any EL8 clone for the future.

In the past I've even produced updated XFCE packages but I don't want to
do this in future. Too many other things to do.

Simon

> Sorry, I run gdm on Springdale 8 and Alma 8.  I'm not doing much work on
> any RHEL 8 clone ATM, I prefer the longer support of C7! :-(
> Martin
>
> On 11/02/2021 10:26, Simon Matter wrote:
>> Thanks Martin, so the "Xfce" group definition in EPEL is obviously
>> broken.
>>
>> Looks like XFCE doesn't get much love in EL8. Do you or anyone else have
>> suggestions for a lightweight desktop environment to use on EL8 apart
>> from
>> XFCE? One which is supported well by EPEL?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Simon
>>
>>> Hi Simon,
>>>
>>> I'm running XFCE under CentOS 8 as a VM under CentOS 7.  I've just had
>>> a
>>> quick look and this is what I see (see attachment).  You'll need to
>>> view
>>> it in a wide terminal.
>>>
>>> HTH,
>>> Martin
>>>
>>> On 11/02/2021 09:24, Simon Matter wrote:
 Hi,

 Is anyone here running XFCE desktop on CentOS 8? If so, how did you
 install it?

 I just tried to install it from EPEL and this is what I got:

 # dnf group install Xfce
 Last metadata expiration check: 0:14:01 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021
 10:05:47
 CET.
 No match for group package "NetworkManager-gnome"
 No match for group package "thunar-archive-plugin"

 I'm unable to find packages for NetworkManager-gnome or
 thunar-archive-plugin anywhere in CentOS 8 or EPEL 8.

 Did I miss something?

 Thanks,
 Simon

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>>>
>>> --
>>> J Martin Rushton MBCS
>>> ___
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>>>
>>
>>
>
> --
> J Martin Rushton MBCS
>


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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

Hi,

> On 11/02/21 10:24 pm, Simon Matter wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is anyone here running XFCE desktop on CentOS 8? If so, how did you
>> install it?
>>
>> I just tried to install it from EPEL and this is what I got:
>>
>> # dnf group install Xfce
>> Last metadata expiration check: 0:14:01 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 10:05:47
>> CET.
>> No match for group package "NetworkManager-gnome"
>> No match for group package "thunar-archive-plugin"
>
> I run the command and it resolves the dependencies just fine, but does
> not want to install any of the above two packages.
>
>> I'm unable to find packages for NetworkManager-gnome or
>> thunar-archive-plugin anywhere in CentOS 8 or EPEL 8.
>
> Can you please show the full output of your command, please?  Also the
> output of:

# dnf group install "Xfce"
Last metadata expiration check: 0:05:02 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 11:45:57 CET.
No match for group package "NetworkManager-gnome"
No match for group package "thunar-archive-plugin"
Dependencies resolved.

 PackageArch  VersionRepository   
Size

Installing group/module packages:
 Thunar x86_641.8.15-1.el8   epel
1.6 M
 mousepad   x86_640.4.2-1.el8epel
326 k
 thunar-volman  x86_640.9.5-1.el8epel
290 k
 tumblerx86_640.2.7-1.el8epel
237 k
 xfce-polkitx86_640.3-3.el8  epel 
25 k
 xfce4-appfinderx86_644.14.0-1.el8   epel
246 k
 xfce4-panelx86_644.14.4-1.el8   epel
1.0 M
 xfce4-power-managerx86_641.6.6-1.el8epel
810 k
 xfce4-pulseaudio-pluginx86_640.4.3-1.el8epel
123 k
 xfce4-screensaver  x86_640.1.10-1.el8   epel
290 k
 xfce4-session  x86_644.14.2-1.el8   epel
518 k
 xfce4-settings x86_644.14.3-1.el8   epel
877 k
 xfce4-terminal x86_640.8.10-1.el8   epel
670 k
 xfconf x86_644.14.3-1.el8   epel
261 k
 xfdesktop  x86_644.14.1-3.el8   epel
1.2 M
 xfwm4  x86_644.14.2-1.el8   epel
581 k
Installing dependencies:
 exox86_640.12.10-1.el8  epel
701 k
 garcon x86_640.6.4-3.el8epel
214 k
 libxfce4ui x86_644.14.1-3.el8   epel
274 k
 libxfce4util   x86_644.14.0-1.el8   epel
180 k
 pavucontrolx86_643.0-11.el8 ol8_appstream   
160 k
Installing Groups:
 Xfce

