SIGs/Desktop/Meeting-20070912

Desktop SIG Meeting of 2007-09-12

Present

• ChristopherAillon (caillon)
• MatthiasClasen (mclasen)
• JesseKeating (f13)
• JeremyKatz (jeremy)
• JonNettleton (jnettlet)
• MatejCepl (mcepl)
• ColinWalters (walters)

Notes

• 40MB freed up by splitting out evo, room for more stuff
• We can add tomboy and f-spot without going over for space
• We should do parallel installs of other popular distros to compare against test2
• We plan to do a LiveCD with the new NM once it lands
• Discussion about other packages and changes we'd like to see

Log

Sep 12 14:01:46 <mclasen>	again, I didn't send out an agenda
Sep 12 14:02:08 <mclasen>	one thing we can discuss today is
Sep 12 14:02:19 <f13>	mclasen: you failed to set the topic?
Sep 12 14:02:27 *	f13 has changed the topic to: Fedora Desktop SIG meeting
Sep 12 14:02:31 <mclasen>	thanks
Sep 12 14:02:36 <mclasen>	I'm stupid sometimes...
Sep 12 14:02:42 <f13>	I don't think I have special powers or anything, just /topic
Sep 12 14:02:52 <mclasen>	so, we freed up 40M on the live cd by splitting evo
Sep 12 14:03:06 <mclasen>	which gives us room to maybe include some other goodies
Sep 12 14:03:35 <f13>	too bad about help :/
Sep 12 14:03:46 <f13>	oh well (:
Sep 12 14:03:57 <mclasen>	we followed the precedent set by gimp
Sep 12 14:04:09 <f13>	nod
Sep 12 14:04:25 <mclasen>	it would be nice if we could tell the user after installation to hd that there are some packages they might want to add
Sep 12 14:05:09 <mclasen>	maybe this is a situation where suggests: would come handy...
Sep 12 14:06:00 <mclasen>	so, what are the apps that we really want to see on the livecd, but couldn't ?
Sep 12 14:06:45 <mclasen>	do we want to have bigboard on it, e.g ?
Sep 12 14:06:55 <jeremy>	inkscape is one that has come up in the past
Sep 12 14:07:12 *	clarkbw (n=clarkbw@static-71-243-117-136.bos.east.verizon.net) has joined #fedora-meeting
Sep 12 14:07:18 *	mbacovsk has quit (Read error: 110 (Connection timed out))
Sep 12 14:07:33 <mclasen>	that still doesn't fit :-(
Sep 12 14:07:39 <jeremy>	potentially scanning stuff, planner, tomboy/f-spot
Sep 12 14:07:53 <jeremy>	(by looking at the list of things that have been removed in the past)
Sep 12 14:08:12 <mclasen>	tomboy/f-spot will be large due to pulling in mono
Sep 12 14:08:28 <walters>	mclasen: i'm planning a different (much smaller) livecd image for online desktop
Sep 12 14:08:44 <mclasen>	walters: ah, ok
Sep 12 14:08:48 <walters>	it's already 500 megs and going down
Sep 12 14:09:07 <jeremy>	mclasen: yeah, I know it pulls in mono.  but I seem to remember the end result was ~ 10-20 megs.  I'll do a test and see
Sep 12 14:09:21 <mclasen>	if it fits, tomboy would certainly be cool to have
Sep 12 14:09:42 <f13>	indeed
Sep 12 14:09:54 <f13>	halfline needs to crank out that rewrite in python (:
Sep 12 14:09:59 <jeremy>	just kicked off, will know in 15-20 minutes probably
Sep 12 14:11:15 <jnettlet>	probably not ready yet, but I think conduit could really be a showcase service to include.
Sep 12 14:11:33 <mclasen>	hadess keeps saying that
Sep 12 14:11:46 <mclasen>	do we even have conduit packages ?
Sep 12 14:11:51 <jnettlet>	yep
Sep 12 14:12:01 <jnettlet>	I think they are a little old
Sep 12 14:12:24 <mclasen>	that could be fixed
Sep 12 14:12:34 <mclasen>	seems to weigh less than 1M, with deps
Sep 12 14:13:18 <jnettlet>	some of the big apps that are currently integrated are tomboy and f-spot
Sep 12 14:13:47 <jnettlet>	so F7 has Conduit 3.1-2 and 0.3.3 is out
Sep 12 14:14:10 <mclasen>	gah
Sep 12 14:14:18 *	mclasen feels lost in the conduit window
Sep 12 14:14:20 <mclasen>	no help
Sep 12 14:15:44 <mclasen>	I think hadess had some ideas for conduit, but he's not here...
