On Thursday 28 July 2016 16:04:29 Ludwig Nussel wrote:

Hi,

In the thread about lxdm we learned that we don't seem to have LXDE maintainers anymore. Yet we have LXDE on the DVD and offer it very prominently in the installer: https://openqa.opensuse.org/tests/230205#step/installer_desktopselection/6

So I wonder if putting LXDE in the spotlight like that still makes sense?

IMHO LXDE is very mature. As long as it is working it should be ok to have it at a prominent spot. As soon as problems appear and you can actually not recommend it anymore, sure, hide it :-)

Also, I wonder whether the minimal X selection adds much value. Those who want to use a different window manager could start off from text mode just as well, right?

I think minimal X is a good compromise. Of course text mode would be sufficient but having a window manager readily available where you can start one window with "zypper in <more stuff>" but while it's downloading do something else already. Anyway, as long as the option list is more than 1 but not more than let's say 7 it should be fine. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On Thu, 28 Jul 2016 16:04:29 +0200 Ludwig Nussel wrote:

Hi,

In the thread about lxdm we learned that we don't seem to have LXDE maintainers anymore. Yet we have LXDE on the DVD and offer it very prominently in the installer: https://openqa.opensuse.org/tests/230205#step/installer_desktopselection/6

So I wonder if putting LXDE in the spotlight like that still makes sense?

I use LXDE for several years now and I am still satisfied with its performance. For me it is easy to use DE without that are fast and cheap on resources without fancy eye candy stuff that I do not need for work. So I think it still deserve its place in installer as I try remaining options and for me LXDE works the best ( even XFCE4 have its problems ).

Also, I wonder whether the minimal X selection adds much value. Those who want to use a different window manager could start off from text mode just as well, right?

It offers some preconfiguration from installer that helps. So it make sense for some use cases. Like if you would like to use tilling window manager, then it is much easier to do it from minimal X then from text mode. If there is plan to remove it, do we have replacement? So we can compare if replacement works same or better? just my 2c Josef

cu Ludwig

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On 28 July 2016 at 16:33, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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El 2016-07-28 a las 16:04 +0200, Ludwig Nussel escribió:

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Also, I wonder whether the minimal X selection adds much value. Those who want to use a different window manager could start off from text mode just as well, right?

No, starting from text mode to really install a graphical desktop that is not in the main install menu is not trivial. For starters, you can not use graphical YaST to select what to install, or to configure network. Even worse if it happens to need network manager.

You can use ncurses YaST, which is pretty much exactly the same as 'graphical YaST' -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

28.07.2016 18:45, Patrick Shanahan пишет:

* Richard Brown [07-28-16 10:36]:

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On 28 July 2016 at 16:33, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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El 2016-07-28 a las 16:04 +0200, Ludwig Nussel escribió:

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Also, I wonder whether the minimal X selection adds much value. Those who want to use a different window manager could start off from text mode just as well, right?

No, starting from text mode to really install a graphical desktop that is not in the main install menu is not trivial. For starters, you can not use graphical YaST to select what to install, or to configure network. Even worse if it happens to need network manager.

You can use ncurses YaST, which is pretty much exactly the same as 'graphical YaST'

"Exactly" is rather exaggerated.

yes, but NetworkManager :(

There is nmtui; if ncurses software manager is suitable replacement for graphical version, so should also be nmtui as replacement for GUI client. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

* Andrei Borzenkov [07-28-16 12:52]:

28.07.2016 18:45, Patrick Shanahan пишет:

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* Richard Brown [07-28-16 10:36]:

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On 28 July 2016 at 16:33, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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El 2016-07-28 a las 16:04 +0200, Ludwig Nussel escribió:

...

Also, I wonder whether the minimal X selection adds much value. Those who want to use a different window manager could start off from text mode just as well, right?

No, starting from text mode to really install a graphical desktop that is not in the main install menu is not trivial. For starters, you can not use graphical YaST to select what to install, or to configure network. Even worse if it happens to need network manager.

You can use ncurses YaST, which is pretty much exactly the same as 'graphical YaST'

"Exactly" is rather exaggerated.

...

yes, but NetworkManager :(

There is nmtui; if ncurses software manager is suitable replacement for graphical version, so should also be nmtui as replacement for GUI client.

ahhh, new for me. NM has failed on all my boxes previous so I use wicked, but just did a new tw install on a dell laptop which will not let yast configure to wicked. tks, will try nmtui. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 07/28/2016 11:51 PM, H.Merijn Brand wrote:

On Thu, 28 Jul 2016 16:04:29 +0200, Ludwig Nussel wrote:

...

