subject:"Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop"

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 05:17:10PM -0700, Octavio Alvarez wrote:
 
 That's why I see GNOME 3 as a tablet environment. I'd love to use a
 tablet with GNOME 3. But using it in a desktop just reduces the
 communication between me and my computer. What is Debian?

This is actually the core (hidden) question which I think is driving
the whole debate.  Ignoring the claims of Debian as the universal
operating system, what audience does Debian what to target by default
in its installer?

Is it the power user?  Is it developers?  Is it the typical users I've
seen on Launchpad, such that I've largely stopped dealing with bug
reports there --- far too many Ubuntu users can't file a proper bug
report, and then other Ubuntu users Google their symptoms, and drop in
irrelevant observation for problems that superficially have the same
symptoms, but are about something else entirely?

If you want Debian to target people who like Windows 8, or maybe Mac
OS, then GNOME or Unity is the right default DE.  If you don't care
about servicing the needs of your current user base, and instead want
to chase after (hopefully) potentially new users, the way the GNOME
project has done, by all means, go with GNOME.

I have a slight bias towards XFCE, but honestly, it's for primarily
selfish reasons --- I don't want the sort of bug reports that
Launchpad gets; the vast majority of bugs filed with the BTS are by
people with whom I can work with to fix bugs, and as a result packages
such as e2sprogs get better for everyone.  And so very selfishly, I
don't want that signal to get drowned out by the noise which is
Launchpad, and so I'd prefer that Ubuntu continue to target the
Windows 8 and Mac OS user market.

It may be that Debian would like to go after the same thing.  If so,
I'll be sad, but given that I can always install some other DE, at the
end of the day it doesn't make that much difference to my personal
workflow, since I can always override the default.

Cheers,

- Ted


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Axel Wagner

Hi,

Theodore Ts'o ty...@mit.edu writes:
 This is actually the core (hidden) question which I think is driving
 the whole debate.  Ignoring the claims of Debian as the universal
 operating system, what audience does Debian what to target by default
 in its installer?

Agreed. Though default is a very important word here, that you seem to
have omitted in the rest of the mail. You don't have to give up
targeting devs and similar, to try to get new users by having
noob-friendly defaults.

Best,

Axel Wagner


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Ansgar Burchardt

Hi,

On 08/13/2014 15:43, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
 Is it the power user?  Is it developers?  Is it the typical users I've
 seen on Launchpad, such that I've largely stopped dealing with bug
 reports there --- far too many Ubuntu users can't file a proper bug
 report, and then other Ubuntu users Google their symptoms, and drop in
 irrelevant observation for problems that superficially have the same
 symptoms, but are about something else entirely?
 
 If you want Debian to target people who like Windows 8, or maybe Mac
 OS, then GNOME or Unity is the right default DE.  If you don't care
 about servicing the needs of your current user base, and instead want
 to chase after (hopefully) potentially new users, the way the GNOME
 project has done, by all means, go with GNOME.

To quote a fairly famous Linux user who eventually came back from XFCE
to GNOME: But I'm actually back to gnome3 because with the right
extensions it is more pleasant.[1]

But I'm not sure if he qualifies as a power user or is just another guy
who like Windows 8 or OS X. *scnr*

Ansgar

  [1] One of the comments to the post
  https://plus.google.com/115250422803614415116/posts/KygiWsQc4Wm


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 04:09:25PM +0200, Ansgar Burchardt wrote:
 To quote a fairly famous Linux user who eventually came back from XFCE
 to GNOME: But I'm actually back to gnome3 because with the right
 extensions it is more pleasant.[1]
 
 But I'm not sure if he qualifies as a power user or is just another guy
 who like Windows 8 or OS X. *scnr*

I wait with bated breath when the next GNOME version update breaks all
of his extensions (as GNOME version updates are wont to do).  And then
when he complains, hopefully he won't swear too much, when he's told
that it's his fault for depending on GNOME extensions, since there is
zero guarantees of compatibility given by GNOME.

(This is Linus thou shalt not break userspace Torvalds we're talking
about.  And the GNOME extensions are the diametric opposite of that
philosophy.)

- Ted


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Anthony F McInerney


 But I'm actually back to gnome3 because with the right
  extensions it is more pleasant.

So the question is does debian have the extensions he speaks of?
(and) Have debian tweaked those extensions by default, to his liking?

And to quote a not so famous computer user who said what's that crap on
the screen, i don't like that, why have they made it look like
android(main gnome3 menu + app list) and i can't login to your laptop
now. (GDM3)
I asked for no opinion or expressed one either way. But since we're now
just quoting things people said.
The user has far more experience with windows in general, but has no
problems with lightdm+ e17. (never seen xfce)
Again i suppose it depends who debian is targetting by default.

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Matthias Klumpp

2014-08-13 22:05 GMT+02:00 Anthony F McInerney afm...@gmail.com:
But I'm actually back to gnome3 because with the right
extensions it is more pleasant.

So the question is does debian have the extensions he speaks of?
(and) Have debian tweaked those extensions by default, to his liking?

And to quote a not so famous computer user who said what's that crap on the
screen, i don't like that, why have they made it look like android(main
gnome3 menu + app list) and i can't login to your laptop now. (GDM3)
I asked for no opinion or expressed one either way. But since we're now just
quoting things people said.
The user has far more experience with windows in general, but has no
problems with lightdm+ e17. (never seen xfce)
Again i suppose it depends who debian is targetting by default.
Well, Linus' extensions won't break because GNOME updates them with
every release and ships them with the official GNOME release.
They are also available in Debian:
https://packages.debian.org/sid/gnome-shell-extensions
In order to use a classic GNOME, the only thing the user has to do
on a Debian installation is (if the extensions package is installed)
to select GNOME Classic from the login screen.
So it's not complicated at all.
Cheers,
Matthias

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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 10:18:49PM +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
 Well, Linus' extensions won't break because GNOME updates them with
 every release and ships them with the official GNOME release.

From the README found in gnome-shell-extensions sources:

GNOME Shell Extensions is a collection of extensions providing additional
and optional functionality to GNOME Shell.
Since GNOME Shell is not API stable, extensions work only against a very
specific version of the shell, usually the same as this package (see
configure --version). Also, since extensions are built from many
individual contributors, we cannot guarantee stability or quality for any
specific extension.
For these reasons, distributions are advised to avoid installing or 
packaging
this module by default.

So again, it'll be interesting to see how many extensions work when
3.14 gets released, and how many just break or just silently
disappear

Of course, not anything which is officially in GNOME is guaranteed to
stick around, either.  Functionality which is part of official GNOME
have commonly disappeared in a version upgrade as well, and the
Gnome Shell Extensions has a lesser guarantee of stability than
features in core GNOME.

At least for me, it's a case of Fool me once, shame on you; fool me
twice, shame on me.

- Ted


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Matthias Klumpp

2014-08-13 22:59 GMT+02:00 Theodore Ts'o ty...@mit.edu:
On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 10:18:49PM +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
Well, Linus' extensions won't break because GNOME updates them with
every release and ships them with the official GNOME release.

From the README found in gnome-shell-extensions sources:

GNOME Shell Extensions is a collection of extensions providing additional
and optional functionality to GNOME Shell.
Since GNOME Shell is not API stable, extensions work only against a very
specific version of the shell, usually the same as this package (see
configure --version). Also, since extensions are built from many
individual contributors, we cannot guarantee stability or quality for any
specific extension.
For these reasons, distributions are advised to avoid installing or
packaging
this module by default.
That's odd - I remember someone from the GNOME folks saying that they
develop these extensions together with the Shell and as part of
official GNOME so they do not break and users can rely on them.
Also, they provide the stuff needed for GNOME Classic, which is the
default desktop on RHEL (so I kind of expect that stuff to work and to
be developed in future).
But that README file is indeed very clear about the extensions repo...

So again, it'll be interesting to see how many extensions work when
3.14 gets released, and how many just break or just silently
disappear

Of course, not anything which is officially in GNOME is guaranteed to
stick around, either. Functionality which is part of official GNOME
have commonly disappeared in a version upgrade as well, and the
Gnome Shell Extensions has a lesser guarantee of stability than
features in core GNOME.

At least for me, it's a case of Fool me once, shame on you; fool me
twice, shame on me.
That's why I use KDE (GNOME also has some small annoyances like having
to delete things in Nautilus using ALT+ENTF etc.) - but admittedly,
the GNOME experience is very usable, and the common reaction I get
from new Linux users is some kind of wow effect, since they like the
clean and modern design of GNOME as well as it's workflow, which lets
people focus on screen content instead of desktop chrome.
So if that's the people we want to reach with the default desktop,
GNOME is certainly a good option. I would also recommend to go for
this user group when selecting a default, since any more experienced
user can absolutely be expected to pick the right image with their
favourite flavour of Debian, or change some options in the installer.
Unexperienced users usually don't really know what they want, so
selecting a good default for them would be useful.
People for computers with low specs could pick an image with Xfce or
LXQt and experience a great desktop environment - since there isn't
really a second class desktop in Debian, only different levels of
how well something is maintained.
Cheers,
Matthias

P.S: Of course, KDE Plasma would also be a great choice as DE
default-selection ;-)

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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Hashem Nasarat



On 08/13/2014 06:08 PM, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
 2014-08-13 22:59 GMT+02:00 Theodore Ts'o ty...@mit.edu:
 On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 10:18:49PM +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
 Well, Linus' extensions won't break because GNOME updates them with
 every release and ships them with the official GNOME release.

 From the README found in gnome-shell-extensions sources:

 GNOME Shell Extensions is a collection of extensions providing additional
 and optional functionality to GNOME Shell.
 Since GNOME Shell is not API stable, extensions work only against a very
 specific version of the shell, usually the same as this package (see
 configure --version). Also, since extensions are built from many
 individual contributors, we cannot guarantee stability or quality for any
 specific extension.
 For these reasons, distributions are advised to avoid installing or 
 packaging
 this module by default.
 That's odd - I remember someone from the GNOME folks saying that they
 develop these extensions together with the Shell and as part of
 official GNOME so they do not break and users can rely on them.
 Also, they provide the stuff needed for GNOME Classic, which is the
 default desktop on RHEL (so I kind of expect that stuff to work and to
 be developed in future).
 But that README file is indeed very clear about the extensions repo...
 

The following first party extensions are developed along with
gnome-shell and are updated for each gnome-shell release.
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions/tree/extensions

Extensions on https://extensions.gnome.org/ are the ones that are often
late with updating based on new releases.

(My perspective as a Debian user: I cannot bring myself to recommend
Debian to GNU/Linux newcomers, and those not interested in tinkering
with packages and DEs, if the default DE isn't comparable (in terms of
usability, features, design) to GNOME.  If this is the case, I will
sadly recommend Mint, Fedora, or some Ubuntu flavor instead, which all
have demonstrated more of a focus to those not in the ivory tower).


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Josselin Mouette

Le mardi 12 août 2014 à 12:26 -0400, Joey Hess a écrit : 
 Ian Jackson wrote:
  Do you intend to review (or are you reviewing) the decision taken in
  July 2012 [1] ?  If so, is this discussion here on -devel useful ?  If
  it is useful, what questions should we be focusing on ?
 
 See my 1st message to this thread.
 
 Can't say I've found most of the thread useful.

I’d like the thread to be useful, and for that goal it would be much
appreciated if the d-i team could you tell us what the relevant criteria
are and what people need to work on.