Sep 12 14:16:10 <jnettlet>	maybe it is worth starting a thread on the mailing list then
Sep 12 14:16:31 <mclasen>	yeah
Sep 12 14:17:19 <mclasen>	ok, if nobody has any more application proposals, we should perhaps move on
Sep 12 14:17:50 <mclasen>	one thing I wanted to quickly mention here is that I want to drop the openoffice launchers from the default panel configuration
Sep 12 14:18:15 <jnettlet>	I think that is a good idea
Sep 12 14:18:33 <mclasen>	not an issue for the livecd, anyway
Sep 12 14:19:13 <f13>	yeah, that would be awesome.
Sep 12 14:19:16 <jeremy>	do it!
Sep 12 14:19:16 <abadger1999>	sounds good
Sep 12 14:20:49 <mclasen>	what else do we have to discuss ?
Sep 12 14:22:08 <jnettlet>	for the Desktop spin we are going to be using NetworkManager by default correct?
Sep 12 14:22:26 <mclasen>	yes
Sep 12 14:22:37 <mcepl>	halfline could save himself rewriting f-prot in Python if he fixes jbrout (which is in Python already and waiting to be packaged for Fedora)
Sep 12 14:22:42 <mclasen>	I think we already did on the F7 livecd, no ?
Sep 12 14:22:46 <f13>	I think all our Live images that are gnome based are using NetworkManager by default.
Sep 12 14:22:47 <jnettlet>	I would love to move a bunch of "network" dependent services out of the init process and start them through NetworkManagerDispatcher
Sep 12 14:22:52 <caillon>	jnettlet: that's also the goal for fedora proper.
Sep 12 14:23:00 <caillon>	jnettlet: and is still on the table
Sep 12 14:23:04 <caillon>	i think
Sep 12 14:23:09 <f13>	yes
Sep 12 14:23:09 <mclasen>	mcepl: your chance to own a package !
Sep 12 14:23:18 <f13>	we're eagerly awaiting new NM that works.
Sep 12 14:23:30 <mclasen>	jnettlet: yeah, I was meaning to bring up network services anyway
Sep 12 14:23:37 <mcepl>	mclasen: unless it is stable enough to work for me, I won't put it into Fedora ;-)
Sep 12 14:23:43 <caillon>	f13: yeah i forgot to ping dcbw about it when i saw him before
Sep 12 14:24:04 *	mclasen looks around
Sep 12 14:24:04 <jeremy>	if I don't talk to him before, I'll harass him on the bus later
Sep 12 14:24:06 <f13>	caillon: I talked to him on the bus this morning.
Sep 12 14:24:15 <f13>	caillon: he's making progress, but nothing to test yet.
Sep 12 14:24:36 <mclasen>	jnettlet: how does that look in practise ?
Sep 12 14:24:57 <mclasen>	we still ship initscripts, just off by default, and add scripts for the dispatcher ?
Sep 12 14:25:26 <jnettlet>	basically I just chkconfig off iscsi ntpd autofs sshd avahi-daemon avahi-dnsconfd
Sep 12 14:26:11 <jnettlet>	then I have scripts for /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d that use the lock files and service to bring the up down restart on network changes
Sep 12 14:26:27 <mclasen>	does that cause conflicts if the user later turns the service on ?
Sep 12 14:26:34 <mclasen>	or are the scripts smart about that ?
Sep 12 14:26:57 <jnettlet>	nope because it uses the service call and checks /var/run and/or /var/lock/subsys to see if the process is already running
Sep 12 14:27:30 <jnettlet>	so if it is already running and the interface call is eth0 up, it will just restart the service
Sep 12 14:27:47 <caillon>	we should really just do this via dbus.
