Re: Bug #1208204 - indicator-sound no longer functions with xfce4-indicator-plugin
Too much unreasonable negativism, I think. Xubuntu 13.10 is generally a fine operating system, of high quality. Stable as a rock and reliable. The very small group of Xubuntu developers have done a great job, for which I'm very grateful to them. If you want an enterprise grade operating system, pick Xubuntu 12.04 LTS. Period. No use spending too much dev time on an operating system that has a lifespan of a mere nine months. That time is better spent on the next LTS and on the point releases of the current LTS. That said: I think it would perhaps be a good idea to present the workaround for the bug of volume control in the panel, *in full* on the Release Notes page of 13.10. Instead of a mere link to the bug report on Launchpad. Easier to find, easier to apply Maybe with a cautionary word about side effects if you have installed other desktop environments as well. Regards, Pjotr. 2013/12/6 legacy daily legacyda...@gmail.com I also felt this was a real issue. Between this and a number of other annoying bugs - like race condition booting from SSD, new users may end up quite disappointed. Hopefully the LTS will have a much higher quality. - George On Dec 5, 2013, at 10:19 AM, Richard Elkins richard.elk...@gmail.com wrote: The issues with bug #1208204 are these: (1) The complaints began in July. As of 70 milliseconds ago, this bug is not assigned to anyone, with a status of Undecided, and still marked as New to Ubuntu Studio. (2) See Peter Flynn's earlier mail. Well-articulated IMO. (3) If the indicator-sound package is re-released without a fix to #1208204 (and this has happened at least once), then you have to apply the patch again. Maybe again and again. And so on. In message #69 of the bug report, there is an attachment is an automated patch for XFCE users which obviates the need to manually edit the file each time indicator-sound is rolled out without a fix to this issue. It does take care that it is being used by an XFCE user. However, it's still a work-around. A lesser of evils. Some other solutions for non-tech users seeking a light-weight desktop: (1) Go back to Xubuntu 13.04. Read reviews before attempting an upgrade. (2) Replace Xubuntu with Lubuntu/LXDE. (3) Replace Xubuntu with Mint/MATE. In any of them, users must take care to backup their data somewhere safe before doing a new ground-up installation. All of them are disruptive and personal time-wasters. Richard On 12/05/2013 11:12 AM, Bruno Benitez wrote: Hi, Pjtor, I am not a programmer, but I see a huge problem with your very easy fix, you see, xubuntu shares most and almost all their setting from mainbuntu, so the file /usr/share/dbus-1/services/indicator-sound.service belongs to all the *buntu multiverse, changing its content would have affected all the flavours and then break the ubuntu's panels. Xubuntu would have needed an special indicator-sound.service and all the programs that call the service would have to be tuned to use this, as far as i understand. Now I readily admit that I'm no developer and I can't fabricate an update package that does this, but *it looks* dead simple to do, in my layman's eyes. And it *would* be a big Public Relations bonus for Xubuntu 13.10. It is one of the recommended solutions, to be applied by xubuntu users manually, again we can not ship a modified file because it would break the rest of the flavours. I agree that this was not a nice thing to happen, and that maybe some silly workaround (like simply adding a panel launcher to pavucontrol as default, or adding a standalone sound applet) might have been preferrable, but at the moment no one of us though about this. I can not speak for the rest of xubuntu but I feel a bit ashamed that we let this go through so far as it did. -- Br uno.- -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Bug #1208204 - indicator-sound no longer functions with xfce4-indicator-plugin
PPA with fixed package: https://launchpad.net/~a-j-buxton/+archive/indicator-sound-gtk2 ppa:a-j-buxton/indicator-sound-gtk2 This doesn't use the workaround from the bug report. It fixes it in a way which is hopefully compatible with other desktops. It needs testing though, on systems with both Xubuntu and Unity installed. On 6 December 2013 09:55, P.K. pliniusmi...@gmail.com wrote: Too much unreasonable negativism, I think. Xubuntu 13.10 is generally a fine operating system, of high quality. Stable as a rock and reliable. The very small group of Xubuntu developers have done a great job, for which I'm very grateful to them. If you want an enterprise grade operating system, pick Xubuntu 12.04 LTS. Period. No use spending too much dev time on an operating system that has a lifespan of a mere nine months. That time is better spent on the next LTS and on the point releases of the current LTS. That said: I think it would perhaps be a good idea to present the workaround for the bug of volume control in the panel, *in full* on the Release Notes page of 13.10. Instead of a mere link to the bug report on Launchpad. Easier to find, easier to apply Maybe with a cautionary word about side effects if you have installed other desktop environments as well. Regards, Pjotr. 