Pantheon Desktop
Summary
The Pantheon desktop environment is the DE that powers elementaryOS. It builds on GNOME technologies, but utilizes components that were written from scratch in vala, using the GTK+3 toolkit.
Owner
- Name: Fabio Valentini
- Email: decathorpe AT fedoraproject DOT org
- Release notes owner:
Current status
- Targeted release: Fedora 30
- Last updated: 2018-11-13
- Tracker bug: #1649555
- Release Notes tracker: #256
Detailed Description
The Pantheon desktop will be another viable choice for users of fedora. In particular, this is also interesting for users who like the Pantheon desktop, but would prefer to use fedora instead of an ubuntu-based distribution.
Most of the components of the Pantheon desktop shell and the applications developed by elementary have already been packaged for fedora.
Benefit to Fedora
This change will make fedora the first linux distribution other than elementaryOS to support the Pantheon Desktop environment and elementary applications.
It gives users of fedora another choice for their desktop environment, and it gives users of Pantheon and elementary applications the ability to choose a different linux distribution for the first time.
Scope
Proposal owners
Packaging Status
TODO Items
- investigate improving missing switchboard plugs for fedora support, and submit them for review:
- Date and Time plug: behavioral differences between fedora / ubuntu
- Locale plug: implement dnf / PackageKit backend for langpack installation
- Power plug: remove dependency on ubuntu-specific patches to gnome-settings-daemon
- Security and Privacy plug: implement FirewallD backend to replace ufw
- do testing for components not yet in official fedora repositories, and package them:
- Parental Controls plug: does this actually work on fedora?
- Sharing plug: does this actually work on fedora?
- User Accounts plug: investigate behavioral differences between fedora / ubuntu
All these switchboard plugs are already packaged and available from one of my COPR repositories:
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/decathorpe/elementary-staging/
The .spec files are maintained in a GitHub repository until the packages pass package review:
https://github.com/decathorpe/elementary-staging-rpms
- improve screensaver / lock screen support: RHBZ#1644858
- possibly patch Pantheon session components to use standard interfaces
- consider implementing shim for GDM / gnome-screensaver and LightDM / light-locker compatibility, or
- consider implementing adapter for translating different DBus calls for this
- create metapackages or comps groups:
- Pantheon Session (Desktop Environment without apps)
- Pantheon Desktop (Desktop Enviromnent with apps)
Creating these meta-packages or comps groups is planned to happen well before the fedora 30 branch point.
Other developers
This is not a system-wide change - however, some components require the latest releases from the accounts-SSO / signon stack.
In particular, 
signon-glib
Release engineering
No impact
Trademark approval
N/A - not needed for this Change
This Change is about adding the missing components of the Desktop Environment to fedora, and fixing show-stopper bugs. If we decide to make this a spin in the future, that will be a separate Change.
Upgrade/compatibility impact
Packages for the Pantheon DE and elementary applications have been available since fedora 25 in some cases, and most components have been available since fedora 27. Upgrading to the latest fedora release brings users the latest versions of (most of) these packages.
However, due to upstream changes, some desktop applications might lose user settings when upgrading from fedora 28 to 29, because upstream changed their GSettings path between releases. For that reason, the updates containing these breaking changes were not pushed to stable releases < 29, following the Updates Policy for stable and beta releases.
How To Test
- install the Pantheon Desktop Environment:
pantheon-session-settings - choose Pantheon session at login
- use the system as usual
- try out elementary applications
- check if screensaver kicks in (possibly doesn't work yet)
When also testing the "WIP packages" from my elementary-staging COPR repository, there are two metapackages available:
- pantheon-session: depends on all session and desktop shell components
- pantheon-desktop: depends on session, shell, and applications
User Experience
- no impact for users who don't already have the Pantheon session or elementary applications installed
- usability and stablilty improvements for users who already use it
Dependencies
N/A
Contingency Plan
- Contingency mechanism: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)
- Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change) - No
- Blocks product? N/A
Documentation
The current status of the project and detailed instructions on how to install the Pantheon session on fedora are available here.
Release Notes
The improved Pantheon Desktop Environment and elementary applications found in the latest release of elementaryOS 5.0 "Juno" will officially be available on fedora 30 as well.