→ Is the installation CD size still relevant?
→ What is the target audience of Debian-installer for the default image?
→ What is the required level of accessibility?
→ Will you configure different defaults for different architectures?

Thanks for your input.
-- 
 .''`.  Josselin Mouette
: :' :
`. `'
  `-


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Simon McVittie

On 13/08/14 23:08, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
 the common reaction I get from new Linux users [...]
 I would also recommend to go for
 this user group when selecting a default, since any more experienced
 user can absolutely be expected to pick the right image with their
 favourite flavour of Debian, or change some options in the installer.
 Unexperienced users usually don't really know what they want, so
 selecting a good default for them would be useful.

Yes, this. Debian's defaults are never going to please everyone, because
you can't default to GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE, fvwm, awesome, ratpoison
etc. all at the same time; but they can at least be good for people who
don't know which they prefer, because those people are reliant on the
default.

S


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 06:34:46PM -0400, Hashem Nasarat wrote:
 
 The following first party extensions are developed along with
 gnome-shell and are updated for each gnome-shell release.
 https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-shell-extensions/tree/extensions
 
 Extensions on https://extensions.gnome.org/ are the ones that are often
 late with updating based on new releases.

I note that the workspace grid extension (which seems to be the only
way you can get a 2-dimensional workspace) is not a first party
extension.  So if you depend on it, you are more at risk than usual if
you use GNOME

- Ted


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Anthony F McInerney



 I’d like the thread to be useful, and for that goal it would be much
 appreciated if the d-i team could you tell us what the relevant criteria
 are and what people need to work on.

 → Is the installation CD size still relevant?
 → What is the target audience of Debian-installer for the default image?
 → What is the required level of accessibility?
 → Will you configure different defaults for different architectures?


I concur with this message, i also ask that whatever DE is chosen that they
are open to change of default packages, default settings and default
recommends. So that the debian default is a reflection not of that DE but
of debian actually doing something proactive with it.
I'd also like to note that HiDPI appears (as per my message which was not
commented on) appears to be completely irrelevant as no current solution in
debian appears to support it fully.

On 14 August 2014 00:32, Simon McVittie s...@debian.org wrote:

but they can at least be good for people who
don't know which they prefer, because those people are reliant on the
default.

Which i believe concurs with my statement above.

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-13 Thread Roger Lynn

On 07/08/14 23:10, Jordi Mallach wrote:
 Popularity: One of the metrics discussed by the tasksel change proponents
 mentioned popcon numbers. 8 months after the desktop change, Xfce does not 
 seem
 to have made a dent on install numbers.  The Debian GNOME team doesnât feel
 popconâs data is any better than a random online poll though, as itâs an 
 opt-in
 service which the vast majority of users donât enable.

What proportion of people installing testing or unstable will just go along
with the default? Won't most people choosing the default options be using
the stable installer? It would therefore be difficult to collect any
meaningful data at all from popcon until there was stable release with
changed defaults.

Roger


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Wookey

+++ Kees de Jong [2014-08-12 02:03 +0200]:
Are we really comparing RAM here as if it were the 90's? How many people
here use Android? Today it needs 512 MB to function properly. In two years
that could be 1 or 2 GB and that's a mobile OS. How much RAM does your
browser use? 

Too much! I agree browsers use more ram than desktops these days, or
at least the big ones (firefox, chrome) do. 

My Chrome/Firefox easily uses 1 GB. My GNOME 3.10 desktop
(running Fedora now because I needed a modern GNOME version for Exchange
support for work) is using about 800 MB to 1200 MB. Do I really care? No,
because RAM is cheap and I have 8 GB. Do I need to buy more? No, because 8
GB is still more than enough.

That's fine so long as your hardware is new enough to take more
memory. Anyone with an ARM machine will be in the 512MB/1G/2G camp. My
laptop (x200s) officially maxes out at 4G, although it turns out that
8G does actually work in practice.

Memory usage does still matter as your hardware doesn't have to be
particularly old to have RAM of a size that is likely to all get used,
and on arm (increasingly being used for netbook/laptop/desktop usage)
it's practically guaranteed.

So yes, it's not the 1990s but I think we should aim to make Debian to
work tolerably well on 2 or 4G systems. Alistair posted numbers
suggesting 600MB for gnome3 or KDE, 360 for XFCE, 300 for LXDE, which
is a difference, but not a huge one. Very significant on a 512MB
machine, but not that significant on 2G. You say 800-1200 above which
is twice as much. Is this the differnce between initial boot up and
usage after some time, or 'various add-ons'? Knowing what 'typical'
numbers are would be useful. I have various well-used XFCE desktops I
could check but I'm not sure how to get a cmparable RAM-usage number
of them.

If you can't run GNOME because you don't have the system specs to run a
modern desktop then you can select XFCE/LXDE in the installation menu. But
let's be fair, those people are a minority. And a default should fit the
needs of the majority. And since people easily have 4 GB of RAM or more
these days with the basic 3D acceleration

I only had 2G RAM till last year (when I had to buy some more because
browsers take so much damn RAM). I think we should at least consider
those people in the 'typical machines' bucket. 

  (even a Raspberry Pi can run GNOME 3)

A Pi is only 512MB, so 'barely'. Like most arm hardware memory levels are still
low by modern x86 standards. They are like late 90s/early 2000s x86 machines in 
this regard.

I don't want to over-emphasise the arm thing - it is still a minority
sport - but it's a growing area of usage where memory is still
limited.

I just wanted to counter a little the 'everyone has buckets of RAM
these days' view, whilst acnowledging that it is no longer the 90's
and a 512Mb machine will struggle with any modern desktop+browser
(which is sad IMHO - dawkins knows what software, especially browsers,
do with all that memory! - hundreds of Mb for simple tables of built
packages, for example, but I digress :-)

Wookey
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Principal hats:  Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM
http://wookware.org/


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Wookey

+++ Anthony F McInerney [2014-08-12 00:02 +0100]:
XFCE:
 
 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:506756 362468 144288   6568  22756 179264
-/+ buffers/cache: 160448 346308
Swap:   392188  0 392188
 
GNOME:
 
 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:506756 500360   6396   1948840  37724
-/+ buffers/cache: 461796  44960
Swap:   392188  66672 325516
 
LXDE:
 
 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:506756 316504 190252   8500  18920 149812
-/+ buffers/cache: 147772 358984
Swap:   392188  0 392188
 
KDE:
 
 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:506756 499724   7032   6772  10516 109760
-/+ buffers/cache: 379448 127308
Swap:   392188  21632 370556

Thanks for this, interesting.

Could you do MATE too please?


Wookey
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http://wookware.org/


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Josselin Mouette

Le mardi 12 août 2014 à 03:03 +0100, Anthony F McInerney a écrit : 
 I had stated previously XFCE had started showing memory usage similar
 to gnome. This has quite obviously changed. I was wrong, and i'm
 posting it as a correction to my statement.

You’re comparing apples and oranges. These memory usage comparisons are
only useful at feature parity - which doesn’t exist, since different
environments have different paradigms and different feature sets.

 How much RAM does your browser use? 
 Lots, which is why i prefer my DE not to eat it all.

When the browser uses 1 GB while GNOME (including evolution and many
other running applications) uses half of that, I don’t think you need to
look for memory savings in the desktop. You need to buy more RAM and
that’s all, because browsers won’t suddenly stop needing their gigabyte.

 If you can't run GNOME because you don't have the system specs
 to run a modern desktop then you can select XFCE/LXDE in the
 installation menu. But let's be fair, those people are a
 minority. And a default should fit the needs of the majority. 
 Ahh good you have statistics for that. Please link them, or quote and
 cite sources.

I just had a look at an online hardware store.
Out of their 682 laptops and 332 desktops: 
  * 1 model has 1 GiB 
  * 48 models have 2 GiB 
  * 470 models have 4 GiB 
  * 495 have 6 GiB or more

Which means 0,1% of the machines you can buy are not able to run a web
browser anyway,  5% are more than enough for a full-fledged GNOME+web
browser, and all the rest are very comfortable with anything you can run
under Linux.

 Some people like the 'basic 3d acceleration' for other things, so not
 only do you want me to sacrifice my RAM to all powerful DE, but also
 my GPU? How kind of you ;)

We happen at work to have users with very important needs of 3D
resources, so one of my colleagues conducted some performance tests with
and without a compositor (the compositor being GNOME 3).

It turns out that with a recent adapter, 3D applications are running a
small bit faster under GNOME, and that’s probably because it saves your
graphics card the pain to switch from 2D to 3D contexts. 
-- 
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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On 12 August 2014 09:51, Wookey woo...@wookware.org wrote:

 Could you do MATE too please?

 MATE: (with mate-desktop-environment-extras)
free ^[[C total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 506756 397480 109276
7096 58820 166076 -/+ buffers/cache: 172584 334172
Swap: 392188 0 392188

The ctrl characters came with it apparently.
 And as an extra, Gnome Classical:
free total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 506756 498240 8516 2452
5972 71360 -/+ buffers/cache: 420908 85848 Swap: 392188 16292 375896

Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop


 We happen at work to have users with very important needs of 3D
 resources, so one of my colleagues conducted some performance tests with
 and without a compositor (the compositor being GNOME 3).

 It turns out that with a recent adapter, 3D applications are running a
 small bit faster under GNOME, and that’s probably because it saves your
 graphics card the pain to switch from 2D to 3D contexts.

 Virtualbox Results (no guest drivers installed)

Gnome:
glxgears 1267 frames in 5.0 seconds = 253.150 FPS 1197 frames in 5.0
seconds = 239.372 FPS 1174 frames in 5.0 seconds = 234.753 FPS 1142 frames
in 5.0 seconds = 228.005 FPS 1201 frames in 5.0 seconds = 239.898 FPS 1217
frames in 5.0 seconds = 243.075 FPS
1194 frames in 5.0 seconds = 238.475 FPS
Gnome-Classic:
glxgears

1150 frames in 5.0 seconds = 229.772 FPS
1267 frames in 5.0 seconds = 253.212 FPS
1240 frames in 5.0 seconds = 247.875 FPS
1272 frames in 5.0 seconds = 254.374 FPS
1314 frames in 5.0 seconds = 262.673 FPS
1279 frames in 5.0 seconds = 255.684 FPS

XFCE:

glxgears
2110 frames in 5.0 seconds = 421.982 FPS
2290 frames in 5.0 seconds = 457.800 FPS
2241 frames in 5.0 seconds = 448.046 FPS
2279 frames in 5.0 seconds = 455.636 FPS
2191 frames in 5.0 seconds = 438.094 FPS
2246 frames in 5.0 seconds = 449.114 FPS
2218 frames in 5.0 seconds = 443.590 FPS


Please note xfce was installed on the same vm, that gnome /
gnome-classic was on. It was therefore using much more memory, (it
seems GDM + other gnome services are causing memory use, i will be
testing that shortly). And here i will make a comparison. ahahahaha.
That was it. Moving on.


;)

Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Josselin Mouette

Le mardi 12 août 2014 à 13:12 +0100, Anthony F McInerney a écrit : 
 Virtualbox Results (no guest drivers installed)

Glxgears is not a relevant 3D benchmark.

But the funniest thing is that you did this test without any 3D
acceleration, which is not representative at all of most real-world
computers.