2013/12/6 legacy daily legacyda...@gmail.com I also felt this was a real issue. Between this and a number of other annoying bugs - like race condition booting from SSD, new users may end up quite disappointed. Hopefully the LTS will have a much higher quality. - George On Dec 5, 2013, at 10:19 AM, Richard Elkins richard.elk...@gmail.com wrote: The issues with bug #1208204 are these: (1) The complaints began in July. As of 70 milliseconds ago, this bug is not assigned to anyone, with a status of Undecided, and still marked as New to Ubuntu Studio. (2) See Peter Flynn's earlier mail. Well-articulated IMO. (3) If the indicator-sound package is re-released without a fix to #1208204 (and this has happened at least once), then you have to apply the patch again. Maybe again and again. And so on. In message #69 of the bug report, there is an attachment is an automated patch for XFCE users which obviates the need to manually edit the file each time indicator-sound is rolled out without a fix to this issue. It does take care that it is being used by an XFCE user. However, it's still a work-around. A lesser of evils. Some other solutions for non-tech users seeking a light-weight desktop: (1) Go back to Xubuntu 13.04. Read reviews before attempting an upgrade. (2) Replace Xubuntu with Lubuntu/LXDE. (3) Replace Xubuntu with Mint/MATE. In any of them, users must take care to backup their data somewhere safe before doing a new ground-up installation. All of them are disruptive and personal time-wasters. Richard On 12/05/2013 11:12 AM, Bruno Benitez wrote: Hi, Pjtor, I am not a programmer, but I see a huge problem with your very easy fix, you see, xubuntu shares most and almost all their setting from mainbuntu, so the file /usr/share/dbus-1/services/indicator-sound.service belongs to all the *buntu multiverse, changing its content would have affected all the flavours and then break the ubuntu's panels. Xubuntu would have needed an special indicator-sound.service and all the programs that call the service would have to be tuned to use this, as far as i understand. Now I readily admit that I'm no developer and I can't fabricate an update package that does this, but *it looks* dead simple to do, in my layman's eyes. And it *would* be a big Public Relations bonus for Xubuntu 13.10. It is one of the recommended solutions, to be applied by xubuntu users manually, again we can not ship a modified file because it would break the rest of the flavours. I agree that this was not a nice thing to happen, and that maybe some silly workaround (like simply adding a panel launcher to pavucontrol as default, or adding a standalone sound applet) might have been preferrable, but at the moment no one of us though about this. I can not speak for the rest of xubuntu but I feel a bit ashamed that we let this go through so far as it did. -- Br uno.- -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel -- Alistair Buxton a.j.bux...@gmail.com -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Bug #1208204 - indicator-sound no longer functions with xfce4-indicator-plugin
Altogether this is an unfortunate situation, but there was little we could do in time to get it fixed. For 14.04, we're looking to migrate to a panel that has GTK3 support. This should fix all the indicator issues/breakages that happened in the last few cycles. This was one of the options for 13.10, but at that point of time we the patch was relatively untested, wasn't in the repositories and we were really short on time. The other option wasn't trivial either, and would have taken valuable developer time as well. In the end, trying to fix the GTK2 indicator stack would have meant a lot of work to get it working for 13.10. Whether we would have continued with that stack or not for 14.04 had it been done can't be evaluated. It's pretty certain that the GTK2 indicator stack would have kept on breaking, and we would have had to continue fixing those issues. All this being said, we shall look at backporting the GTK3 indicators to 13.10 later when the work on them is done. However, since I don't contribute to packaging or code-development, I'm the wrong person to say if this is likely or not. I see how people switching to other distros or back to older versions of Xubuntu could be considered a bad thing. From my personal point of view (all Xubuntu hats off), I don't think