The new gnome-software application
by Ryan Lerch
Just wondering if anyone has seen the work GNOME has been doing on the
new version of GNOME Software? It has the same name as the packagekit
GUI that is currently in Fedora, so i assume that it is going to replace
it, but with more of a focus on Applications rather than Packages.
There is already a working version of it that can be easily built from
source on Fedora 18:
https://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-software/
And it seems to be based off the designs that are mocked up here:
https://live.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Software
I recently just built it from source, and in its current state, it lists
the applications I have installed, and Applications that need updating.
(I assume that it is defining "Application" as a package with a desktop
file) Also, in the "updates" section, it lists an item "OS Update
version 3.4.3" that seems to bundle all of the other (non-application)
package updates together. It does not yet have individual overview pages
for each application like the mockups.
Does anyone here have any more thoughts on this new tool, and how this
approach might interact with the way we package and distribute software
in Fedora?
cheers,
ryanlerch
11 years, 2 months
Re: Improving the Fedora boot experience
by Máirín Duffy
On 03/13/2013 12:47 AM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> I read the blog and I was NOT talking about your blog post. Rereading
> what I wrote does show that I did not convey that clearly. What I was
> trying to refer to was that over the long winding thread others have
> pointed out that this would be great from an aesthetics view or
> implying that wanting to see the boot messages was uglifying things.
>
> That was where my dander was getting up earlier. Your blog post did
> not get up my dander and I was agreeing that you were a) listening to
> us old grognards and b) trying to come up with a solution that
> encompassed that listening.
I don't think it's worth getting upset over the aesthetics point because
it clearly appears to be a minor one and not the main impetus.
~m
11 years, 2 months
Re: Improving the Fedora boot experience
by Gianluca Sforna
On Wed, Mar 13, 2013 at 12:10 AM, Nicolas Mailhot
<nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net> wrote:
> The proposal discussed here is not to "keep the hood on the car".
> The proposal is to remove any indication there is a hood, and show the
> user a seamless surface with no hint it can be opened (or how).
However, pretty much every operating system out there has a special
key or combo to activate a boot menu, which is otherwise not
accessible. I don't think Linux users are less capable to find out
what they need to press at boot, when things need to be tuned.
--
Gianluca Sforna
http://morefedora.blogspot.com
http://identi.ca/giallu - http://twitter.com/giallu
11 years, 2 months
Re: Improving the Fedora boot experience
by Máirín Duffy
On 03/12/2013 07:24 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> I am saying this because I agree. To me the proposal (not the original
> but some point in the the 500 ms boot time "ideal" ) seemed very much
> a welded shut view. And as someone who has to worked on welded shut
> computers for asthetic reasons.. it brings out the fighting urge in
> me.
Did you guys actually read the blog post? Is aesthetics cited in any of
the reasons for hiding the menu? No, it's not. These were the reasons I
cited in favor of the proposal to hide the menu:
"- Changing video modes makes the screen flash unnecessarily. Not
displaying the boot menu by default would eliminate some of this
flashing. The video mode changing also screws up how our X setup works
and results in unnecessary bugs for users.
- We used to suppress the boot menu by default in earlier releases and
its suppression didn’t cause major problems.
- There’s other ways for the user to indicate wanting to enter the menu
besides boot-time keypresses – other OSes have methods to enter these
menus by rebooting from a running system (systemd is working on this) or
automatically loading the menu when an error condition is encountered.
- Not listening for keypresses doesn’t probe USB, meaning not waiting
for keypresses will make boot even faster since we won’t have to
load/probe USB.
- (Nobody explicitly stated this, but) Displaying information geared
towards power users by default is intimidating / confusing to
less-knowledgeable users."
Please be fair.
~m
11 years, 2 months
Re: Improving the Fedora boot experience
by Adam Jackson
On Tue, 2013-03-12 at 17:19 +0100, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
> Did anyone check the X guys were ok with a setup where they had no longer
> any room for error? They heavily depend on users being able to boot on the
> previous kernel when there is a driver problem.
Yeah, I'm good.
- ajax
11 years, 2 months
obsoletes in gnome-shell
by Bill Nottingham
The gnome-shell package should probably obsolete the assorted fallback mode
components that have been removed from F19 (and will likely cause dep
problems on user's systems if they remain.)