Hi,

In the thread about lxdm we learned that we don't seem to have LXDE maintainers anymore. Yet we have LXDE on the DVD and offer it very prominently in the installer: https://openqa.opensuse.org/tests/230205#step/installer_desktopselection/6

So I wonder if putting LXDE in the spotlight like that still makes sense?

Also, I wonder whether the minimal X selection adds much value. Those who want to use a different window manager could start off from text mode just as well, right?

Minimal X makes a lot of sense if the machine will offer X11, but not as a desktop, like using ssh with X11 forwarding.

It would still be simple to keep this functionality if we remove Minimal X from the selection but don't remove the pattern entirely so for this case you would pick "text mode" then in the advanced software selection later on you could enable the minimal X11 pattern when you install the other patterns for whichever software your server needs.

...

cu Ludwig

-- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adeliade Australia, UTC+9:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B

On 07/29/2016 11:15 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

El 2016-07-29 a las 10:06 +0930, Simon Lees escribió:

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On 07/28/2016 11:34 PM, Ludwig Nussel wrote:

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Personally from an enlightenment perspective when people ask I recommend using the net install where enlightenment becomes one of the choices (Its not currently on the DVD). I think as others have mentioned in this thread there needs to be a way for a lot of users to install something thats not gnome or kde (they take reasonable effort to remove again once installed) and end up with a graphical environment where they can configure Network Manager and install whichever desktop they want.

Yep.

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In my opinion as long as there is one of (XFCE/LXDE/Minimal-IceWM/LXQt(When its ready) That will meet this need.

Perhaps not XFCE, because it brings parts of Gnome in. :-?

It doesn't really, it brings in a few standalone components from a quick look, there is nothing in there that seems like it pulls in any major components, if you consider that all the lighter DE's (except maybe LXQt) use the very poorly named NetworkManager-gnome which is really actually nm-applet for networkmanger setup and configuration its not pulling in much that the other patterns don't pull in besides xfce itself which doesn't seem that big and gnome-games. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adeliade Australia, UTC+9:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B

Ludwig Nussel skrev den 2016-07-28 16:04:

So I wonder if putting LXDE in the spotlight like that still makes sense?

In my opinion it is a bit of lack that openSUSE LEAP does not provide DVD MATE install option, but I assume it is a matter of DVD space. In my optics it seems like there is not a big difference with respect to performance to use MATE or LXDE. And MATE is gaining a lot of popularity. For my use case having a 13" laptop with a resolution of 1920x1080 GNOME is pretty useless, since textscaling above 1.33 makes stuff look wierd (the windows does not scale due to HiDPI scaling support is only integer wise 1,2,3..) so the only DE that will work for me is KDE (my prefered), MATE and Enlightenment. This means I only have one install option from the DVD of a usable system. It is fine, but I would rather have some extra GNOME packages removed (it is really a huge selection on the DVD) than leaving out MATE. Just my $0.02.

Also, I wonder whether the minimal X selection adds much value. Those who want to use a different window manager could start off from text mode just as well, right?

I do not think so. I find it easier if I want to install MATE or Enlightenment to start of with the minimal X environment. I would expect less experienced Linux users would be a bit intimidated but seeing the Linux console login after installation. I think IceWM would do a better job in this respect. Bo -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

Simon Lees schrieb:

On 07/29/2016 04:30 PM, Bo Simonsen wrote:

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Ludwig Nussel skrev den 2016-07-28 16:04:

...

So I wonder if putting LXDE in the spotlight like that still makes sense?

In my opinion it is a bit of lack that openSUSE LEAP does not provide DVD MATE install option, but I assume it is a matter of DVD space. In my optics it seems like there is not a big difference with respect to performance to use MATE or LXDE. And MATE is gaining a lot of popularity. For my use case having a 13" laptop with a resolution of 1920x1080 GNOME is pretty useless, since textscaling above 1.33 makes stuff look wierd (the windows does not scale due to HiDPI scaling support is only integer wise 1,2,3..) so the only DE that will work for me is KDE (my prefered), MATE and Enlightenment. This means I only have one install option from the DVD of a usable system. It is fine, but I would rather have some extra GNOME packages removed (it is really a huge selection on the DVD) than leaving out MATE. Just my $0.02.