other open source OS's are our competitors. People have very different needs and workflows and they should use whatever works for them, whether it was Xubuntu, Ubuntu or any of its flavors or something completely different. Ultimately, 13.10 is not an LTS release, and those who want the maximum stability should keep with the LTS's. Again, it's unfortunate but things are going to break now and then. Now let's try to make 14.04 better; you all are welcome to help us with testing and whatever your skills and time allow! Cheers, Pasi On 05/12/13 00:18, Lutz Andersohn wrote: Thumbs up for Peter's sentiment expressed in his email. I might add, even for the users skilled enough and willing to dig down and apply a workaround, it takes time. The situation becomes even more frustrating if something used to work and got broken! I personally feel that all distro's spend not enough time on regression testing when any new release comes out. New features are good but not at the expense of something that used to work. *Lutz Andersohn* lutz.anders...@gmail.com (925) 784 1565 D-19318, AFF-I http://www.linkedin.com/pub/1/b65/2b6 Public key ID: 0x9620D1A6 On 12/04/2013 03:36 PM, Peter Flynn wrote: On 12/04/2013 05:33 PM, Bruno Benitez wrote: Hello Richard, as I understand from the meetings we have held, if there is enough need of it our developers can make a fix through the backport channel. Speaking as a project manager (in a different field), I have every sympathy with this point of view... It is very sad that we have this issue in first place, but control over sound was available and lots of tutorials on how to fix it where also available, if users would abandon just for this cause there is no much else we can do. ...speaking as a psychologist, I would say that it may be useful for developers to understand that users *do* abandon distros for this kind of thing, and for even smaller ones. Their reasoning is that if the developers can't get the small things right, (and they would view a plugin indicator as a small thing), then there is little hope of the big things being right. It's a frighteningly brutal viewpoint, and when it happens in a commercial environment, a damaging one. The British have a phrase for it: to spoil the ship for a pennyworth of tar (from the days when wooden ships needed waterproofing with tar). On the other hand, it acts as a filter: users who do not have the inclination or skill to find a fix will leave the community. In the long term this may reduce the demand for support. In any case the fix for the plugin indicators will be included in 14.04 and it will be an LTS, so that would be the recommended solution to anyone, just wait a few months. A new user probably won't wait a few months to get a sound indicator working. They'll give up and install something else. ///Peter -- Pasi Lallinaho (knome) » http://open.knome.fi/ Leader of Shimmer Project and Xubuntu » http://shimmerproject.org/ Graphic artist, webdesigner, Ubuntu member » http://xubuntu.org/ -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Bug #1208204 - indicator-sound no longer functions with xfce4-indicator-plugin
Hi, Pjtor, I am not a programmer, but I see a huge problem with your very easy fix, you see, xubuntu shares most and almost all their setting from mainbuntu, so the file /usr/share/dbus-1/services/indicator-sound.service belongs to all the *buntu multiverse, changing its content would have affected all the flavours and then break the ubuntu's panels. Xubuntu would have needed an special indicator-sound.service and all the programs that call the service would have to be tuned to use this, as far as i understand. Now I readily admit that I'm no developer and I can't fabricate an update package that does this, but *it looks* dead simple to do, in my layman's eyes. And it *would* be a big Public Relations bonus for Xubuntu 13.10. It is one of the recommended solutions, to be applied by xubuntu users manually, again we can not ship a modified file because it would break the rest of the flavours. I agree that this was not a nice thing to happen, and that maybe some silly workaround (like simply adding a panel launcher to pavucontrol as default, or adding a standalone sound applet) might have been preferrable, but at the moment no one of us though about this. I can not speak for the rest of xubuntu but I feel a bit ashamed that we let this go through so far as it did. -- Br uno.- -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Bug #1208204 - indicator-sound no longer functions with xfce4-indicator-plugin