Thanks for making the point that with llvmpipe, GNOME is perfectly
usable on a machine without 3D. 
-- 
 .''`.Josselin Mouette
: :' :
`. `'
  `-


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

I enjoy the way you keep ignoring the relevant points, memory usage and
performance regressions. And the way you benchmarked gnome against gnome.
How about warsaw on xfce on the same hardware or your benchmarks pretty
much show nothing except that your 'slight performance increase when using
gnome-shell' is pure fabrication.



On 12 August 2014 13:20, Josselin Mouette j...@debian.org wrote:

 Le mardi 12 août 2014 à 13:12 +0100, Anthony F McInerney a écrit :
  Virtualbox Results (no guest drivers installed)

 Glxgears is not a relevant 3D benchmark.

 But the funniest thing is that you did this test without any 3D
 acceleration, which is not representative at all of most real-world
 computers.

 Thanks for making the point that with llvmpipe, GNOME is perfectly
 usable on a machine without 3D.
 --
  .''`.Josselin Mouette
 : :' :
 `. `'
   `-

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Ian Jackson

Jordi Mallach writes (Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop):
 It's been around 9 months since tasksel changed (for real) the default
 desktop for new installs. At the time of the change, it was mentioned
 the issue would be revisited before the freeze, around debconf time.

Fascinating as this discussion is, I think it is at risk of becoming
too much of a time sink.  I think that it would be useful to have some
authoritative guidance from those in Debian who are responsible for
this decision.  AFAICT that is the tasksel maintainers.

So I would appreciate it if the tasksel maintainers would let us know:

Do you intend to review (or are you reviewing) the decision taken in
July 2012 [1] ?  If so, is this discussion here on -devel useful ?  If
it is useful, what questions should we be focusing on ?

Ian.

[1] 
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=tasksel/tasksel.git;a=commit;h=2a962cc65cdba010177f27e8824ba10d9a799a08


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Joey Hess

Ian Jackson wrote:
 Do you intend to review (or are you reviewing) the decision taken in
 July 2012 [1] ?  If so, is this discussion here on -devel useful ?  If
 it is useful, what questions should we be focusing on ?

See my 1st message to this thread.

Can't say I've found most of the thread useful.

-- 
see shy jo


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Simon McVittie

On 08/08/14 05:41, Joey Hess wrote:
 (Also, perhaps worth noting
 that 3.12 is quite a few versions ahead of the gnome currently in
 unstable..)

The metapackages in src:meta-gnome3 are still at version 3.8, but the
actual upstream packages making up GNOME 3.12 are nearly all in testing
already. Automated tracker:
https://www.0d.be/debian/debian-gnome-3.12-status.html

According to that page, brasero (CD burning) and several casual games
(Sudoku etc.) are out of date. That's about it. It's entirely possible
that those packages didn't have any significant changes between what we
have and the GNOME 3.12 release, or have changes that are unsuitable.

There's a lot of red in the Telepathy section, but that's only because
the automated tracker is picking up 0.99.x snapshots from the
Telepathy 1.0 branch, which isn't ready for real use yet, and will
probably land alongside GNOME 3.16 post-jessie. Our versions of
Telepathy 0.x are up to date.

I don't know whether the GNOME maintainers intend to update
src:meta-gnome3 for 3.12, or whether the metapackages' dependencies from
3.8 are equally valid for 3.12.

S


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Theodore Ts'o

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 12:26:18PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
 See my 1st message to this thread.

Joey,

With respect to your question re HiDPI displays and Xfce, I'm using
Xfce4 from Debian Testing on a Lenovo T540p with 3k screen, and
setting things up was fairly straight forward.  I got most of what I
needed by setting Custom DPI Setting in Settings - Appearance -
Fonts - DPI.

The main pain point that I've had is that Google Chrome doesn't
support HiDPI very well.  I've manually adjusted the zoom level which
mostly compensates almost everything except the buttons on the
toolbar, but that's a problem which is independent of the desktop
environment, and won't be fixed until Aura support for Linux
arrives[1].

[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=143619

So that's my experience with Xfce and HiDPI displays; at least for
this hacker, it was orders of magnitude less painful than dealing with
GNOME.  :-)

Cheers,

- Ted

P.S.  I don't have the double suspend problem; it looks like these
days, xfce4-power-manager doesn't do any suspending at all, and it's
all handled by systemd.  So the main pain point there was not waiting
suspend on lid close when I was on AC power.  I found the following
which worked around the issue for me (except that I haven't been able
to make the udev rules work, but I don't mind running
/usr/local/bin/suspend-prevent by hand when I go on and off AC mains.)

http://nrocco.github.io/2014/06/05/suspend-prevent-systemd.html


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Cameron Norman

El mar, 12 de ago 2014 a las 12:11 , Theodore Ts'o ty...@mit.edu 
escribió:

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 12:26:18PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:

 See my 1st message to this thread.


Joey,

With respect to your question re HiDPI displays and Xfce, I'm using
Xfce4 from Debian Testing on a Lenovo T540p with 3k screen, and
setting things up was fairly straight forward.  I got most of what I
needed by setting Custom DPI Setting in Settings - Appearance -
Fonts - DPI.


Did you have to edit anything else as well? I wonder if there could be 
some installer hook that detects DPI and adjusts these settings 
automatically...




The main pain point that I've had is that Google Chrome doesn't
support HiDPI very well.  I've manually adjusted the zoom level which
mostly compensates almost everything except the buttons on the
toolbar, but that's a problem which is independent of the desktop
environment, and won't be fixed until Aura support for Linux
arrives[1].

[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=143619

So that's my experience with Xfce and HiDPI displays; at least for
this hacker, it was orders of magnitude less painful than dealing with
GNOME.  :-)


I would appreciate if you went into a little detail on what pain you 
had with GNOME for comparison purposes.


Thank you,
--
Cameron



Cheers,

- Ted

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Michael Biebl

Am 12.08.2014 21:11, schrieb Theodore Ts'o:
 On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 12:26:18PM -0400, Joey Hess wrote:
 See my 1st message to this thread.
 
 Joey,
 
 With respect to your question re HiDPI displays and Xfce, I'm using
 Xfce4 from Debian Testing on a Lenovo T540p with 3k screen, and
 setting things up was fairly straight forward.  I got most of what I
 needed by setting Custom DPI Setting in Settings - Appearance -
 Fonts - DPI.

Scaling fonts alone is not sufficient if you want to properly support
HiDPI displays. You really want all UI elements to be scaling up,
otherwise icons etc get tiny and very hard to hit.

XFCE does not deal with that problem at all.

-- 
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?



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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Theodore Ts'o

On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 09:33:03PM -0007, Cameron Norman wrote:
 With respect to your question re HiDPI displays and Xfce, I'm using
 Xfce4 from Debian Testing on a Lenovo T540p with 3k screen, and
 setting things up was fairly straight forward.  I got most of what I
 needed by setting Custom DPI Setting in Settings - Appearance -
 Fonts - DPI.
 
 Did you have to edit anything else as well? I wonder if there could be some
 installer hook that detects DPI and adjusts these settings automatically...

As far as screen resolution was concerned, that was pretty much about it.

As near as I can tell, My Thinkpad doesn't actually export any EDID or
DDC information from which you could get the DPI information.  So
unless you wanted to use a database of common laptop signatures, cross
check that with the screen resolution (the T540p has different DPI's
depending whether you upgrade LCD panel, and to what resolution), it's
not clear to me how practical it would be to automate this, due to the
problems with the detect the DPI step.

Assuming you can detect the DPI (and life gets entertaining the user
has an external monitor hooked up --- so you need to decide between
using the DPI of the LCD panel or the external monitor), using the
command-line toole xfconf-query to actually adject the setting is
pretty simple.

 So that's my experience with Xfce and HiDPI displays; at least for
 this hacker, it was orders of magnitude less painful than dealing with
 GNOME.  :-)
 
 I would appreciate if you went into a little detail on what pain you had
 with GNOME for comparison purposes.

It's the usual frustrations, that have been aired a million times
before[1].  Struggling with the GNOME equivalent of the Windows Registry,
wanting to use a 2D workspace, struggling as random GNOME extensions
break when GNOME releases a new version, etc., etc., etc.

[1] http://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/the-problem-with-gnome-3/

Basically, I can be effective and efficient with Xfce.  I can't say
the same about GNOME, as a power user.  Which is OK, since I'm clearly
not the target audience for the GNOME project.  Oh, well

Cheers,

- Ted


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On 12 August 2014 23:25, Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org wrote:


 Scaling fonts alone is not sufficient if you want to properly support
 HiDPI displays. You really want all UI elements to be scaling up,
 otherwise icons etc get tiny and very hard to hit.

 XFCE does not deal with that problem at all.

 --
 Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
 universe are pointed away from Earth?

 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

For cairo I think you might be able to elaborate on this, in terms of
gnome/gtk3 HiDPI support in debian currently. If this is true are you
planning to cherry pick any git commits for it or waiting for cairo to
release upstream. (please forgive if this is not true, it seems relevant to
what is being asked)

Note: gtk3 3.10 and 3.12 require HiDPI support in cairo, but the current
release (cairo 1.12.16-2) does not yet have this support. In order to
enable full HiDPI support for Gtk3 programs, you will have to build
cairo-git and then rebuild gtk3 off of these newer cairo libraries.
To enable HiDPI, set your interface factor scaling using gsettings:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2

The rest of the page goes on to describe the current status for other DE's
too and seems quite informative, it also includes information on iceweasel
and chromium.

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Vincent Bernat

 ❦ 13 août 2014 00:25 +0200, Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org :

 Joey,
 
 With respect to your question re HiDPI displays and Xfce, I'm using
 Xfce4 from Debian Testing on a Lenovo T540p with 3k screen, and
 setting things up was fairly straight forward.  I got most of what I
 needed by setting Custom DPI Setting in Settings - Appearance -
 Fonts - DPI.

 Scaling fonts alone is not sufficient if you want to properly support
 HiDPI displays. You really want all UI elements to be scaling up,
 otherwise icons etc get tiny and very hard to hit.

 XFCE does not deal with that problem at all.

Everything seems to use DPI settings for that. You set DPI and scaling
happens for other parts of the interface. I am not using a DE and I set
DPI through xrdb.
-- 
 /* Am I fucking pedantic or what? */
2.2.16 /usr/src/linux/drivers/scsi/qlogicpti.h


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Michael Biebl

Am 13.08.2014 01:19, schrieb Vincent Bernat:
  ❦ 13 août 2014 00:25 +0200, Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org :

 Scaling fonts alone is not sufficient if you want to properly support
 HiDPI displays. You really want all UI elements to be scaling up,
 otherwise icons etc get tiny and very hard to hit.

 XFCE does not deal with that problem at all.
 
 Everything seems to use DPI settings for that. You set DPI and scaling
 happens for other parts of the interface.

I can not confirm your findings.

If you increase the DPI settings under XFCE following the instructions
posted by Ted, none of the UI elements besides text are scaled, no
scaled cursor, no scaled icons, no scaled window decorations, etc.

-- 
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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Octavio Alvarez



On 09/08/14 04:30, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
 Hi envite,
 
 Thanks for your input.
 
 Quoting envite (2014-08-09 10:43:25)
 XFCE (does not mount my USB disks)
 
 Did you perhaps suppress recommends?

Should this really be a Recommends?


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Vincent Bernat

 ❦ 13 août 2014 01:44 +0200, Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org :

 Scaling fonts alone is not sufficient if you want to properly support
 HiDPI displays. You really want all UI elements to be scaling up,
 otherwise icons etc get tiny and very hard to hit.