Transaction Summary

Install  21 Packages

Total size: 10 M
Installed size: 48 M
Is this ok [y/N]:

>
> dnf repolist -v epel

# dnf repolist -v epel
Loaded plugins: builddep, changelog, config-manager, copr, debug,
debuginfo-install, download, generate_completion_cache, needs-restarting,
playground, repoclosure, repodiff, repograph, repomanage, reposync
DNF version: 4.2.23
cachedir: /var/cache/dnf
Last metadata expiration check: 0:07:26 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 11:45:57 CET.
Repo-id: epel
Repo-name  : Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64
Repo-status: enabled
Repo-revision  : 1613003176
Repo-updated   : Thu 11 Feb 2021 01:26:47 CET
Repo-pkgs  : 6,999
Repo-available-pkgs: 6,994
Repo-size  : 9.9 G
Repo-baseurl   : file:///mnt/nfs/Linux/Mirrors/epel/8/Everything/x86_64/
Repo-expire: 172,800 second(s) (last: Thu 11 Feb 2021 11:45:57 CET)
Repo-filename  : /etc/yum.repos.d/epel.repo
Total packages: 6,999


As you can see I'm serving repos from my local mirrors. Are they not
complete somehow?

Simon

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[J Martin Rushton via CentOS]

Sorry, I run gdm on Springdale 8 and Alma 8.  I'm not doing much work on 
any RHEL 8 clone ATM, I prefer the longer support of C7! :-(

Martin

On 11/02/2021 10:26, Simon Matter wrote:

Thanks Martin, so the "Xfce" group definition in EPEL is obviously broken.

Looks like XFCE doesn't get much love in EL8. Do you or anyone else have
suggestions for a lightweight desktop environment to use on EL8 apart from
XFCE? One which is supported well by EPEL?

Thanks,
Simon


Hi Simon,

I'm running XFCE under CentOS 8 as a VM under CentOS 7.  I've just had a
quick look and this is what I see (see attachment).  You'll need to view
it in a wide terminal.

HTH,
Martin

On 11/02/2021 09:24, Simon Matter wrote:

Hi,

Is anyone here running XFCE desktop on CentOS 8? If so, how did you
install it?

I just tried to install it from EPEL and this is what I got:

# dnf group install Xfce
Last metadata expiration check: 0:14:01 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 10:05:47
CET.
No match for group package "NetworkManager-gnome"
No match for group package "thunar-archive-plugin"

I'm unable to find packages for NetworkManager-gnome or
thunar-archive-plugin anywhere in CentOS 8 or EPEL 8.

Did I miss something?

Thanks,
Simon

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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Peter]

On 11/02/21 10:24 pm, Simon Matter wrote:

Hi,

Is anyone here running XFCE desktop on CentOS 8? If so, how did you
install it?

I just tried to install it from EPEL and this is what I got:

# dnf group install Xfce
Last metadata expiration check: 0:14:01 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 10:05:47 CET.
No match for group package "NetworkManager-gnome"
No match for group package "thunar-archive-plugin"


I run the command and it resolves the dependencies just fine, but does 
not want to install any of the above two packages.



I'm unable to find packages for NetworkManager-gnome or
thunar-archive-plugin anywhere in CentOS 8 or EPEL 8.


Can you please show the full output of your command, please?  Also the 
output of:


dnf repolist -v epel


Peter
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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[Simon Matter]

Thanks Martin, so the "Xfce" group definition in EPEL is obviously broken.

Looks like XFCE doesn't get much love in EL8. Do you or anyone else have
suggestions for a lightweight desktop environment to use on EL8 apart from
XFCE? One which is supported well by EPEL?