Sep 12 14:27:50 <mclasen>	that sounds good, although it feels as if the init system should know about this, ideally, e.g system-config-services
Sep 12 14:28:10 <jnettlet>	I think it needs a tab like we have for xinetd
Sep 12 14:28:31 *	jeremy wonders if you want to have the concept that the initscript is a network service and then chkconfig does the right thing based on "traditional" vs NetworkManager network setup
Sep 12 14:29:03 <caillon>	we should see about inviting dcbw for one of these things
Sep 12 14:29:11 <jnettlet>	jeremy: I have already written some stuff on my machine based around that idea
Sep 12 14:29:12 <caillon>	perhaps
Sep 12 14:29:29 <jeremy>	but bigger discussion than desktop-spin specific probably
Sep 12 14:29:55 <mclasen>	somewhat related to the whole new-init discussion
Sep 12 14:29:59 <jeremy>	yeah
Sep 12 14:30:12 <jnettlet>	yes
Sep 12 14:30:34 <mclasen>	but a bit more focused and concrete
Sep 12 14:31:30 <caillon>	ok, whats next then?
Sep 12 14:31:43 <jnettlet>	for my desktop, and early-gdm I basically start  auditd restorecond syslog messagebus haldaemon NetworkManger Consolekit then gdm-login
Sep 12 14:31:53 <jnettlet>	everything else starts after gdm or through NetworkManager
Sep 12 14:32:11 <mclasen>	related to network services, I wondered if we want to include/enable nss-mdns
Sep 12 14:32:15 <mclasen>	or do we already ?
Sep 12 14:32:41 <jeremy>	doesn't look like it
Sep 12 14:32:55 <jeremy>	unless it's required by something
Sep 12 14:33:04 <jeremy>	nope
Sep 12 14:33:58 <jnettlet>	doesn't avahi-dnsconfd do the same thing?
Sep 12 14:34:39 <mclasen>	dunno, I'll poke lennart about it
Sep 12 14:35:47 <mclasen>	ok, what else ?
Sep 12 14:35:50 <f13>	speaking of lennart, does it make sense that pulse audio volume control lands in Applications -> sound/video but there is also a volume control on System -> Preferences -> Personal ?
Sep 12 14:36:03 <mclasen>	not much
Sep 12 14:36:13 <mclasen>	volume control is a mess that needs cleaning up
Sep 12 14:36:18 <f13>	yeah
Sep 12 14:36:19 <jnettlet>	I agree
Sep 12 14:36:21 <mclasen>	but probably more on the F9 timescale
Sep 12 14:36:29 <f13>	the audio stack is all kinds of "fun" again.
Sep 12 14:36:34 <jnettlet>	do we install ekiga on the livecd?
Sep 12 14:37:03 <mcepl>	Could I have one more gripe with the current NM (at least according to what's in F-7)? Its management of VPN sucks -- it shouldn't say that the network is on unless also VPN is on, and VPN should be autostarted after getting basic network connection (configurable behavior probably). Otherwise empathy (telepahy multi-protocol IM client) crashes badly everytime when trying to connect to RH IRC through VPN, because NM tells it that network connecti
Sep 12 14:37:33 <f13>	mcepl: yeah, that's a known gripe
Sep 12 14:37:56 <jnettlet>	do we include the VPN plugins on the desktop spin?
Sep 12 14:38:16 <jeremy>	jnettlet: yeah, they're marked as default in comps
Sep 12 14:38:27 <jeremy>	(... so that they get included for the desktop spin)
Sep 12 14:38:29 <jnettlet>	we need to update the openvpn nm plugin then
Sep 12 14:38:44 <jnettlet>	the gui in the one we still ship is old
Sep 12 14:38:50 <mclasen>	mcepl: I hope that we'll have a working nm snapshot in rawhide soon, then all those gripes need to be reevaluated...
Sep 12 14:39:18 <caillon>	yeah, we should push the NM stuff to when we get the 0.7 branch in for gripes
Sep 12 14:39:19 <jnettlet>	I also need to finish the gui changes for pptp and vpnc plugins
Sep 12 14:40:12 <mclasen>	one thing I wanted to bring up here, since I believe it hasn't been discussed last week
Sep 12 14:40:15 <f13>	we're going to want to do a snapshot release as soon as the new nm bits land to get a lot of testing on it.  I expect a lot of breakage that we need to fix up.
Sep 12 14:40:28 <caillon>	right
Sep 12 14:40:41 <jnettlet>	I was going to email the list about that a couple of days ago
Sep 12 14:40:47 <mclasen>	is the idea to do some parallel installs of ubunu/opensuse/test2
Sep 12 14:40:47 <jnettlet>	I definitely agree
Sep 12 14:40:55 <mclasen>	and write up comparisons
Sep 12 14:40:58 <mcepl>	mclasen: well, that's another problem which probably doesn't have good solution -- it would be really nice to have rawhide which would be stable to used by people who mind that their computer doesn't boot up every other day.