 XFCE does not deal with that problem at all.
 
 Everything seems to use DPI settings for that. You set DPI and scaling
 happens for other parts of the interface.

 I can not confirm your findings.

 If you increase the DPI settings under XFCE following the instructions
 posted by Ted, none of the UI elements besides text are scaled, no
 scaled cursor, no scaled icons, no scaled window decorations, etc.

As I am using awesome, window decorations, desktop icons are quite
unknown to me. What gets scaled for free is all the GTK and QT widgets.
-- 
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2.2.16 /usr/src/linux/fs/isofs/inode.c


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Michael Biebl

Am 13.08.2014 01:59, schrieb Vincent Bernat:
  ❦ 13 août 2014 01:44 +0200, Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org :
 I can not confirm your findings.

 If you increase the DPI settings under XFCE following the instructions
 posted by Ted, none of the UI elements besides text are scaled, no
 scaled cursor, no scaled icons, no scaled window decorations, etc.
 
 As I am using awesome, window decorations, desktop icons are quite
 unknown to me. What gets scaled for free is all the GTK and QT widgets.

Does that include UI elements which do *not* contain text, like scrollbars?


-- 
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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Russ Allbery

Octavio Alvarez alvar...@alvarezp.ods.org writes:
 On 09/08/14 04:30, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
 Quoting envite (2014-08-09 10:43:25)
 XFCE (does not mount my USB disks)

 Did you perhaps suppress recommends?

 Should this really be a Recommends?

Yes.

I have no need for and no desire for automatic USB disk mounting, and do
not want to be forced to install that package on my Xfce system.

-- 
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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Octavio Alvarez



On 12/08/14 15:44, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
 So that's my experience with Xfce and HiDPI displays; at least for
 this hacker, it was orders of magnitude less painful than dealing with
 GNOME.  :-)

 I would appreciate if you went into a little detail on what pain you had
 with GNOME for comparison purposes.
 
 It's the usual frustrations, that have been aired a million times
 before[1].  Struggling with the GNOME equivalent of the Windows Registry,
 wanting to use a 2D workspace, struggling as random GNOME extensions
 break when GNOME releases a new version, etc., etc., etc.
 
 [1] http://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/06/12/the-problem-with-gnome-3/
 
 Basically, I can be effective and efficient with Xfce.  I can't say
 the same about GNOME, as a power user.  Which is OK, since I'm clearly
 not the target audience for the GNOME project.  Oh, well

I can't agree more, with you and the blog post. I will go further.

Xfce does not break a paradigm, it uses less than half the RAM, which
allows me to do more things simultaneously and doesn't do unexpected
things. Xfce customizability is built in. Under GNOME I have to install
a tweaker to make it remotely do what I expect.

Over time, GNOME 3 increasingly consumes more RAM. The same happens with
X.org. Xfce behavior is definitely not as bad. I've been told this has
to do with heap fragmentation but I don't buy it. I don't have numbers
but I would think HF to cause 20% of the increasingly-consumed RAM behavior.

By default, GNOME 3 hides the notification area from view and only one
application button can be seen at a time. One of the most common and
important tasks, application switching, is a two-step process now: 1)
open the 'Activities' view to see what windows do I have open. 2) Look
for it with the eyes and click. In the traditional desktop, the first
step is eliminated. That's possibly desirable in a tablet where screen
resources are invaluable, but not in a workstation where
user-to-computer bandwidth must be maximized and screen are not
touch-sensitive.

That's why I see GNOME 3 as a tablet environment. I'd love to use a
tablet with GNOME 3. But using it in a desktop just reduces the
communication between me and my computer. What is Debian?


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Theodore Ts'o

On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 01:44:43AM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
 
 If you increase the DPI settings under XFCE following the instructions
 posted by Ted, none of the UI elements besides text are scaled, no
 scaled cursor, no scaled icons, no scaled window decorations, etc.

That's a fair comment.

The UI elements which I care about, which are the icons in the panels
are scaled with the size of the panels.  The same is true with the
icons in the notification panel and window buttons.

There are are a few UI elements, such as the window decorations which
aren't scaled, but I actually prefer them to be small.

The only UI elements where it has really bothered me has been in the
Chrome Browser, and that problem is DE independent, since Gnome uses
Aura and not GTK.

The bottom line is that XFCE is actually pretty usable even on a HiDPI
screen.

Cheers,

- Ted


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-12 Thread Cameron Norman

El mar, 12 de ago 2014 a las 5:06 , Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org 
escribió:

Am 13.08.2014 01:59, schrieb Vincent Bernat:

  ❦ 13 août 2014 01:44 +0200, Michael Biebl bi...@debian.org :

 I can not confirm your findings.

 If you increase the DPI settings under XFCE following the 
instructions

 posted by Ted, none of the UI elements besides text are scaled, no
 scaled cursor, no scaled icons, no scaled window decorations, etc.
 
 As I am using awesome, window decorations, desktop icons are quite
 unknown to me. What gets scaled for free is all the GTK and QT 
widgets.


Does that include UI elements which do *not* contain text, like 
scrollbars?


Probably relevant to Michael's inquiry: can we just get a few 
screenshots? It would be a lot easier to compare.


Best regards,
--
Cameron

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread fr33domlover

On 2014-08-07
Jordi Mallach jo...@debian.org wrote:

 Hi Debian,
 
 It's been around 9 months since tasksel changed (for real) the default
 desktop for new installs. At the time of the change, it was mentioned
 the issue would be revisited before the freeze, around debconf time.
 
 Well, it's roughly that time. :) So I'd like to plainly request GNOME is
 reinstated as the default desktop environment for a number of reasons.
 

Jordi, very good points.


I'm not a Debian developer, just a user, but here's my opinion. Probably not
something which hasn't been said, but I'd like to support this view too.

All the good things GNOME has make it an excellent choice for a DE in Debian.
And indeed, you can install GNOME easily on Debian, and I don't think it will
change. Good. But a default DE is something differet.

A default DE should be reasonably stable, non-surprising, familiar, and work
with few-years-old hardware at least (my 4-5 year old laptop already struggles
with GNOME, taking more than half the RAM even before I run the heavy things).
If people like GNOME 3 - and many do - they can just choose to download the
ISO with GNOME. Just like they did for KDE and XFCE. But when you don't know
much or just need a working desktop, XFCE is a light configurable quick
solution.

Therefore, while GNOME is great and has all its strengths and community - I
think XFCE should be default. I believe you'll simply see many people install
the non-default GNOME, so GNOME will retain all the community, popularity and
attention it has. And XFCE may get some new attention which will help with its
further development.



I believe many people new to GNU/Linux and friends don't
exactly understand what distros and DEs are. They want the Debian CD, push it
into the CD drive and wait for the magic to happen. For these people, it would
be nice if Debian worked well out-of-the-box as a universal operating system.
Later they can easily discover GNOME, KDE, etc.

One could say that XFCE as a default is bad as first impression, but in fact,
to people coming from Window$ it's much more familiar and they don't expect
anything fancy if they never saw it already.

Overall, I think XFCE's traditional stable lightweight configurable approach is
better as a default. You can always make the GNOME and KDE CDs clearly visible
on the download page, to make sure people are aware of them if they have shiny
hardware or preference for GNOME Shell and so on.



Also, idea: A page on the Debian wiki/policy can be made, which explains how a
default DE should be chosen. Which characteristics are more important, which
are less and so on. I feel the variety of different opinions here is not only
the natural result of a healthy discussion, but also a result of each person
having their own view of what default DE should mean. Some guidelines or
rules etc. could make it easier to make these decisions, and keep them
consistent.


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Thomas Weber

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 03:20:49AM +0100, Anthony F McInerney wrote:
 Would the people who are claiming that blank cdr are cheaper than dvdr,
 especially in third world countries, please cite sources (shops, price
 checkers etc) of the price of say 5 pack or 10 pack, even up to 50pack of
 CD's, vs the same amount of DVD's, from those third world countries. Is the
 price of a small pack of DVD's really worth making the decision on a DE for
 debian?

Not sure why you'd want to go for third world countries, but let's look
at Germany (Aldi is one of the two biggest discounters here):
http://www.presseportal.de/pm/112096/2653870/aldi-senkt-preise-fuer-fischprodukte-oel-und-smoothies
CD-R Rohlinge (80 Minuten, je 50er Spindel) 5,99 Euro
DVD+R Rohlinge (je 20er Spindel)3,99 Euro 
That is 0.12 EUR per CDR and 0.20 EUR per DVD. 

 DVD readers/writers are cheaper now than CD readers/writers ever were.
I don't think it makes sense to ask for the price of one media (which is
in Cents), but then assume that the extra cost for a new DVD reader is
negligible.

Thomas


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Olav Vitters

On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 07:30:49PM +0200, Andreas Barth wrote:
 * Olav Vitters (o...@vitters.nl) [140808 19:12]:
  [ support for init systems bedside systemd ]
 
  There was also a question what should happen if *upstream* removes
  support. That's not up to Debian Developers to patch back. Such was
  discussed and clarified. One of the questions that was voted on this was
  pretty much about this.
 
 My memory of what we discussed and voted is different.
 
 Basically we recommend to support as many init systems as reasonable
 possible, and that is even true if upstream ceases support for it. It
 might have some impact on what reasonable is after upstream ceases
 support for some init system (and of course, as always it is prefered
 to do such patches on upstream side), but it is definitly not
 forbidden to patch support for some init system back into a package
 (unless the package becomes by this too broken to be supported, or
 one of the many others things we prefer to not have in our archive -
 as always). (And nothing here is actually init system specific, or
 new etc.)

From the email I responded to:
| Yes, the decision was taken by ctte.  #746715 decided that all init |
| systems are to be supported, not only systemd, and that functionality
| on non-systemd must not be dropped without a good reason.

My response specifically deals with this. Yes, nice if Debian Developers
could keep the response. However, there is nothing in there about must
not be dropped without good reason. If upstream removes support, so be
it. Then it is very nice if the support is patched back in, but there is
nothing in the decision that it is expected that anyone could expect
packagers to do this.

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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On Mon, 11 Aug, 2014 at 10:15 AM, Thomas Weber twe...@debian.org
wrote:

Not sure why you'd want to go for third world countries, but let's
look

at Germany (Aldi is one of the two biggest discounters here):
http://www.presseportal.de/pm/112096/2653870/aldi-senkt-preise-fuer-fischprodukte-oel-und-smoothies
CD-R Rohlinge (80 Minuten, je 50er Spindel) 5,99 Euro
DVD+R Rohlinge (je 20er Spindel)3,99 Euro
That is 0.12 EUR per CDR and 0.20 EUR per DVD.
As you have shown here, it would cost an extra €0.08 to have it on
DVD instead of CD.

Also I’ll note for you, that's 86GB for €3.99 or 40GB for €5.99
The cost of a DVD is not some far reaching astronomical price increase,
in fact per GB it's cheaper.
Here in the UK I can walk into a poundstore and pick up 4 dvds for a
£1. I'm quite sure you can do the same in any $1 dollar, 99cent store.
The cd's in that store come in a 5pack for £1.

DVD readers/writers are cheaper now than CD readers/writers ever
were.
I don't think it makes sense to ask for the price of one media (which
is

in Cents), but then assume that the extra cost for a new DVD reader is
negligible.