The issues with bug #1208204 are these: (1) The complaints began in July. As of 70 milliseconds ago, this bug is not assigned to anyone, with a status of Undecided, and still marked as New to Ubuntu Studio. (2) See Peter Flynn's earlier mail. Well-articulated IMO. (3) If the indicator-sound package is re-released without a fix to #1208204 (and this has happened at least once), then you have to apply the patch again. Maybe again and again. And so on. In message #69 of the bug report, there is an attachment is an automated patch for XFCE users which obviates the need to manually edit the file each time indicator-sound is rolled out without a fix to this issue. It does take care that it is being used by an XFCE user. However, it's still a work-around. A lesser of evils. Some other solutions for non-tech users seeking a light-weight desktop: (1) Go back to Xubuntu 13.04. Read reviews before attempting an upgrade. (2) Replace Xubuntu with Lubuntu/LXDE. (3) Replace Xubuntu with Mint/MATE. In any of them, users must take care to backup their data somewhere safe before doing a new ground-up installation. All of them are disruptive and personal time-wasters. Richard On 12/05/2013 11:12 AM, Bruno Benitez wrote: Hi, Pjtor, I am not a programmer, but I see a huge problem with your very easy fix, you see, xubuntu shares most and almost all their setting from mainbuntu, so the file /usr/share/dbus-1/services/indicator-sound.service belongs to all the *buntu multiverse, changing its content would have affected all the flavours and then break the ubuntu's panels. Xubuntu would have needed an special indicator-sound.service and all the programs that call the service would have to be tuned to use this, as far as i understand. Now I readily admit that I'm no developer and I can't fabricate an update package that does this, but *it looks* dead simple to do, in my layman's eyes. And it *would* be a big Public Relations bonus for Xubuntu 13.10. It is one of the recommended solutions, to be applied by xubuntu users manually, again we can not ship a modified file because it would break the rest of the flavours. I agree that this was not a nice thing to happen, and that maybe some silly workaround (like simply adding a panel launcher to pavucontrol as default, or adding a standalone sound applet) might have been preferrable, but at the moment no one of us though about this. I can not speak for the rest of xubuntu but I feel a bit ashamed that we let this go through so far as it did. -- Br uno.- -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Bug #1208204 - indicator-sound no longer functions with xfce4-indicator-plugin
I also felt this was a real issue. Between this and a number of other annoying bugs - like race condition booting from SSD, new users may end up quite disappointed. Hopefully the LTS will have a much higher quality. - George On Dec 5, 2013, at 10:19 AM, Richard Elkins richard.elk...@gmail.com wrote: The issues with bug #1208204 are these: (1) The complaints began in July. As of 70 milliseconds ago, this bug is not assigned to anyone, with a status of Undecided, and still marked as New to Ubuntu Studio. (2) See Peter Flynn's earlier mail. Well-articulated IMO. (3) If the indicator-sound package is re-released without a fix to #1208204 (and this has happened at least once), then you have to apply the patch again. Maybe again and again. And so on. In message #69 of the bug report, there is an attachment is an automated patch for XFCE users which obviates the need to manually edit the file each time indicator-sound is rolled out without a fix to this issue. It does take care that it is being used by an XFCE user. However, it's still a work-around. A lesser of evils. Some other solutions for non-tech users seeking a light-weight desktop: (1) Go back to Xubuntu 13.04. Read reviews before attempting an upgrade. (2) Replace Xubuntu with Lubuntu/LXDE. (3) Replace Xubuntu with Mint/MATE. In any of them, users must take care to backup their data somewhere safe before doing a new ground-up installation. All of them are disruptive and personal time-wasters. Richard On 12/05/2013 11:12 AM, Bruno Benitez wrote: Hi, Pjtor, I am not a programmer, but I see a huge problem with your very easy fix, you see, xubuntu shares most and almost all their setting from mainbuntu, so the file /usr/share/dbus-1/services/indicator-sound.service belongs to all the *buntu multiverse, changing its content would have affected all the flavours and then break the ubuntu's panels. Xubuntu would have needed an special indicator-sound.service and all the programs that call the service would have to be tuned to use this, as far as i understand. Now I readily admit that I'm no developer and I can't fabricate an update package that does this, but *it looks* dead simple to do, in my layman's eyes. And it *would* be a big Public Relations bonus for Xubuntu 13.10. It is one of the recommended solutions, to be applied by xubuntu users manually, again we can not ship a modified file because it would break the rest of the flavours. I agree that this was not a nice thing to happen, and that maybe some silly workaround (like simply adding a panel launcher to pavucontrol as default, or adding a standalone sound applet) might have been preferrable, but at the moment no one of us though about this. I can not speak for the rest of xubuntu but I feel a bit ashamed that we let this go through so far as it did. -- Br uno.- -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Bug #1208204 - indicator-sound no longer functions with xfce4-indicator-plugin