Sep 12 14:41:12 <mcepl>	mclasen: but that's certainly out of topic here
Sep 12 14:41:21 <mclasen>	mcepl: stable rawhide is an oxymoron
Sep 12 14:41:38 <mcepl>	mclasen: well, there is stable Debian/unstable :-)
Sep 12 14:41:42 <caillon>	mcepl: try telling that to the kernel folks -- i can't boot with the rawhide kernel.  don't worry about NM not working :-)
Sep 12 14:42:03 <mclasen>	but I have been using rawhide for 3 years, and never really had unsurmountable problems to get work done...
Sep 12 14:42:11 <caillon>	mcepl: but if it doesn,t we need to know about it to fix it
Sep 12 14:42:26 <jnettlet>	It would be nice if we had a spin directory that we could cherry pick packages out of rawhide for
Sep 12 14:42:34 <mcepl>	brb
Sep 12 14:42:48 <f13>	jnettlet: that's what we're going to do for the snapshots
Sep 12 14:42:58 <jnettlet>	f13: sounds good
Sep 12 14:43:07 <f13>	jnettlet: in koji we can create a new tag quickly/easily that is just a snapshot of rawhide, then we can add things in as needed to get a snapshot made
Sep 12 14:43:09 <mclasen>	f13: is there some plan to do weekly snapshot spins from now on ?
Sep 12 14:43:28 <f13>	mclasen: weekly if possible, maybe every other week.
Sep 12 14:43:49 <f13>	doing so eats into other development time though, I'm trying to use some time between test2 and f9 to get some other things ready for f9
Sep 12 14:44:00 <jeremy>	I'm going to try to at least do a subset weekly; won't do the full set of live images
Sep 12 14:44:02 <jeremy>	there are just too many of them
Sep 12 14:44:06 *	jrb (i=jrb@nat/redhat/x-f2f40a3e32025cc7) has joined #fedora-meeting
Sep 12 14:44:19 <f13>	yeah, seriously
Sep 12 14:44:30 <mclasen>	f13: we have the tools out there now, so everybody can just do his own...
Sep 12 14:44:35 <jeremy>	but x86 desktop is the one that will probably almost always be done.  and then some switching around of x86_64, developer, FEL, kde and all the permutations
Sep 12 14:44:44 <mclasen>	I've started to do that occasionally
Sep 12 14:45:11 <jeremy>	fwiw, adding tomboy and f-spot to rawhide of today takes us to 686 MB.  so we can do so if we want
Sep 12 14:45:13 <f13>	mclasen: this is true, we just have to make the snapshot repos publically available, and that isn't always easy.  Fscking multilib gets in the way.
Sep 12 14:45:25 <jeremy>	(and if we do, we should change f-spot to be default in comps)
Sep 12 14:45:41 <mclasen>	jeremy: +1
Sep 12 14:45:42 <f13>	please!
Sep 12 14:45:52 <f13>	and really, we should just add it to the default session
Sep 12 14:45:59 <skvidal>	can we have 40 or so messages about rpmfusion? please?
Sep 12 14:46:05 <skvidal>	whoops wrong channel
Sep 12 14:46:06 <skvidal>	sorry
Sep 12 14:46:07 <jnettlet>	and we should set gnome to use f-spot import on removable media
Sep 12 14:46:10 <f13>	discovering things like this to add to session isn't exactly easy.
Sep 12 14:46:50 <mclasen>	jnettlet: I haven't looked at the fspot import dialog in a long time; when we last looked at it (for Fc6, I think) it needed some love
Sep 12 14:46:55 <mclasen>	has it improved ?
Sep 12 14:47:14 <mclasen>	f13: you mean adding tomboy to the default panel config ?
Sep 12 14:47:35 <jnettlet>	I can't remember to comment.  I have a bunch of people using it and it never comes up
Sep 12 14:47:43 <jnettlet>	I will look
Sep 12 14:48:24 <mclasen>	thanks
Sep 12 14:48:58 <f13>	mclasen: yeah
Sep 12 14:49:03 *	smooge (n=smooge@canopus.unm.edu) has joined #fedora-meeting
Sep 12 14:49:21 <jnettlet>	I don't think it has changed
Sep 12 14:49:30 <jnettlet>	were the complaints in bugzilla?