Price is not a valid concern for DVD, in terms of media or drives.
Either the CD drive is too old to function or the machine is. (in terms
of jessie anyway), you can barely buy second hand CD drives, but DVD
drives are a plenty, sure you can buy them NEW for little more than a
pack of 50 CD's.

And if it's machines in the wild with CD drives still again, we have
woody, squeeze and wheezy for them.

I ran woody on my cheap laptop in 2002. it had a DVD drive.

Can we now move on to choosing a DE?

Thanks
Anthony.

Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Ondřej Surý

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014, at 12:23, Anthony F McInerney wrote:

Can we now move on to choosing a DE?



Nope, we still don't have enough anecdotic evidence and
trolling yet[1]...



O.

1. Not target at you, just general observation of d-d...

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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread shirish शिरीष

at bottom :-

On 8/11/14, Thomas Weber twe...@debian.org wrote:
On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 03:20:49AM +0100, Anthony F McInerney wrote:
Would the people who are claiming that blank cdr are cheaper than dvdr,
especially in third world countries, please cite sources (shops, price
checkers etc) of the price of say 5 pack or 10 pack, even up to 50pack of
CD's, vs the same amount of DVD's, from those third world countries. Is
the
price of a small pack of DVD's really worth making the decision on a DE
for
debian?

Not sure why you'd want to go for third world countries, but let's look
at Germany (Aldi is one of the two biggest discounters here):
http://www.presseportal.de/pm/112096/2653870/aldi-senkt-preise-fuer-fischprodukte-oel-und-smoothies
CD-R Rohlinge (80 Minuten, je 50er Spindel) 5,99 Euro
DVD+R Rohlinge (je 20er Spindel)3,99 Euro
That is 0.12 EUR per CDR and 0.20 EUR per DVD.

DVD readers/writers are cheaper now than CD readers/writers ever were.
I don't think it makes sense to ask for the price of one media (which is
in Cents), but then assume that the extra cost for a new DVD reader is
negligible.

Thomas

Hi all,
As an interested user I come from India and at least here there isn't
a difference at all in terms of a CD or DVD media. A single of both
costs Rs. 20/- (with the plastic case and all) and going to some of
the wholesalers we can get it for Rs. 7/- or Rs. 8/- (in a spindle or
a box) . The price might differ between the two by a Rupee or two
(it's been quite some time since I went to buy blank DVD's) but the
space equation is such that I never buy a CD.

I do remember a distinct conversation where I asked him if he ever got
orders for CD with the vendor replying that mostly he gets order CD's
from villages rather than from city/town itself. Still the ratio was
80 20 in favor of DVD's.

I know it's not at all scientific and is probably a strawman argument
but that's the way I see it here. Almost nobody I know within my
circle talks about CD and I do not just work with the elite in the
city.
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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Lennart Sorensen

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 11:15:15AM +0200, Thomas Weber wrote:
 Not sure why you'd want to go for third world countries, but let's look
 at Germany (Aldi is one of the two biggest discounters here):
 http://www.presseportal.de/pm/112096/2653870/aldi-senkt-preise-fuer-fischprodukte-oel-und-smoothies
 CD-R Rohlinge (80 Minuten, je 50er Spindel) 5,99 Euro
 DVD+R Rohlinge (je 20er Spindel)3,99 Euro 
 That is 0.12 EUR per CDR and 0.20 EUR per DVD. 

My local computer store has $8.99 for 50 DVD-R and $16.99 for 50 CD-R.

Of course they also have 100 CD-R for $18.88 and 100 DVD-R for $24.88,
so who knows.  Seems the price is pretty similar depending what you buy
and how many.

Of course as for gnome as a default, unless it can have sane defaults
where it behaves as the vast majority of computer users are used to a
desktop working, then I don't think it is a usable desktop.  That means
it needs buttons on windows that people expect to see where they expect
to see them, and things behaving as they expect them to behave.
Would Debian be willing to make gnome3 have different defaults than
upstream in the interest of actually being useable to new users who are
used to other operating systems and desktops?

-- 
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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Matthias Urlichs

Hi,

Lennart Sorensen:
 it needs buttons on windows that people expect to see where they expect
 to see them

You mean left vs. right side? 

 Would Debian be willing to make gnome3 have different defaults than
 upstream in the interest of actually being useable to new users who are
 used to other operating systems and desktops?
 
People who are so afraid of new stuff to learn that they won't even figure
out how to close a window are not Gnome's (or XFCE's, for that matter)
target audience.
If you want that, install KDE and tell it to use one of the
let's-mimic-Windows/MacOS themes.

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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Jonas Smedegaard

Quoting David Weinehall (2014-08-10 22:59:45)
 On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 11:10:50AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

 The issue here really is how big is it? rather than hos many disks 
 [of which kind] does it fit onto?.

 unable to fit on a single image is not only about use of said 
 storage devices for installation, but also an indication more 
 generally of how much data needs to be transfered on average for a 
 usable installation.

 Quite a few places in the World have poor and/or expensive internet 
 access.  Larger default desktop will hurt the most in developing 
 countries: non-techies gets discourages to use Debian at all, or when 
 using it may apply security fixes less often.

 In all cases where I'm stuck with expensive (and/or slow) Internet I 
 sure as hell pick the netinst image and download the minimum set of 
 packages I need, rather than a whole CD image on the offhand chance 
 that I might need everything on it (which is exceedingly unlikely).

[remark about actual CD use rather than desktop size measure snipped]

 So, as long as GNOME fits on the first installation CD I see no reason 
 not to prefer it over XFCE.

I do: I see a reason to netinst a 0.629xCD size desktop install rather 
than a 0.829xCD size desktop when bandwidth is costly.

(numbers above are made up - just to illustrate that I am talking about 
the size of the desktops, not actual concrete CDs or DVDs or Blueray 
disks.


 - Jonas

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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Jonas Smedegaard

Quoting Olav Vitters (2014-08-11 11:21:14)
 On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 11:10:50AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
 Quite a few places in the World have poor and/or expensive internet 
 access.  Larger default desktop will hurt the most in developing 
 countries: non-techies gets discourages to use Debian at all, or when 
 using it may apply security fixes less often.

 How poor is poor?

Poor enough that they bother visitors coming from different places in 
the World asking them to please consider bring install data by 
sneakernet (e.g. on CDs but could just as well be floppies or uSD 
storage embedded in iPhones - physical media type not important).

I call it bother not because I have experienced actually being 
bothered by such request, but because I have experienced being treated 
like a king in India and Indonesia yet asked that - surprising to me - 
requst.


 I've been participating since having a theoretical 64KB/s cable 
 connection, which in practice only did 3-5KB/s (provider: BART in 
 Rotterdam)! A cd would take about 24 hours to download (net install 
 was sometimes unreliable, so I preferred a cd). Having a poor 
 connection means you get creative. I shared the cd's I downloaded, 
 used rewritable to push the cost down, etc.

How poor was that example of poor?


 I've checked http://explorer.netindex.com/maps which shows the Speed 
 test results across the world. According to that site, the minimal 
 speed I can see in various African countries is at least 0.75 Mbps. 
 Much higher than the speed I was used to.

How expensive is such average speed?  Not measured in dollar, but 
measured in something more locally tangible, like work hours?


 Always having a slow connection changes means you're tolerance level 
 is different. I used to download a cd in 24 hours. Nowadays the same 
 takes maybe 35 seconds.

Still you are talking about cost in time.  Few I have met in developing 
countries were poor measured in time available.


 I don't get the doom and gloom unless you're more clear.

Please elaborate what is unclear.


 - Jonas

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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Joel Rees

2014/08/12 1:12 Jonas Smedegaard d...@jones.dk:

 [...]
 Still you are talking about cost in time.  Few I have met in developing
 countries were poor measured in time available.
 [...]

Developed country (Japan). My wife makes me scrimp on everything, so I
still have megabit/sec download. Fiber or 10 Mb/s copper would cost me some
JPY1000 a month more, up to about 3500/mo. (Roughly JPY100 to USD1.00.)
So, when I download DVDs, I plan on leaving the download going all day.

But I don't download DVDs because the installer will go to the net for the
latest anyway, if you let it. Of course, that means upgrading to Jessy is
going to be two days of down time.

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CPUs just fancy pens.
All is a stream of text
flowing from the past into the future.

Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Ben Hutchings

On Mon, 2014-08-11 at 03:20 +0100, Anthony F McInerney wrote:
[...]
 If people have old CD only machines i would not like to attempt to get
 kernel 3.16 +drivers +userland working on that. I've been in that
 situation plenty of times, where woody or potato are better simply
 because the drivers had been deprecated. Lets not go into the
 256/512MB of ram that the CD only computer has and how much gnome or
 xfce is going to chew up and bring the machine to a crawl as soon you
 try to do anything and it hits swap.
[...]

I have a wheezy VM running Xfce comfortably in 256 MB (only a third of
which is used at this moment, excluding caches and buffers).  I doubt
that jessie is going to require vastly more memory.  So I think that
Xfce and CD media are still going to be useful for people who are stuck
with older hardware.

If we agree that it's important to support installation from a single CD
(rather than 2+ CDs or downloads) then Xfce would probably be the right
default DE for that single CD.  I do not support making it the default
in general, though.

Ben.

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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Lennart Sorensen

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 05:34:04PM +0200, Matthias Urlichs wrote:
 You mean left vs. right side? 

Or even showing them at all (certainly last time I bothered to look at
gnome 3 it seemed to think buttons on windows were mostly to be avoided).

 People who are so afraid of new stuff to learn that they won't even figure
 out how to close a window are not Gnome's (or XFCE's, for that matter)
 target audience.
 If you want that, install KDE and tell it to use one of the
 let's-mimic-Windows/MacOS themes.

xfce is perfectly useable to most people by default.

All I personally expect from a window manager is:

Be able to launch programs (ideally using alt+F2)
Be able to resize the window using the edge of the window
Have a maximize/restore button
Have a minimize button
Have a close button
(These last 3 should also show up when I hit alt+space, because well I
have used that keystroke on many systems for over 20 years to do that).

That's it.  I don't need any more than that.  Gnome 3 failed that out
of the box.

It seems Microsoft is willing to accept they fucked up on windwos
8 and are backing down and restoring what people really want in the
next version.  I wonder if the gnome UI designers will ever be willing
to admit they screwed up and back down.

Adding new idea is fine, but not at the expense of existing features
and behaviour.  You have to let people continue to use things until they
get used to the new things if they ever do.  You can't just force people
to switch the way they work.

-- 
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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 06:00:05PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
 I do: I see a reason to netinst a 0.629xCD size desktop install rather 
 than a 0.829xCD size desktop when bandwidth is costly.

Yes, but if you netinst you can *pick* your desktop, it's not like you
have to pick the default.  Do a minimal install, then use tasksel
to select XFCE (or just x + a window manager + the application you
actually need).

The CD images are fixed size.  They will fill out a CD-size
(or a DVD, if they are DVD-images).  Netinst images can obviously
be optimized for size, but the netinst images do not contain the
desktop environment, so whichever desktop is default is a totally
moot question in that scenario.

Summary:

* If you download you can pick the smallest option possible;
  thus the default desktop is irrelevant -- people with plenty
  of bandwidth will probably go with the default, but if you know
  that your connectivity is expensive you'll go for something small
  (possibly forgoing the tasks system altogether)

* If you use ready-made CD/DVD images they'll be fixed size no matter
  what.  If you sneaker-net them you definitely want them to be full,
  not half-full.