Mate, Cinnamon, LXQt and Enlightenment are all currently not on the DVD as they are all relatively new in openSUSE this is also something that I think we should address in some way. When there used to be a smaller KDE iso and Smaller Gnome iso as well as the DVD I was considering putting together an "Alternate DE" image as well, but then the kde/gnome images were dropped so were back to square 1. The reason I started using openSUSE was because it treated all desktops equally which makes it an ideal distro for these users, I think we could play to the strength of this better by squeezing some things off the DVD to make room for more desktops. [...] My argument for why desktops are more important then some other things on the DVD: As a developer its nice being able to install all the various "Dev tool" patterns as part of the install but at the same time

Even if we had free space we will hardly ever fit all desktop environments on the DVD. So how would we decide which ones to leave out? The DVD is probably most useful where bandwidth is limited or for offline use. So I wonder if more desktops are actually relevant in such cases. If we had space on the DVD instead of putting more desktops we could also put more commonly used applications or more language support packages for example. Anyways, are we talking about Leap or Tumbleweed here? I'm not sure the DVD plays such a big role for TW, so the discussion might be moot there. Once you install with online repos or from the NET iso all desktops are available via the software selection. The patterns for desktops are listed first. For Leap I'd prefer to offer a limited set of well polished, working desktops during installation rather than a wide range of choices where none can be recommended without hesitation. But again this raises the question for selection criteria. Maybe scenarios from our test matrix¹ can give some hints.

So I think its time we talked about what should or shouldn't be on the DVD I don't think theres been a good discussion in atleast the 5 years i've been paying attention. If its important we have all the software we currently have available on a DVD maybe its time we thought about shipping a second DVD containing all the stuff that can still easily be installed post installation like devel tools or given that 8GB flash drives can be purchased here for the equivalent of $5 US maybe we should ship a larger image as well (I don't remember the last time I used a physical DVD to install something).

Extra DVDs are so last century :-) Maybe an 8 GB image for USB sticks would be an option indeed. The full ftp tree currently has 20GB (TW 32GB) though. It also wouldn't help us with the discussion about what to put on the smaller DVD image. There is demand for a DVD image as DVDs are still useful e.g. as cheap giveaway at events. So I don't think we can get rid of it yet.

If we decide to do any one of these things i'm happy to volunteer to do some of the work.

If you are interested in how the DVD content is computed based on patterns and package dependencies have a look at https://github.com/openSUSE/package-lists. It's not for the faint-hearted though ;-) cu Ludwig [1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AGKijKpKiJCB616-bHVoNQuhWHpQLHPWCb3m... -- (o_ Ludwig Nussel //\ V_/_ http://www.suse.com/ SUSE Linux GmbH, GF: Felix Imendörffer, Jane Smithard, Graham Norton, HRB 21284 (AG Nürnberg) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org

On 08/02/2016 06:19 AM, Simon Lees wrote:

On 08/02/2016 05:01 PM, Ludwig Nussel wrote:

...

Simon Lees schrieb:

...

On 07/29/2016 04:30 PM, Bo Simonsen wrote:

...

Ludwig Nussel skrev den 2016-07-28 16:04:

...

So I wonder if putting LXDE in the spotlight like that still makes sense?

In my opinion it is a bit of lack that openSUSE LEAP does not provide DVD MATE install option, but I assume it is a matter of DVD space. In my optics it seems like there is not a big difference with respect to performance to use MATE or LXDE. And MATE is gaining a lot of popularity. For my use case having a 13" laptop with a resolution of 1920x1080 GNOME is pretty useless, since textscaling above 1.33 makes stuff look wierd (the windows does not scale due to HiDPI scaling support is only integer wise 1,2,3..) so the only DE that will work for me is KDE (my prefered), MATE and Enlightenment. This means I only have one install option from the DVD of a usable system. It is fine, but I would rather have some extra GNOME packages removed (it is really a huge selection on the DVD) than leaving out MATE. Just my $0.02.

Mate, Cinnamon, LXQt and Enlightenment are all currently not on the DVD as they are all relatively new in openSUSE this is also something that I think we should address in some way. When there used to be a smaller KDE iso and Smaller Gnome iso as well as the DVD I was considering putting together an "Alternate DE" image as well, but then the kde/gnome images were dropped so were back to square 1. The reason I started using openSUSE was because it treated all desktops equally which makes it an ideal distro for these users, I think we could play to the strength of this better by squeezing some things off the DVD to make room for more desktops. [...] My argument for why desktops are more important then some other things on the DVD: As a developer its nice being able to install all the various "Dev tool" patterns as part of the install but at the same time

Even if we had free space we will hardly ever fit all desktop environments on the DVD. So how would we decide which ones to leave out?

Yeah including all / more of them was my lazy way of not having to solve this question.

...

The DVD is probably most useful where bandwidth is limited or for offline use. So I wonder if more desktops are actually relevant in such cases. If we had space on the DVD instead of putting more desktops we could also put more commonly used applications or more language support packages for example.

Yeah I was trying to start a broader discussion about whether what were currently doing is the best way to do it or whether were doing it this way just because its the way its been done for a long time and know one has really thought about it.

For example if we wanted to focus on providing more commonly used applications and language packs maybe we could better achieve this goal by providing 2 or 3 DVD's based on there DE but with a core application base, eg a KDE DVD a Gnome DVD and then possibly a other DE DVD. Presumably the users you described above are more likely to only want one DE and know which one they want in advance. But there is probably the further question of how much space that would really save given that for example if the focus is providing more apps the gnome DVD would probably still want to include something like krita which would require parts of kde so maybe for that reason there isn't that great a benefit to splitting.

I guess the other thing to consider here is now that we have openQA doing a wide variety of testing which wasn't there in the past having multiple differing main DVD's is probably more manageable from a testing point of view anyway.

...

Anyways, are we talking about Leap or Tumbleweed here? I'm not sure the DVD plays such a big role for TW, so the discussion might be moot there. Once you install with online repos or from the NET iso all desktops are available via the software selection. The patterns for desktops are listed first.

For Leap I'd prefer to offer a limited set of well polished, working desktops during installation rather than a wide range of choices where none can be recommended without hesitation. But again this raises the question for selection criteria. Maybe scenarios from our test matrix¹ can give some hints.

Yeah i'm mostly talking about Leap here and I agree that they should meet a minimum standard like no serious bugs and further to stuff like if you have a laptop the DE should be setup to make it easy to do stuff like wifi out of the box. I also think that if there were 10 DE's that met the criteria and we had a way of shipping them all (the net ISO I guess) then there is no reason why there shouldn't be a choice for all of them.

Tumbleweed on the other hand I think can have a slightly lower standard which could offer more choices, tumbleweed users are probably more likely to know what they want anyway and not be confused by choice, I think that you could almost say that any DE related pattern that shows up in the installer should also be shown on the DE selection page as long as the maintainer things its up to the standard of general usage.

Not confusing new users is a reason that I like the installers current setup of showing a couple of selections and then providing a "Other" field where more advanced users can have extra options.

...

...

So I think its time we talked about what should or shouldn't be on the DVD I don't think theres been a good discussion in atleast the 5 years i've been paying attention. If its important we have all the software we currently have available on a DVD maybe its time we thought about shipping a second DVD containing all the stuff that can still easily be installed post installation like devel tools or given that 8GB flash drives can be purchased here for the equivalent of $5 US maybe we should ship a larger image as well (I don't remember the last time I used a physical DVD to install something).

Extra DVDs are so last century :-) Maybe an 8 GB image for USB sticks would be an option indeed. The full ftp tree currently has 20GB (TW 32GB) though. It also wouldn't help us with the discussion about what to put on the smaller DVD image. There is demand for a DVD image as DVDs are still useful e.g. as cheap giveaway at events. So I don't think we can get rid of it yet.

Yeah I guess I was thinking if there was no way to solve some of the other issues above if someone wanted DE X or language Y and they knew it wasn't currently on the main DVD then they could try the larger one.

...

...

If we decide to do any one of these things i'm happy to volunteer to do some of the work.

If you are interested in how the DVD content is computed based on patterns and package dependencies have a look at https://github.com/openSUSE/package-lists. It's not for the faint-hearted though ;-)

Thanks i'll have a quick look atleast.

...

cu Ludwig

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AGKijKpKiJCB616-bHVoNQuhWHpQLHPWCb3m...

Providing the urls for the DEs for download from Community Repositories to the Software Repositories would make more sense. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org