Sep 12 14:50:34 <mclasen>	f13: makes sense to me
Sep 12 14:50:48 <mclasen>	jnettlet: so I just got reminded of the issues we say
Sep 12 14:51:10 <mclasen>	halfline says that the dialog was very generic, and required you to pick the camera from a list, or something
Sep 12 14:51:27 <mclasen>	ideally, it should just get a hal-udi and do the right thing without further questions
Sep 12 14:52:48 <mclasen>	probably something to look at again
Sep 12 14:54:32 <mclasen>	ok, any other things ?
Sep 12 14:54:38 <jnettlet>	it looks like running f-spot-import %h should do all of the hal magic
Sep 12 14:54:45 <mclasen>	thats nice
Sep 12 14:55:01 <f13>	oh!
Sep 12 14:55:09 <f13>	this is probably more global than Desktop, but..
Sep 12 14:55:21 <f13>	we should enable SHMconfig in X and include the gsynaptics package
Sep 12 14:55:32 *	mclasen has no idea what shmconfig is
Sep 12 14:55:34 <jnettlet>	definitely
Sep 12 14:55:34 <f13>	being able to adjust the touchpad features out of the box would be rather nice.
Sep 12 14:55:55 <jnettlet>	but that needs to be rolled into Xorg right?
Sep 12 14:55:57 <f13>	mclasen: I'm not entirely sure what it is either, but without it enabled I can't adjust synaptic settings for my touchpad.
Sep 12 14:56:11 <walters>	jnettlet: i don't think they will because it's GPL, no?
Sep 12 14:56:28 <jeremy>	f13: it's a little insecure to enable SHMConfig by default
Sep 12 14:56:51 <jeremy>	it's just an input driver and we include and set it up reasonably well by default
Sep 12 14:57:11 <jeremy>	we don't do SHMConfig because it gives any user pretty complete control of the touchpad
Sep 12 14:57:18 *	knurd wakes up
Sep 12 14:57:41 <knurd>	f13, FYI gsynaptics seems quite silent (read: dead?) upstream
Sep 12 14:57:42 <mclasen>	f13: probably a good idea to poke krh when he's back
Sep 12 14:57:46 <f13>	jeremy: hrm, that's a bummer.
Sep 12 14:58:08 <jnettlet>	This is really something that will be handled by xorg dbus in the future
Sep 12 14:58:14 <f13>	knurd: sounds like a good opportunity to take it and run with it and get some Ubuntu style publicity for making it better.
Sep 12 14:58:41 <jeremy>	jnettlet: yeah, although the synaptics driver will need some changes to do so
Sep 12 14:59:14 <jeremy>	f13: and better than a separate gsynaptics, it'd be better to just have it in the standard mouse preferences.  but hey, that's crazy talk :-)
Sep 12 14:59:32 <f13>	indeed
Sep 12 14:59:36 <knurd>	f13, give me some time to learn C and I'd actually would be interested... ;-)
Sep 12 14:59:56 <f13>	doesn't have to be C
Sep 12 14:59:58 <mclasen>	jeremy: sounds very reasonable to me....
Sep 12 15:00:01 <jnettlet>	that randomly reminds me.  Is there any reason we still restart the X server on every logout?
Sep 12 15:00:16 <walters>	why would you log out?
Sep 12 15:00:22 <jnettlet>	I know it used to be a big problem, but that seems a bit outdated
Sep 12 15:00:25 <lennert>	why would you run X? :P
Sep 12 15:00:27 *	lennert hides
Sep 12 15:00:56 *	rdieter has quit (Read error: 104 (Connection reset by peer))
Sep 12 15:01:11 <mclasen>	on this occasion, I declare the meeting closed...
Sep 12 15:01:17 <caillon>	jnettlet: i think it's because we do that for starting gdm.  i think a few guys were working on fixing that
Sep 12 15:01:31 <caillon>	to only have 1 X session ever
Sep 12 15:01:34 <mclasen>	see you guys next week
Sep 12 15:01:39 <caillon>	but we are reliant on airlied's modesetting stuff
Sep 12 15:01:39 <jnettlet>	later