Regards: David
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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 01:35:28PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
 All I personally expect from a window manager is:
 
 Be able to launch programs (ideally using alt+F2)

Available in GNOME 3.

 Be able to resize the window using the edge of the window

Available in GNOME 3.

 Have a maximize/restore button

Not enabled by default (if I remember correctly), but possible to enable
using gnome-tweak-tool.

 Have a minimize button

Not enabled by default (if I remember correctly), but possible to enable
using gnome-tweak-tool.

 Have a close button

Available in GNOME 3.

 (These last 3 should also show up when I hit alt+space, because well I
 have used that keystroke on many systems for over 20 years to do that).

Alt+space brings up the window menu in GNOME 3.

So, sounds like GNOME 3 provides/can provide everything you seem to
expect from a window manager.


Kind regards, David
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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Lennart Sorensen

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 07:42:41PM +0200, David Weinehall wrote:
 Available in GNOME 3.
 
 Available in GNOME 3.
 
 Not enabled by default (if I remember correctly), but possible to enable
 using gnome-tweak-tool.

I shouldn't have to know that.  And I am pretty sure when gnome3 appeared
in sid, it wasn't available.

 Not enabled by default (if I remember correctly), but possible to enable
 using gnome-tweak-tool.

I will somewhat agree that one is hardly ever used since I just alt+tab to the 
other window I want.

 Available in GNOME 3.
 
 Alt+space brings up the window menu in GNOME 3.
 
 So, sounds like GNOME 3 provides/can provide everything you seem to
 expect from a window manager.

Trying to navigate the horrible menu system trying to find where to
configure things was highly unpleasant too.  It made windows 8 seem sane.

I just believe the default when you install and log in the first time
shoudl be something that makes sense to your typical average user, and I
don't think gnome3 by default does that.  It can be tweaked to do so now
(I don't think it could initially), but the typical user won't know how
to do that.  The defaults are bad.

-- 
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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

How do you measure memory? Free?
Could you quite possibly post the output of free and whatever else you
measure with? (the full output)
For reference against jessie, i'm installing an up to date jessie right
now...

Thanks
Anthony (bofh80)

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Andrei POPESCU

On Lu, 11 aug 14, 19:38:47, David Weinehall wrote:
 On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 06:00:05PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
  I do: I see a reason to netinst a 0.629xCD size desktop install rather 
  than a 0.829xCD size desktop when bandwidth is costly.
 
 Yes, but if you netinst you can *pick* your desktop, it's not like you
 have to pick the default.  Do a minimal install, then use tasksel
 to select XFCE (or just x + a window manager + the application you
 actually need).

Even the netinst has a default. Besides your method below it's also 
possible to change it using the boot menu, which many will miss or be 
afraid to try (it's under Advanced options), so will end up with 
whatever Debian chooses as default.

So the default matters also for the netinst, unless it's made easier to 
change from the installation process itself.

Probably easiest would be to just get rid of Mail server, Web 
server, Print server (CUPS will get pulled anyway as dependency of 
most if not all major DEs), etc. and instead display a list of Desktop 
Environments to choose from.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Mirosław Baran


Olav Vitters wrote:

My response specifically deals with this. Yes, nice if Debian 
Developers

could keep the response. However, there is nothing in there about must
not be dropped without good reason. If upstream removes support, so be
it. Then it is very nice if the support is patched back in, but there 
is

nothing in the decision that it is expected that anyone could expect
packagers to do this.


Olav, would you mind to clarify in what capacity are you on this list?
(Debian user? Debian maintainer? Debian developer? GNOME upstream 
developer?
Systemd developer? Interested independent party? Something else 
altogether?)


(I hope you wont't think this question to be rude – I like to have a bit 
of clarity.)


Thanks in advance,
Best regards
– Miroslaw Baran


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Olav Vitters

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 06:12:02PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
 Quoting Olav Vitters (2014-08-11 11:21:14)
  On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 11:10:50AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
  Quite a few places in the World have poor and/or expensive internet 
  access.  Larger default desktop will hurt the most in developing 
  countries: non-techies gets discourages to use Debian at all, or when 
  using it may apply security fixes less often.
 
  How poor is poor?
 
 Poor enough that they bother visitors coming from different places in 
 the World asking them to please consider bring install data by 
 sneakernet (e.g. on CDs but could just as well be floppies or uSD 
 storage embedded in iPhones - physical media type not important).
 
 I call it bother not because I have experienced actually being 
 bothered by such request, but because I have experienced being treated 
 like a king in India and Indonesia yet asked that - surprising to me - 
 requst.

With how poor is poor to please give numbers. Something to work with.

Regarding bringing install media: Been there, done that. Including the
bits of passing it along various people because cd's got lost in the
post. I urge you to be concrete. Numbers.

  I've been participating since having a theoretical 64KB/s cable 
  connection, which in practice only did 3-5KB/s (provider: BART in 
  Rotterdam)! A cd would take about 24 hours to download (net install 
  was sometimes unreliable, so I preferred a cd). Having a poor 
  connection means you get creative. I shared the cd's I downloaded, 
  used rewritable to push the cost down, etc.
 
 How poor was that example of poor?

I gave exact numbers, please don't give vague replies. It's not helpful.

  I've checked http://explorer.netindex.com/maps which shows the Speed 
  test results across the world. According to that site, the minimal 
  speed I can see in various African countries is at least 0.75 Mbps. 
  Much higher than the speed I was used to.
 
 How expensive is such average speed?  Not measured in dollar, but 
 measured in something more locally tangible, like work hours?

How about doing that research yourself. You're saying to take into
account third world countries, yet not giving any numbers. I gave you
the average speed of a lot of countries. It seems to not match with your
expectations. Cool, then it is NOT up to me to figure out why your still
might be right.

  Always having a slow connection changes means you're tolerance level 
  is different. I used to download a cd in 24 hours. Nowadays the same 
  takes maybe 35 seconds.
 
 Still you are talking about cost in time.  Few I have met in developing 
 countries were poor measured in time available.

No, I am not just talking about cost in time. I gave concrete measures.
You've entire reply lacks anything concrete. Nothing to work with *AT
ALL*. Quantify!

I've said before I have experience with working around low bandwidth,
but it seems nothing is acceptable. That's ok, because then this usecase
cannot be fulfilled anyway.

  I don't get the doom and gloom unless you're more clear.
 
 Please elaborate what is unclear.

Please explain:
- Why this problem did not exist when GNOME used to be a default
- In case it was a problem before, why GNOME was still used
- In case it was acceptable, why isn't it acceptable now
- Why is XFCE acceptable
- Why is the only acceptable solution changing the default DE for
  everyone
- What install size is acceptable
- What install size was it with GNOME before
- What bandwidth is acceptable
- Why cant this be solved by e.g. mailing cd's?
- If Debian 6.0 200MB netinst cd uses GNOME
- If Debian 7.6 290MB netinst cd uses XFCE


Your arguments come up as arbitrary, especially when considering GNOME
used to be a default. Coupled with vague non-specific replies comes off
as pretty disrespectful.

-- 
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Olav


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Johannes Schaffrath


On 08/11/2014 07:38 PM, David Weinehall wrote:

Summary:

* If you download you can pick the smallest option possible;
   thus the default desktop is irrelevant -- people with plenty
   of bandwidth will probably go with the default, but if you know
   that your connectivity is expensive you'll go for something small
   (possibly forgoing the tasks system altogether)

* If you use ready-made CD/DVD images they'll be fixed size no matter
   what.  If you sneaker-net them you definitely want them to be full,
   not half-full.


Regards: David
I fully agree. It doesn't matter how do you have to pay for CD's or 
DVD's for the default DE. The user will choose the iso which they need. 
If we are really worried about the iso and people with a bad connection 
then we should split the LXDE and Xfce iso.

I stick to it:
* Debian doesn't need a default desktop,
* CD1 should be renamed similar to KDE, Xfce/LXDE CD isos and maybe a 
Mate iso would be great and
* the option to choose a DE should be hidden in the advanced options for 
netisos.


Best Johannes (debian user)


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Olav Vitters

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 07:41:00PM +0100, Mirosław Baran wrote:
 Olav, would you mind to clarify in what capacity are you on this list?
 (Debian user? Debian maintainer? Debian developer? GNOME upstream
 developer?
 Systemd developer? Interested independent party? Something else
 altogether?)
 
 (I hope you wont't think this question to be rude – I like to have a
 bit of clarity.)

Ah, sorry. I mentioned it a few times during systemd discussion, so
didn't repeat to avoid it being seen as noise.

Anyway: GNOME release team member. (realized last GUADEC that I'm
already in that team for almost 6 years)

I lurk/contribute on Gentoo, openSUSE, Fedora, Debian, Mageia (read
on). I've reached out to a few Debian Developers last FOSDEM. Initially
just to better understand the issues distributions face while packaging
GNOME I started to help out @ Mageia with GNOME packaging.

Regarding Debian specifically: Used it for a year or so, and for a much
longer time on a few servers (IMO server doesn't mean much, once
configured you don't spend loads of hours logged into it like you do
when you're using it on your desktop machine).

Also an more-or-less inactive GNOME sysadmin, inactive triager
(Mozilla+GNOME), used to be Bugzilla developer (later learned that this
also enabled commit privs to Mozilla:). I like to help out with the
development of GNOME, without actually being a developer (aside from
scripting languages like Python/Perl). I did release a tarball once or
twice though :P

GNOME is purely a hobby, I have no other interest. I like discussions
(probably noticeable). I like seeing where GNOME stands. E.g. what
things are we doing wrong. I also like feedback. Meaning, I prefer if
people take part in discussions. I often forward potential things I
think might be missed or might be a problem to distributor-list. E.g.
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/distributor-list/2012-June/msg1.html
where we didn't get much feedback on the plan to switch to Python 3. But
also stuff like non-maintenance of (freedesktop.org) ConsoleKit, changes
to (freedesktop.org) UPower, etc.

Originally I joined release team due to being a triager. I was asked to
join because of knowing the issues within GNOME (bugs, etc). I don't do
the actual GNOME releases as that is almost impossible to do without
taking time off. The packaging hugely helps though, sometimes ask for
new tarballs (x.y.z.1 and so on).

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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Johannes Schaffrath


On 08/11/2014 09:45 PM, Johannes Schaffrath wrote:

On 08/11/2014 07:38 PM, David Weinehall wrote:

Summary:

* If you download you can pick the smallest option possible;
   thus the default desktop is irrelevant -- people with plenty
   of bandwidth will probably go with the default, but if you know
   that your connectivity is expensive you'll go for something small
   (possibly forgoing the tasks system altogether)

* If you use ready-made CD/DVD images they'll be fixed size no matter
   what.  If you sneaker-net them you definitely want them to be full,
   not half-full.


Regards: David
I fully agree. It doesn't matter how do you have to pay for CD's or 
DVD's for the default DE. The user will choose the iso which they 
need. If we are really worried about the iso and people with a bad 
connection then we should split the LXDE and Xfce iso.

I stick to it:
* Debian doesn't need a default desktop,
* CD1 should be renamed similar to KDE, Xfce/LXDE CD isos and maybe a 
Mate iso would be great and
* the option to choose a DE should be hidden in the advanced options 
for netisos.