Bill
11 years, 2 months
Re: Improving the Fedora boot experience
by Lennart Poettering
On Mon, 11.03.13 21:45, Nicolas Mailhot (nicolas.mailhot(a)laposte.net) wrote:
>
> Le Lun 11 mars 2013 21:16, Lennart Poettering a écrit :
> > On Mon, 11.03.13 13:08, Chris Murphy (lists(a)colorremedies.com) wrote:
> >
> >> On Mar 11, 2013, at 11:31 AM, Björn Persson <bjorn(a)xn--rombobjrn-67a.se>
> >> wrote:
> >> > Or nothing at all displayed unless the user happens to know to press
> >> some key at the
> >> > right moment?
> >>
> >> A multiboot system needs at least a message to inform the user how to
> >> get to the boot manager (the GRUB menu). A Fedora only system probably
> >> should entirely suppress the menu or notice how to get to it.
> >
> > Somebody who is capable of installing multiple operating systems on one
> > machine should easily be savvy enough to remember that pressing
> > shift/esc/space/f2/whatever gets him the boot menu.
> >
> > If you installed multiple OSes and noticed that the boot menu is gone,
> > wouldn't pressing these keys be your natural reaction anyway?
>
> My natural reaction would be to curse whoever is making me waste minutes
> in press-random-keys-to-see-if-you-can-unlock-boot games to "win" a few
> seconds. I'm pretty sure any poll would find the same result.
My natural reaction to the current grub2 menu that steals my boot is
that I start to hate Fedora and Linux for that we waste our time in ugly
boot menus and bikeshedding about them.
Lennart
--
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.
11 years, 2 months
Re: Improving the Fedora boot experience
by Lennart Poettering
On Mon, 11.03.13 22:14, Till Maas (opensource(a)till.name) wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 09:09:46PM +0100, Lennart Poettering wrote:
>
> > We are working on this in the systemd context. We will provide a tiny
> > mechanism, similar to localed/timedated/hostnamed that can be used by
> > desktop UIs to choose "boot into firmware", and "boot into other OS"
> > features, which can then be exposed on the shutdown button in the UI, or
> > in some configuration applet thingy or wherever the desktop UI wants to
> > put it.
>
> Would the systemd feature also allow to for example boot the default
> kernel but allow to display a menu in parallel that can be used to boot
> a different kernel by reconfiguring the boot loader and initiating a
> reboot? Then it is possible to get both, nearly zero boot delay and a
> boot menu.
The machanism will certainly not "reconfigure" the boot loader. It will
pass additional information tot he boot loader or BIOS via EFI vars or
so, where that's available, but certainly not muck with the boot loader.
Whatever the mechanism does, you can always override everything from the
boot menu, just by pressing shift or whatever is necessary. The systemd
mechanism only gives the BIOS/boot loader *hints* that it would be cool
to do something on next reboot, like for example enter the firmware
setup, or boot into a specific OS, but the user should always be
empowered to do whatever he wants to do if the machine reboots.
Lennart
--
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.
11 years, 2 months
Re: Improving the Fedora boot experience
by Lennart Poettering
On Mon, 11.03.13 13:08, Chris Murphy (lists(a)colorremedies.com) wrote:
> On Mar 11, 2013, at 11:31 AM, Björn Persson <bjorn(a)xn--rombobjrn-67a.se> wrote:
> > Or nothing at all displayed unless the user happens to know to press some key at the
> > right moment?
>
> A multiboot system needs at least a message to inform the user how to
> get to the boot manager (the GRUB menu). A Fedora only system probably
> should entirely suppress the menu or notice how to get to it.
Somebody who is capable of installing multiple operating systems on one
machine should easily be savvy enough to remember that pressing
shift/esc/space/f2/whatever gets him the boot menu.
If you installed multiple OSes and noticed that the boot menu is gone,
wouldn't pressing these keys be your natural reaction anyway?
Lennart
--
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.
11 years, 2 months
Re: Improving the Fedora boot experience
by Lennart Poettering
On Mon, 11.03.13 18:51, Matthew Garrett (mjg59(a)srcf.ucam.org) wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2013 at 06:49:16PM +0100, Lennart Poettering wrote:
>
> > We should not only turn off the graphical screen, but the entire thing
> > should get turned off unless the user presses some key.
>
> It's worth noting that many modern systems will not register keypresses
> during boot by default. Moving in this direction shouldn't happen until
> there's worthwhile support in the desktop UI for using the boot
> indicators spec.
We are working on this in the systemd context. We will provide a tiny
mechanism, similar to localed/timedated/hostnamed that can be used by
desktop UIs to choose "boot into firmware", and "boot into other OS"
features, which can then be exposed on the shutdown button in the UI, or
in some configuration applet thingy or wherever the desktop UI wants to
put it.
Lennart
--
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.
11 years, 2 months