Thanks,
Simon

> Hi Simon,
>
> I'm running XFCE under CentOS 8 as a VM under CentOS 7.  I've just had a
> quick look and this is what I see (see attachment).  You'll need to view
> it in a wide terminal.
>
> HTH,
> Martin
>
> On 11/02/2021 09:24, Simon Matter wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is anyone here running XFCE desktop on CentOS 8? If so, how did you
>> install it?
>>
>> I just tried to install it from EPEL and this is what I got:
>>
>> # dnf group install Xfce
>> Last metadata expiration check: 0:14:01 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 10:05:47
>> CET.
>> No match for group package "NetworkManager-gnome"
>> No match for group package "thunar-archive-plugin"
>>
>> I'm unable to find packages for NetworkManager-gnome or
>> thunar-archive-plugin anywhere in CentOS 8 or EPEL 8.
>>
>> Did I miss something?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Simon
>>
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>>
>
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>


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Re: [CentOS] How to install XFCE on CentOS 8?

[J Martin Rushton via CentOS]

Hi Simon,

I'm running XFCE under CentOS 8 as a VM under CentOS 7.  I've just had a 
quick look and this is what I see (see attachment).  You'll need to view 
it in a wide terminal.


HTH,
Martin

On 11/02/2021 09:24, Simon Matter wrote:

Hi,

Is anyone here running XFCE desktop on CentOS 8? If so, how did you
install it?

I just tried to install it from EPEL and this is what I got:

# dnf group install Xfce
Last metadata expiration check: 0:14:01 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 10:05:47 CET.
No match for group package "NetworkManager-gnome"
No match for group package "thunar-archive-plugin"

I'm unable to find packages for NetworkManager-gnome or
thunar-archive-plugin anywhere in CentOS 8 or EPEL 8.

Did I miss something?

Thanks,
Simon

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$ dnf --color=never list xfce\*
Last metadata expiration check: 0:01:19 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 09:59:20 GMT.
Installed Packages
xfce-polkit.x86_64   0.3-3.epel8.playground  
@epel-playground
xfce4-about.x86_64   4.14.1-3.epel8.playground   
@epel-playground
xfce4-appfinder.x86_64   4.14.0-1.epel8.playground   
@epel-playground
xfce4-panel.x86_64   4.14.4-1.epel8.playground   
@epel-playground
xfce4-places-plugin.x86_64   1.8.1-1.epel8.playground
@epel-playground
xfce4-pulseaudio-plugin.x86_64   0.4.3-1.epel8.playground
@epel-playground
xfce4-session.x86_64 4.14.2-1.epel8.playground   
@epel-playground
xfce4-settings.x86_644.14.3-1.epel8.playground   
@epel-playground
xfce4-systemload-plugin.x86_64   1.2.3-2.epel8.playground
@epel-playground
xfce4-taskmanager.x86_64 1.2.3-1.epel8.playground
@epel-playground
xfce4-terminal.x86_640.8.10-1.el8@epel
Available Package:
xfce4-battery-plugin.x86_64  1.1.3-1.el8 epel
xfce4-datetime-plugin.x86_64 0.8.0-1.el8 epel
xfce4-netload-plugin.x86_64  1.3.2-1.el8 epel
xfce4-notifyd.x86_64 0.6.1-1.el8 epel
xfce4-panel-devel.x86_64 4.14.4-1.el8epel
xfce4-power-manager.x86_64   1.6.6-1.el8 epel
xfce4-screensaver.x86_64 0.1.10-1.el8epel
xfce4-screenshooter.x86_64   1.9.7-1.el8 epel
xfce4-screenshooter-plugin.x86_641.9.7-1.el8 epel
xfce4-smartbookmark-plugin.x86_640.5.1-1.el8 epel
xfce4-time-out-plugin.x86_64 1.1.0-1.el8 epel
xfce4-weather-plugin.x86_64  0.10.2-1.el8epel
xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin.x86_64  2.4.4-1.el8 epel

$ dnf --color=never list NetworkManager-gnome
Last metadata expiration check: 0:05:53 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 09:59:20 GMT.
Error: No matching Packages to list

$ dnf --color=never list thunar-archive-plugin
Last metadata expiration check: 0:06:16 ago on Thu 11 Feb 2021 09:59:20 GMT.
Error: No matching Packages to list

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