Best Johannes (debian user)

Not should... I mean shouldn't be hidden:)






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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 01:47:53PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
 On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 07:42:41PM +0200, David Weinehall wrote:
  Available in GNOME 3.
  
  Available in GNOME 3.
  
  Not enabled by default (if I remember correctly), but possible to enable
  using gnome-tweak-tool.
 
 I shouldn't have to know that.  And I am pretty sure when gnome3 appeared
 in sid, it wasn't available.
 
  Not enabled by default (if I remember correctly), but possible to enable
  using gnome-tweak-tool.
 
 I will somewhat agree that one is hardly ever used since I just alt+tab to 
 the other window I want.
 
  Available in GNOME 3.
  
  Alt+space brings up the window menu in GNOME 3.
  
  So, sounds like GNOME 3 provides/can provide everything you seem to
  expect from a window manager.
 
 Trying to navigate the horrible menu system trying to find where to
 configure things was highly unpleasant too.  It made windows 8 seem sane.
 
 I just believe the default when you install and log in the first time
 shoudl be something that makes sense to your typical average user, and I
 don't think gnome3 by default does that.  It can be tweaked to do so now
 (I don't think it could initially), but the typical user won't know how
 to do that.  The defaults are bad.

Well, if there's a consensus that the minimise/maximise
buttons are needed (I always enable them, so I'd vote yes!), then
I'm sure that the Debian GNOME team will be happy to enable those
options by default.


Regards: David
-- 
 /) David Weinehall t...@debian.org /) Rime on my window   (\
//  ~   //  Diamond-white roses of fire //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/(/   Beautiful hoar-frost   (/


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Michael Biebl

Am 11.08.2014 22:09, schrieb David Weinehall:
 On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 01:47:53PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
 On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 07:42:41PM +0200, David Weinehall wrote:
 Available in GNOME 3.

 Available in GNOME 3.

 Not enabled by default (if I remember correctly), but possible to enable
 using gnome-tweak-tool.

 I shouldn't have to know that.  And I am pretty sure when gnome3 appeared
 in sid, it wasn't available.

 Not enabled by default (if I remember correctly), but possible to enable
 using gnome-tweak-tool.

 I will somewhat agree that one is hardly ever used since I just alt+tab to 
 the other window I want.

 Available in GNOME 3.

 Alt+space brings up the window menu in GNOME 3.

 So, sounds like GNOME 3 provides/can provide everything you seem to
 expect from a window manager.

 Trying to navigate the horrible menu system trying to find where to
 configure things was highly unpleasant too.  It made windows 8 seem sane.

 I just believe the default when you install and log in the first time
 shoudl be something that makes sense to your typical average user, and I
 don't think gnome3 by default does that.  It can be tweaked to do so now
 (I don't think it could initially), but the typical user won't know how
 to do that.  The defaults are bad.
 
 Well, if there's a consensus that the minimise/maximise
 buttons are needed (I always enable them, so I'd vote yes!), then
 I'm sure that the Debian GNOME team will be happy to enable those
 options by default.

Are you missing anything from the GNOME Classic mode *)? It offers
exactly what you are asking for, with zero need for configuration.
It's available right next to the GNOME session on your login manager.

Michael

*) GNOME Classic is GNOME Shell with a different set of extensions and a
different default configuration. Imho also a great demonstration of the
flexibility and extendability of the GNOME Shell infrastructure.


-- 
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universe are pointed away from Earth?



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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On Mon, Aug 11, 2014 at 10:40:04PM +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:

[snip]
 
 Are you missing anything from the GNOME Classic mode *)? It offers
 exactly what you are asking for, with zero need for configuration.
 It's available right next to the GNOME session on your login manager.
 
 Michael
 
 *) GNOME Classic is GNOME Shell with a different set of extensions and a
 different default configuration. Imho also a great demonstration of the
 flexibility and extendability of the GNOME Shell infrastructure.

Were you asking me or Lennart?  Personally I prefer the new GNOME, but
with all 3 buttons enabled + the workspace grid extension.  The only
thing I don't like is that a feature I used a lot was removed from
Nautilus, but the flexibility of GNOME Shell doesn't really help
there...


Regards: DAvid
-- 
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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

XFCE:

 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:506756 362468 144288   6568  22756 179264
-/+ buffers/cache: 160448 346308
Swap:   392188  0 392188


GNOME:

 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:506756 500360   6396   1948840  37724
-/+ buffers/cache: 461796  44960
Swap:   392188  66672 325516


LXDE:

 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:506756 316504 190252   8500  18920 149812
-/+ buffers/cache: 147772 358984
Swap:   392188  0 392188


KDE:

 total   used   free sharedbuffers cached
Mem:506756 499724   7032   6772  10516 109760
-/+ buffers/cache: 379448 127308
Swap:   392188  21632 370556


As default using the latest mini.iso with  mirror/udeb/suite=sid and using
the 'alternate desktop menu'
booted, logged in, loaded a terminal, here you go. notice the swap usage.
virtualbox vm 512MB

Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Kees de Jong

Are we really comparing RAM here as if it were the 90's? How many people
here use Android? Today it needs 512 MB to function properly. In two years
that could be 1 or 2 GB and that's a mobile OS. How much RAM does your
browser use? My Chrome/Firefox easily uses 1 GB. My GNOME 3.10 desktop
(running Fedora now because I needed a modern GNOME version for Exchange
support for work) is using about 800 MB to 1200 MB. Do I really care? No,
because RAM is cheap and I have 8 GB. Do I need to buy more? No, because 8
GB is still more than enough.

If you can't run GNOME because you don't have the system specs to run a
modern desktop then you can select XFCE/LXDE in the installation menu. But
let's be fair, those people are a minority. And a default should fit the
needs of the majority. And since people easily have 4 GB of RAM or more
these days with the basic 3D acceleration (even a Raspberry Pi can run
GNOME 3) then I would say that logic chooses GNOME. Also because of a ton
of other reasons already mentioned e.g. systemd, documentation, dedicated
maintainers, accessibility, etc.

Desktop poll app [Was: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop]

2014-08-11 Thread Noel Torres

On Saturday, 9 de August de 2014 12:04:56 Axel Wagner escribió:
[...]
 I really think, in these kinds of discussions it would be helpfull to
 get some kind of direct community-feedback. This would help *both* sides
 in every of these discussions, because it would make it impossible for
 either side to claim a widely held opinion that can not be refuted
 easily. For example, if we could have a simple survey do you prefer
 the experience of gnome 3 or xfce which any dev/maintainer/user could

I have been thinking on this, and I have come with an idea. I admin possibly a 
stupid one, but I want to know what do you all think on it.

Imagine a Desktop application, than fires on start (on every desktop 
environment, maybe wxwidgets, I do not care just now) and on first desktop boot 
after install. It asks these questions:

1) (LOCALIZED) Would you want to help Debian by taking some surveys?
a) YES
b) NO

Only if YES

2) (LOCALIZED) Would you like to take the surveys in English, as soon as they 
are released, or wait until they are translated to your language?
a) English as soon as released
b) Wait 1 week for translation, english if not translated then
c) Wait 1 month for translation, english if not translated then
d) Only when (if ever) translated

After this simple per-user configuration, the app (ONLY if YES to question 1) 
will fire invisibly once a day and check some server via HTTPS (e.g. 
polls.debian.net) for polls and sets of answers. If any is found there, it is 
presented to the user, and if the user answers it (there will be an option of 
I do not want to answer this poll in every poll) the answer will be sent to 
the same server via HTTPS, where it will be stored anonymously. No userid, not 
even IP stored with the answers.

Do you like it?

er Envite


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Noel Torres

On Monday, 11 de August de 2014 16:34:04 Matthias Urlichs escribió:
 Hi,
 
 Lennart Sorensen:
  it needs buttons on windows that people expect to see where they expect
  to see them
 
 You mean left vs. right side?
 
  Would Debian be willing to make gnome3 have different defaults than
  upstream in the interest of actually being useable to new users who are
  used to other operating systems and desktops?
 
 People who are so afraid of new stuff to learn that they won't even figure
 out how to close a window are not Gnome's (or XFCE's, for that matter)
 target audience.
 If you want that, install KDE and tell it to use one of the
 let's-mimic-Windows/MacOS themes.

I think we should not care about Gnome's target audience, but about Debian's 
target audience. Remember Debian Social Contract , #4.

Regards

er Envite


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

On 12 August 2014 01:03, Kees de Jong keesdej...@gmail.com wrote:

 Are we really comparing RAM here as if it were the 90's?

I had stated previously XFCE had started showing memory usage similar to
gnome. This has quite obviously changed. I was wrong, and i'm posting it as
a correction to my statement.

I also just test installed all 4 DE's and am happy to run any further tests
required to reach a consensus.


 How many people here use Android? Today it needs 512 MB to function
 properly.

Linux+Java. Needs memory, surprise?


 In two years that could be 1 or 2 GB and that's a mobile OS.

It's Linux. It has a web browser. A modem. A wireless connection.
Bluetooth. GPS. Music Player, Photo viewer, wait this is sounding familiar.


 How much RAM does your browser use?

Lots, which is why i prefer my DE not to eat it all.

My Chrome/Firefox easily uses 1 GB

My GNOME 3.10 desktop (running Fedora now because I needed a modern GNOME
 version for Exchange support for work) is using about 800 MB to 1200 MB.

Ouch

Do I really care? No, because RAM is cheap and I have 8 GB. Do I need to
 buy more? No, because 8 GB is still more than enough.

free
totalused free
 sharedbuffers cached
Mem:12332856 12164516168340 129196
1002483989512
-/+ buffers/cache:8074756  4258100
Swap:3211260  129088  3082172
Maybe for you. (and my DE uses less than lxde and xfce, but with more
options and jazz+bugs). But that's me, i might be able to fit my own
memory, most people will not, they have to pay for that, and most would
have to remove memory to fit  more memory, hence making the cost more than
you imagined.


 If you can't run GNOME because you don't have the system specs to run a
 modern desktop then you can select XFCE/LXDE in the installation menu. But
 let's be fair, those people are a minority. And a default should fit the
 needs of the majority.

Ahh good you have statistics for that. Please link them, or quote and cite
sources.


 And since people easily have 4 GB of RAM or more these days with the basic
 3D acceleration (even a Raspberry Pi can run GNOME 3) then I would say that
 logic chooses GNOME.

Some people like the 'basic 3d acceleration' for other things, so not only
do you want me to sacrifice my RAM to all powerful DE, but also my GPU? How
kind of you ;) . Also as the memory usage shows, a pi won't be doing much
more than starting gnome and going, oh look it's gnome.

 Also because of a ton of other reasons already mentioned e.g. systemd,
 documentation, dedicated maintainers, accessibility, etc.

OK that's a gnome+1 then. :)
TBH i'd rather hear what you like about gnome3, the workflow or anything
else that makes it 'stand out' from other DE's, or rather, worth a large
percentage of ram, especially if can surpass 1GB.
Thanks for the info.

Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-11 Thread Matthias Urlichs

Hi,

Noel Torres:
 I think we should not care about Gnome's target audience, but about Debian's 
 target audience. Remember Debian Social Contract , #4.
 
No single DE can be the perfect DE-to-end-all-DE-flames^Wdiscussions to all 
users.

If the missing min+max buttons is the only problem here, a patch to
enable them by default should be *really* simple.