Hello Richard, as I understand from the meetings we have held , if there is enough need of it our developers can make a fix through the backport channel. http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/xubuntu-devel/2013/xubuntu-devel.2013-11-03-22.39.log.html#l-41 It is very sad that we have this issue in first place, but control over sound was available and lots of tutorials on how to fix it where also available, if users would abandon just for this cause there is no much else we can do. They would not want to use the backport channel either. In any case the fix for the plugin indicators will be included in 14.04 and it will be an LTS, so that would be the recommended solution to anyone, just wait a few months . 2013/12/4 Richard Elkins richard.elk...@gmail.com Ubuntu Desktop team, I know that everyone is busy and Unity probably has a higher priority than XFCE. However, there are a lot of XFCE users in the Ubuntu family of distros (E.g. Xubuntu, Ubuntu Studio). They really need help with the subject bug. Developers and other command-line users can employ the patch provided in message #69 of that bug report (automates the work-around) or they can manually re-apply the patch indicated in message #5; they can also grab the 14.04 version of the package and try that too. On the other hand, pure desktop users are a bit gun-shy of using a terminal window or straying away from the normal mode of package maintenance. A lot of criticism has been expressed about this bug not yet being fixed (over 4 months old). Some XFCE users are apparently abandoning Saucy and going back to wherever they came from. Can we get some traction for our XFCE users on this bug? Thank you for your consideration, Richard aka texadactyl@launchpad -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel -- Bruno.- -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Bug #1208204 - indicator-sound no longer functions with xfce4-indicator-plugin
Thumbs up for Peter's sentiment expressed in his email. I might add, even for the users skilled enough and willing to dig down and apply a workaround, it takes time. The situation becomes even more frustrating if something used to work and got broken! I personally feel that all distro's spend not enough time on regression testing when any new release comes out. New features are good but not at the expense of something that used to work. Lutz Andersohn lutz.anders...@gmail.com (925) 784 1565 D-19318, AFF-I http://www.linkedin.com/pub/1/b65/2b6 Public key ID: 0x9620D1A6 On 12/04/2013 03:36 PM, Peter Flynn wrote: On 12/04/2013 05:33 PM, Bruno Benitez wrote: Hello Richard, as I understand from the meetings we have held, if there is enough need of it our developers can make a fix through the backport channel. Speaking as a project manager (in a different field), I have every sympathy with this point of view... It is very sad that we have this issue in first place, but control over sound was available and lots of tutorials on how to fix it where also available, if users would abandon just for this cause there is no much else we can do. ...speaking as a psychologist, I would say that it may be useful for developers to understand that users *do* abandon distros for this kind of thing, and for even smaller ones. Their reasoning is that "if the developers can't get the small things right," (and they would view a plugin indicator as a "small thing"), "then there is little hope of the big things being right." It's a frighteningly brutal viewpoint, and when it happens in a commercial environment, a damaging one. The British have a phrase for it: "to spoil the ship for a pennyworth of tar" (from the days when wooden ships needed waterproofing with tar). On the other hand, it acts as a filter: users who do not have the inclination or skill to find a fix will leave the community. In the long term this may reduce the demand for support. In any case the fix for the plugin indicators will be included in 14.04 and it will be an LTS, so that would be the recommended solution to anyone, just wait a few months. A new user probably won't wait a few months to get a sound indicator working. They'll give up and install something else. ///Peter -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
