Re: It's time to jettison CCSM
Here are my two cents... If the problem is that CCSM may render the desktop unusable, why don't we do something similar to what it's done for changing the display settings? Whenever the CCSM configuration is changed, let's pop up a window and if the user fails to confirm the change, let's revert to the previous configuration. Hope this suggestion helps. Nico On 27/01/12 04:50, Jorge O. Castro wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Chow Loong Jinhyper...@ubuntu.com wrote: If anything this is a great improvement for power users that want to configure unity but don't want to risk using an unsupported tool. And a huge step back until MyUnity reaches feature parity with CCSM. A huge step back in what? If people know they want the hard core deep features of CCSM then they know how to install a PPA. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: It's time to jettison CCSM
On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Jorge O. Castro jo...@ubuntu.com wrote: With tools like MyUnity now in universe, and didrocks putting basic configuration in the control panel I'd like to propose the removal of compizconfig-settingsmanager. I don't mean stop telling people to use it or add a warning, I mean total removal from the archive until the tool is either better tested or doesn't break people's configuration. Here are some of the problems with the tool. - It's possible to accidentally uncheck the Unity plugin, breaking the user's desktop. - It has a load of checkboxes for plugins that we don't support, allowing infinite combinations of untested options, which result in either a broken desktop or a misconfigured one. - People report these bugs, and instead of fixing real bugs we have to deal with corner case bugs for things we never plan on supporting. - Since it's settings are separate from Unity a unity --reset doesn't fix it, you have to blow away .compiz or some other dotfile directories to get a desktop back. - Alex Chiang has documented some of the issues he's run into here: http://askubuntu.com/a/80590/235 - I'm sure at UDS you've seen didrocks show you one of the ways it breaks even when using parts of it that shouldn't break. MyUnity is a better user-facing tool anyway for those that want to play, it would be a shame to have the ccsm tool ship in an LTS. If anyone cares about it they can plop it in a PPA. As someone else already mentioned, I'm in favor of adding dpkg rules that prevent installation of CCSM alongside Unity. Why prevent people using Xfce, LXDE, Mate, etc. from using CCSM, when it's far less buggy when it's not interacting in destructive ways with Unity? Removing it from the archive does not seem like the Ubuntu way at all. Rather, I can practically guarantee you that there will be a huge rallying cry in the power user community that removing it was unfair and poorly thought-out, and that this outcry will spread to regular users who don't understand the situation in the first place. If you want to work on MyUnity or whatever to get it up to feature parity with CCSM, please do so. But Ubuntu has jumped the gun on the issue of what we have is bad but featureful, so we're going to replace it with something that's good but feature-deprived on more than one occasion, and *every single time* the distribution loses users and suffers publicity setbacks. Especially for an LTS, I just can't get my mind around how this makes any sense at all, particularly for distros like Xubuntu and Lubuntu where compiz can spruce up an otherwise spartan desktop. OTOH, if you just make it so that apt and dpkg won't permit installing CCSM when Unity is installed, you're completely solving your original problem, which is to prevent users from installing CCSM and breaking Unity, while allowing the tool to be useful for other desktops. Of course, *someone* is going to try downloading the deb and running dpkg --force, but by the time they've gotten to that step, they're essentially accepting any risk of system breakage that may result. You can't protect users from themselves on an open source platform; it is simply not possible, not advisable, and far more likely to cause a backlash in the attempt than to lead to a more stable distribution. Honestly, I think Ubuntu is broken is by far the lesser evil compared to Ubuntu is ignoring the needs of their users (this latter one WILL come up on very popular websites if CCSM is removed from the archive). -Sean -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: It's time to jettison CCSM
Le 27/01/2012 03:16, Andrew Starr-Bochicchio a écrit : On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 8:04 PM, Marc Deslauriers marc.deslauri...@canonical.com wrote: Of course, the correct way to solve this issue is far more complicated than just removing a package from the archive, it require solving bugs, bringing new code in Unity while avoiding unwanted side effects on compiz and basically requires more manpower. If someone would step up and fix CCSM so a novice user can't mess up their desktop with two mouse clicks, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Just what would that look like? As someone who hasn't run into these issues, it's hard to tell from this thread what would be enough for people to consider CCSM fixed. A lot of the opposition to CCSM seems to be based on the nature of the tool itself rather than any specific bugs (though judging from Launchpad it certainly has its share of those). Are there specific plugins or options that are considered harmful or especially problematic? Are these found in the core plugins that are installed by default? Perhaps they should be broken out into one of the universe plugin-extras packages? Or are they in one of the universe packages already? Maybe we could better split the plugin packages? They are already split sincce Oneiric. For plugins that are officially suppported upstream, we only install those that are used with the unity session right now (25 plugins exactly). Those are installed by compiz-plugins-default and compiz-plugins-main-default, the others are in compiz-plugins and compiz-plugins-main which are not installed by default (but are still there if you upgraded your machine from a version pre-oneiric). - Since it's settings are separate from Unity a unity --reset doesn't fix it, you have to blow away .compiz or some other dotfile directories to get a desktop back. Is this true? I just tested this by exporting my compiz settings using CCSM and running a unity --reset All my custom settings seem to have been cleared. Using CCSM, I was then easily able to re-import my backed up settings and restore them all. The unity python wrapper seems to try and wipe all your compiz settings if --reset is used. It calls: subprocess.Popen([gconftool-2, --recursive-unset, /apps/compiz-1]) Is there a bug in unity's --reset option where this doesn't work in some cases? Should the option to reset all options to their default be made more prominent in CCSM? No, Jorge wasn't quite right on this one, unity --reset indeed reset the whole compiz settings, not just the unity one - I'm sure at UDS you've seen didrocks show you one of the ways it breaks even when using parts of it that shouldn't break. I'll take his word on this. I'd love to hear some more specific issues. I've added some on my other post in this thread. Cheers, Didier -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: It's time to jettison CCSM
On Fri, Jan 27, 2012 at 10:30 AM, Sebastien Bacher seb...@ubuntu.comwrote: Le 27/01/2012 03:42, Mathieu Comandon a écrit : Removing ccsm only benefits users that would go change random settings without knowing how to restore a working desktop. Right, the not-so-technical users following forum posts from the internet are the ones who got screwed and the ones we should care most about, users who are technical enough to deal with the side effects of ccsm are also probably technical enough to go through some extra steps to get it installed. You're right but this doesn't change the fact that ccsm only exposes functionality from libcompizconfig, removing it will make it harder to break stuff but it will still be possible to do so. The removal of the package is not what I consider to be the problem, I can of course upload it very easily to my PPA. The real problem in my opinion is that this would send the wrong message from the Ubuntu Desktop team to the upstream Compiz project. It basically says We only support compiz as long as it's tied to Unity, but not for anything else. With Ubuntu being the single major distro shipping with Compiz, I think it has now a role to play in maintaining the WM it's tied to in good shape, and not only for Unity related stuff. I'm aware that the Ubuntu Desktop didn't ask for this responsibility, this is a side effect of the strong ties between Gnome-Shell and Mutter but if Ubuntu doesn't give its full support for the Compiz project, who will ? Trying to bring a great and solid user experience for the desktop is great and is a really important thing to take care of. But I consider maintaining compiz alive even more important because without it there is no Unity. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: It's time to jettison CCSM
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 01/26/2012 03:55 PM, Jorge O. Castro wrote: On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 12:24 PM, Micah Gersten mic...@ubuntu.com wrote: Because novices are using a power user tool does not mean we should remove a power user tool. I think attention just needs to be called to the problems that can be caused and what better tools exist for novice users. Places like askubuntu.com and the Ubuntu forums would be good places to evangelize this as well as omgbuntu and maybe webupd8. We have a power user tool, MyUnity. If it doesn't do exactly what people want then people will file bugs and then people will either write the config option or not. I'd like to add one example of something simple that seems to be only available in ccsm. I haven't seen myunity yet, my upgrade to precise is pending, but I asked for a friend to check it out and see if it has an option to change the number of workspaces, and the answer is no. Now, unless I'm completely mistaken and it's buried somewhere else, the only way to change the number of workspaces from 4 to something else is to install this dangerous tool called ccsm. It used to be as simple as right clicking on the virtual desktop bar/icon to change this with a slider. It got considerably more dangerous and complicated now. And I did mess up my system once with ccsm, up to the point where I had to backup my files, erase and recreate my user. As everybody said, I don't think the solution is to remove the dangerous tool, but rather to make the most used options people want to tweak available somewhere else, within reason, of course. In particular, in the default installation I should be able to change something simple as the number of workspaces. - -- Andreas Hasenack andr...@canonical.com -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk8ikTAACgkQeEJZs/PdwpBcvQCg6GUc7mPWY5IIeesrHM8826A6 sVoAn3KEL1VPvUFUQal3Vb5y6aeAl0zJ =4+9T -END PGP SIGNATURE- -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: It's time to jettison CCSM
On Fri, 2012-01-27 at 12:28 +0100, Mathieu Comandon wrote: upload it very easily to my PPA. The real problem in my opinion is that this would send the wrong message from the Ubuntu Desktop team to the upstream Compiz project. It basically says We only support compiz as long as it's tied to Unity, but not for anything else. With Ubuntu being the single major distro shipping with Compiz, I think it has now a role to play in maintaining the WM it's tied to in good shape, and not only for Unity related stuff. This has nothing to do with Unity. CCSM was breaking people's desktops long before Unity came around. Saying that removing CCSM only benefits Unity isn't accurate. Marc. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