-- 
-- Matthias Urlichs


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-10 Thread Kees de Jong

Why are we discussing CD/DVD sizes? Why not just use an USB
netinstall? It's then possible to download and install the stuff you
need, if you don't want to use a lot of bandwidth then choose no
desktop environment or XFCE/LXDE. But if you can spare some more time
then you can install GNOME/KDE. Seems like a good deal. And USB sticks
are cheaper (also easier to reuse) so I don't get the 'hurting
developing countries' argument.


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-10 Thread David Weinehall

On Fri, Aug 08, 2014 at 11:10:50AM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
 
 The issue here really is how big is it? rather than hos many disks 
 [of which kind] does it fit onto?.
 
 unable to fit on a single image is not only about use of said storage 
 devices for installation, but also an indication more generally of how 
 much data needs to be transfered on average for a usable installation.
 
 Quite a few places in the World have poor and/or expensive internet 
 access.  Larger default desktop will hurt the most in developing 
 countries: non-techies gets discourages to use Debian at all, or when 
 using it may apply security fixes less often.

In all cases where I'm stuck with expensive (and/or slow) Internet
I sure as hell pick the netinst image and download the minimum set of
packages I need, rather than a whole CD image on the offhand chance that
I might need everything on it (which is exceedingly unlikely).

If, on the other hand, I download a CD-image somewhere else to burn it
and then bring it home, the image will always be full CD-size (or are
you suggesting that we start distributing half-empty CD-images?).

So, as long as GNOME fits on the first installation CD I see no reason
not to prefer it over XFCE.


Kind regards, David
-- 
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//  ~   //  Diamond-white roses of fire //
\)  http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/(/   Beautiful hoar-frost   (/


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Re: [Pkg-xfce-devel] Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014/08/08 18:14 Yves-Alexis Perez cor...@debian.org:

 [...]

 Put it another way, Xfce (and other DEs) have been hurt by the various
 enforced transitions (ConsoleKit,
 hal/devicekit-power/upower/upower-0.99), yes. Combined with the lack of
 resources, that means it lays behind the people who decided those
 transitions.

 Regards,
 --
 Yves-Alexis

As a user trying to find to participate more, can I put a huge +1 on that?

(Lots of things I'd like to help with on XFCE, among other things, but the
recent transitions have been eating what time I might have had, plus a bit
of work time I can't afford.)

--
Joel Rees

Computer memory is just fancy paper,
CPUs just fancy pens.
All is a stream of text
flowing from the past into the future.

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014/08/08 6:58 Jordi Mallach jo...@debian.org:

 Hi Debian,

 It's been around 9 months since tasksel changed (for real) the default
 desktop for new installs. At the time of the change, it was mentioned
 the issue would be revisited before the freeze, around debconf time.

 Well, it's roughly that time. :) So I'd like to plainly request GNOME is
 reinstated as the default desktop environment for a number of reasons.

First thought: Since systemd has been chosen as the one true way of the
future, it seems only obvious that GNOME should be the default desktop.

 Accessibility: GNOME continues to be the only free desktop environment
that
 provides full accessibility coverage, right from login screen. While it’s
true
 GNOME 3.0 was lacking in many areas, and GNOME 3.4 (which we shipped in
wheezy)
 was just barely acceptable thanks to some last minute GDM fixes, GNOME
3.12
 should have ironed out all of the issues and our non-expert understanding
is
 that a11y support is now on par with what GNOME 2.30 from squeeze offered.

There are a number of regular participants on debian-user who have a11y
needs. Would it be too much to ask, to ask them whether GNOME meets their
needs?

 Downstream health: The number of active members in the team taking care of
 GNOME in Debian is around 5-10 persons, while it is 1-2 in the case of
Xfce.
 Being the default desktop draws a lot of attention (and bug reports) that
only
 a bigger team might have the resources to handle.

It has been mentioned in the past, but developers work on what they want to
work on. That may or may not be related to whether a particular DE is
appropriate for general rcommendation.

 Upstream health: While GNOME is still committed to its time-based release
 schedule and ships new versions every 6 months, Xfce upstream is,
 unfortunately, struggling a bit more to keep up with new plumbing
technology.
 Only very recently it has regained support to suspend/hibernate via
logind, or
 support for Bluez 5.x, for example.

Should consider the reasons for the breakage, as well.

 Community: GNOME is one of the biggest free software projects, and is
lucky to
 have created an ecosystem of developers, documenters, translators and
users
 that interact regularly in a live social community. Users and developers
gather
 in hackfests and big, annual conferences like GUADEC, the Boston Summit,
or
 GNOME.Asia. Only KDE has a comparable community, the rest of the free
desktop
 projects don’t have the userbase or manpower to sustain communities like
this.

With a community that big, would it be unreasonable to ask them to maintain
their own distro? Or perhaps their own liveCD? Eh, well, liveSD.

 Localization: Localization is more extensive and complete in GNOME.  Xfce
has
 18 languages above 95% of coverage, and 2 at 100% (excluding English),
GNOME
 has 28 languages above 95%, 9 of them being complete (excluding English).

LOL.

No, seriously, is there any meaning to the claim of complete?

I've seen a lot of bad Japanese translation, recently, that, if I had more
time, I'd file bugs on.

 Documentation: Documentation coverage is extensive in GNOME, with most of
the
 core applications providing localized, up to date and complete manuals,
 available in an accessible format via the Help reader.

See above. Documentation and translation have something in common here.
Particularly since documentation should be translation from technical
language to the more common vernacular.

 Hardware: GNOME 3.12 will be one of the few desktop environments to
support
 HiDPI displays, now very common on some laptop models. Lack of support for
 HiDPI means non-technical users will get an unreadable desktop by
default, and
 no hints on how to fix that.

 Security: GNOME is more secure. There are no processes launched with root
 permissions on the user’s session. All everyday operations (package
management,
 disk partitioning and formatting, date/time configuration…) are
accomplished
 through PolicyKit wrappers.

 Privacy: One of the latest focuses of GNOME development is improving
privacy,
 and work is being done to make it easy to run GNOME applications in
isolated
 containers, integrate Tor seamlessly in the desktop experience, better
disk
 encryption support and other features that should make GNOME a more secure
 desktop environment for end users.

 Popularity: One of the metrics discussed by the tasksel change proponents
 mentioned popcon numbers. 8 months after the desktop change, Xfce does
not seem
 to have made a dent on install numbers.  The Debian GNOME team doesn’t
feel
 popcon’s data is any better than a random online poll though, as it’s an
opt-in
 service which the vast majority of users don’t enable.

 systemd embracing: One of the reasons to switch to Xfce was that it didn’t
 depend on systemd. But now that systemd is the default, that shouldn’t be
a
 problem. Also given ConsoleKit is deprecated and dead upstream, KDE and
Xfce
 are switching or are planning to switch to

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

2014-08-10 Thread Russ Allbery

Joel Rees joel.r...@gmail.com writes:

 First thought: Since systemd has been chosen as the one true way of the
 future, it seems only obvious that GNOME should be the default desktop.

That doesn't seem at all obvious to me.  I don't think those two things
are particularly related.  Lots of people use systemd without being fans
of, or particularly interested in, GNOME, myself included.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)   http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/


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Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop

(Sure wish I could get drivers for this Acer tablet so I could get replace
the vendor-constricted Android with a real OS and get software that
wouldn't misinterpret what my fingers do on the screen. But, then, I
suppose I should go to the trouble of booting up a regular computer for
this.)

2014/08/11 7:32 Joel Rees joel.r...@gmail.com:

 2014/08/08 6:58 Jordi Mallach jo...@debian.org:

 
  Hi Debian,
 
  It's been around 9 months since tasksel changed (for real) the default
  desktop for new installs. At the time of the change, it was mentioned
  the issue would be revisited before the freeze, around debconf time.
 
  Well, it's roughly that time. :) So I'd like to plainly request GNOME is
  reinstated as the default desktop environment for a number of reasons.

 First thought: Since systemd has been chosen as the one true way of the
future, it seems only obvious that GNOME should be the default desktop.

  Accessibility: GNOME continues to be the only free desktop environment
that
  provides full accessibility coverage, right from login screen. While
it’s true
  GNOME 3.0 was lacking in many areas, and GNOME 3.4 (which we shipped in
wheezy)
  was just barely acceptable thanks to some last minute GDM fixes, GNOME
3.12
  should have ironed out all of the issues and our non-expert
understanding is
  that a11y support is now on par with what GNOME 2.30 from squeeze
offered.

 There are a number of regular participants on debian-user who have a11y
needs. Would it be too much to ask, to ask them whether GNOME meets their
needs?

  Downstream health: The number of active members in the team taking care
of
  GNOME in Debian is around 5-10 persons, while it is 1-2 in the case of
Xfce.
  Being the default desktop draws a lot of attention (and bug reports)
that only
  a bigger team might have the resources to handle.

 It has been mentioned in the past, but developers work on what they want
to work on. That may or may not be related to whether a particular DE is
appropriate for general rcommendation.

  Upstream health: While GNOME is still committed to its time-based
release
  schedule and ships new versions every 6 months, Xfce upstream is,
  unfortunately, struggling a bit more to keep up with new plumbing
technology.
  Only very recently it has regained support to suspend/hibernate via
logind, or
  support for Bluez 5.x, for example.

 Should consider the reasons for the breakage, as well.

  Community: GNOME is one of the biggest free software projects, and is
lucky to
  have created an ecosystem of developers, documenters, translators and
users
  that interact regularly in a live social community. Users and
developers gather
  in hackfests and big, annual conferences like GUADEC, the Boston
Summit, or
  GNOME.Asia. Only KDE has a comparable community, the rest of the free
desktop
  projects don’t have the userbase or manpower to sustain communities
like this.

 With a community that big, would it be unreasonable to ask them to
maintain their own distro? Or perhaps their own liveCD? Eh, well, liveSD.

  Localization: Localization is more extensive and complete in GNOME.
 Xfce has
  18 languages above 95% of coverage, and 2 at 100% (excluding English),
GNOME
  has 28 languages above 95%, 9 of them being complete (excluding
English).

 LOL.

 No, seriously, is there any meaning to the claim of complete?

 I've seen a lot of bad Japanese translation, recently, that, if I had
more time, I'd file bugs on.

  Documentation: Documentation coverage is extensive in GNOME, with most
of the
  core applications providing localized, up to date and complete manuals,
  available in an accessible format via the Help reader.

 See above. Documentation and translation have something in common here.
Particularly since documentation should be translation from technical
language to the more common vernacular.

  Hardware: GNOME 3.12 will be one of the few desktop environments to
support
  HiDPI displays, now very common on some laptop models. Lack of support
for
  HiDPI means non-technical users will get an unreadable desktop by
default, and
  no hints on how to fix that.

I'm thinking this sounds like an argument for postponing freeze.

  Security: GNOME is more secure. There are no processes launched with
root
  permissions on the user’s session. All everyday operations (package
management,
  disk partitioning and formatting, date/time configuration…) are
accomplished
  through PolicyKit wrappers.

With the volume of new code, can such claims be serious?

  Privacy: One of the latest focuses of GNOME development is improving
privacy,
  and work is being done to make it easy to run GNOME applications in
isolated
  containers, integrate Tor seamlessly in the desktop experience, better
disk
  encryption support and other features that should make GNOME a more
secure
  desktop environment for end users.

TOR has what to do with real privacy?

  Popularity: One of the metrics discussed by the tasksel change
proponents
  mentioned

Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop