January 2009 - openSUSE Features - openSUSE Mailing Lists

[openFate 305489] default email in email applications
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: Andrey Karepin (EGDFree) Feature #305489, revision 6 Title: default email in email applications openSUSE-11.2: New Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Martin Lasarsch (mlasars) + Interested: Andrey Karepin (egdfree) Interested: Joe Brockmeier (jbrockmeier) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: To get more subscriptions to the mailinglists it would be nice to have a "default mail" in the mail clients (evolution, kmail) which points the user to the mailinglists. Every openSUSE user should be subscribed to opensuse-announce at least. A simple reply to this "default mail" should subscribe to the list. Of course there could be more information in it, like other important lists, pointing to the main list page. evolution have already a "default mail", with general information about evolution, kmail afaik not. This might be also usefull for OEM customers to have a welcome mail for the customers, pointing to the support pages etc.. So general email "branding" packages which makes it possible to have such special "default mails" for the email clients would be usefull. Discussion: #1: Carlos Lange (cflange) (2009-01-17 19:59:30) There are several parts to this suggestion. 1) "default mail": If you mean "Default" in the sense that when I start a new message the To: field is filled out by default with the mailing- list address, I disagree with your comment. The user should set that and an inexperienced user should find herself/himself subscribing to a mailing-list by mistake, just because they forgot to reset the To: field. Such a user would be rightly upset and feel like they were trapped into doing it. 2) If you mean, however, that the address book in Evolution and Kmail should be pre-populated with relevant addresses, such as the mailing- list and others, in the same way the Firefox bookmarks toolbar comes pre-populated with the SUSE folder, then I would agree that this is a useful suggestion, because the user can freely choose to use those addresses or not. 3) I strongly disagree that every openSUSE user should be subscribed to the opensuse-announce mailing-list. I deal with many different types of users. Only a minority of them would be interested in receiving announcements and they actively subscribe to the mailing-list. The vast majority of them likes the Linux-way of being non-intrusive, without the nags and unsolicited messages from the proprietary world, that tend to be associated with annoying marketing strategies. Please, don't advocate that for openSUSE. The SUSE information box shown at the first login is as much in-your- face direct marketing as one should need to take when using openSUSE. And being beautiful and carefully designed as it is, it contains all information a new user needs to decide how much involved with the operating system they want to be. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=305489

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[openFate 305489] default email in email applications
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: Carlos Lange (cflange) Feature #305489, revision 5 Title: default email in email applications openSUSE-11.2: New Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Martin Lasarsch (mlasars) Interested: Joe Brockmeier (jbrockmeier) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: To get more subscriptions to the mailinglists it would be nice to have a "default mail" in the mail clients (evolution, kmail) which points the user to the mailinglists. Every openSUSE user should be subscribed to opensuse-announce at least. A simple reply to this "default mail" should subscribe to the list. Of course there could be more information in it, like other important lists, pointing to the main list page. evolution have already a "default mail", with general information about evolution, kmail afaik not. This might be also usefull for OEM customers to have a welcome mail for the customers, pointing to the support pages etc.. So general email "branding" packages which makes it possible to have such special "default mails" for the email clients would be usefull. + Discussion: + #1: Carlos Lange (cflange) (2009-01-17 19:59:30) + There are several parts to this suggestion. + 1) "default mail": If you mean "Default" in the sense that when I start + a new message the To: field is filled out by default with the mailing- + list address, I disagree with your comment. The user should set that + and an inexperienced user should find herself/himself subscribing to a + mailing-list by mistake, just because they forgot to reset the To: + field. Such a user would be rightly upset and feel like they were + trapped into doing it. + 2) If you mean, however, that the address book in Evolution and Kmail + should be pre-populated with relevant addresses, such as the mailing- + list and others, in the same way the Firefox bookmarks toolbar comes + pre-populated with the SUSE folder, then I would agree that this is a + useful suggestion, because the user can freely choose to use those + addresses or not. + 3) I strongly disagree that every openSUSE user should be subscribed to + the opensuse-announce mailing-list. I deal with many different types of + users. Only a minority of them would be interested in receiving + announcements and they actively subscribe to the mailing-list. The vast + majority of them likes the Linux-way of being non-intrusive, without + the nags and unsolicited messages from the proprietary world, that tend + to be associated with annoying marketing strategies. Please, don't + advocate that for openSUSE. + The SUSE information box shown at the first login is as much in-your- + face direct marketing as one should need to take when using openSUSE. + And being beautiful and carefully designed as it is, it contains all + information a new user needs to decide how much involved with the + operating system they want to be. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=305489

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[openFate 305489] default email in email applications
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: Stephan Binner (Beineri) Feature #305489, revision 4 Title: default email in email applications openSUSE-11.2: New Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Martin Lasarsch (mlasars) Interested: Joe Brockmeier (jbrockmeier) + Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: To get more subscriptions to the mailinglists it would be nice to have a "default mail" in the mail clients (evolution, kmail) which points the user to the mailinglists. Every openSUSE user should be subscribed to opensuse-announce at least. A simple reply to this "default mail" should subscribe to the list. Of course there could be more information in it, like other important lists, pointing to the main list page. evolution have already a "default mail", with general information about evolution, kmail afaik not. This might be also usefull for OEM customers to have a welcome mail for the customers, pointing to the support pages etc.. So general email "branding" packages which makes it possible to have such special "default mails" for the email clients would be usefull. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=305489

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[openFate 305634] Debian-like dist-upgrade live system full version upgrade
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: Thorsten Kukuk (kukuk) Feature #305634, revision 24 Title: Debian-like dist-upgrade live system full version upgrade openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Mandatory Requested by: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) Interested: Andre Duffeck (aduffeck) Interested: Bruno Friedmann (bruno_friedmann) Interested: Francis Giannaros (apokryphos) Interested: Guy Lunardi (glunardi) Interested: Joe Brockmeier (jbrockmeier) Interested: JP Rosevear (jproseve) Interested: Klaus Kämpf (kwk) Interested: Mario Carrion (mariocarrion) Interested: Markus K (kamikazow) Interested: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Interested: Maxi Schimmel (maxxs) Interested: Robert Davies (robopensuse) Interested: Stefan Behlert (sbehlert) Interested: Stephan Binner (beineri) Interested: Stephan Kulow (coolo) Interested: Thorsten Kukuk (kukuk) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: With the 11.2 cycle, we want to offer users the ability to perform a live system upgrade in the manner of Debian's dist-upgrade. For the purpose of this cycle, we want to support dist-upgrade from the previous version (11.1) only, as this is a sufficiently complicated problem as is. From the user's view, the difference is between being able to update the system incrementally within the given version or service pack running, to being ble to migrate with a system command ("zypper dup" or similar) to a higher version altogether. In the Debian experience, the set of base distributions is not necessarily limited, but it has been Ubuntu's practice to define what starting points other than "release n-1" are allowed (for instance, all LTS versions are purported to be able to "apt dist-upgrade" to the top of the line, although I have heard of problems trying to jump two years - 6.06->8.10 - in a fell swoop in this manner :-). In the openSUSE scope, we should aim to be able to "dup" between incremental versions, starting from 11.1 to 11.2, and later 11.x to 12.0. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: With the introduction of the Zypper stack to SLE, we finally reached the state of a featureful (which YOU was not) and fast, reliable (which ZLM was not) update stack in the platform. For enterprise use, some tweaks are still desirable (changelogs, rollback, ...) which we are looking at, as well as improvements on the Enterprise management front, which we are working on with our SRM colleagues. The only really significant competitive feature we are missing at this point is the Debian/Ubuntu dist-upgrade functionality, which has a powerful psychological impact at the Enterprise level and a much more tangible impact at the small user / single user level: many with no IT department do use Ubuntu these days on the basis that "chasing" Fedora and openSUSE along the six-month upgrade cycle is too much for them, and feel they can save time on Ubuntu with the combination of dist- upgrade and the longer LTS cycle. The rationale for pursuing this is to revoke the special status of coolness this functionality gives Ubuntu, and to terminate the negative influence that may have on our SLE sales (from the expert's personal opinion, the preference then easily spills into purchasing). Discussion: #1: Federico Lucifredi (flucifredi) (2009-01-07 20:42:15) This is the #1 feature in the systems management scope for 11.2 - I have no doubt it will be fun :-) #4: Klaus Kämpf (kwk) (2009-01-09 11:32:53) Passing to mls for technical evaluation (solver + autobuild) #5: Michael Schröder (mlschroe) (2009-01-09 12:48:10) Any hint on what features are currently missing? #6: Klaus Kämpf (kwk) (2009-01-09 13:30:57) (reply to #5) From the top of my head: How to handle * Library ABI changes (e.g. major gcc/g++ upgrades) ? * Core package changes (e.g. devs.rpm to udev) ? * Kernel changes (if application/deamons need a specific kernel abi, dbus comes into mind) ? * Failure handling (network breakdown, package update errors, ...) ? * Booting of the new kernel ? #7: Michael Schröder (mlschroe) (2009-01-09 14:45:09) (reply to #6) And debian does this in some way? #8: Robert Davies (robopensuse) (2009-01-17 12:43:42) (reply to #7) The distupgrade feature differs from changing source list and doing upgrade, so some utility process could be started. They may require some documented procedure to be followed, for "tough" changes. But ABI change, how long since ELF/glibc was introduced? C++ ABI ought not be relevant for upgrade process, they are "just" applications and libaries to be updated. Failure handling - you are told to back up your system first, it is "best effort" not guaranteed. The less you have installed the more likely it is to succeed. Debian offer choice of kernels, this may "punt" the problem to a user controlled install and select from GRUB menu. Debian have apt-cache possibility, to create central pool of packages, to decrease liklihood of network troubles, as well as huge number CD and DVD iso's. + #9: Thorsten Kukuk (kukuk) (2009-01-17 15:24:35) (reply to #8) + The glibc internal ABI changes frequently. Means, running applications + will continue to use the old glibc with the old ABI, but installed are + already the new plugins => running applications can crash. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=305634

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[openFate 305657] finer grained PolicyKit support for Networkmanager
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: Jakub Rusinek (liviopl) Feature #305657, revision 6 Title: finer grained PolicyKit support for Networkmanager openSUSE-11.2: New Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) + Interested: Jakub Rusinek (liviopl) Interested: Security Team (secteam) Interested: Stefan Behlert (sbehlert) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: NetworkManager currently only supports one PolicyKit privilege. That is whether a user is allowed to modify administrator defined connections or not. There is no way to disallow users to define their own network configurations. NetworkManager should at least support one additional PolicyKit privilege that defines whether or not users are allowed to bring their own network configuration or whether they mere are allowed to use administrator defined ones. Use Case: - disallow workers on centrally administered machines to configure different network settings - protect home users that only ever connect to a few well known nets from accidently changing their setup -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=305657

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[openFate 303678] New yast module - LIRC configuration
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: Jakub Rusinek (liviopl) Feature #303678, revision 11 Title: New yast module - LIRC configuration openSUSE-11.1: Rejected by Stanislav Visnovsky <visnov(a)novell.com> reject date: 2008-06-24 15:31:30 reject reason: More urgent stuff to cover. Priority Requester: Desirable openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Desirable Requested by: Ladislav Slezak (lslezak) + Interested: Jakub Rusinek (liviopl) Interested: Maxi Schimmel (maxxs) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: Create a new Yast module for configuring IR receivers and remote controls. * irrecord support * ir-kbd-i2c, ir-kbd-gpio support as in tv module already * reading users' config to find out what buttons were defined (only if /home partition left from last installation) * support for lirc's options in /etc/sysconfig See bug https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=381641 -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=303678

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[openFate 305586] Desktop independent global notification framework
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: Jakub Rusinek (liviopl) Feature #305586, revision 11 Title: Desktop independent global notification framework openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Stefan Assmann (assmannst) Interested: Alexander Graf (algraf) Interested: Garrett LeSage (glesage) Interested: Guy Lunardi (glunardi) + Interested: Jakub Rusinek (liviopl) Interested: Jared Allen (jpallen) Interested: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Interested: Ruchir Brahmbhatt (ruchir) Interested: Siegfried Olschner (sdolschn) Interested: Stefan Fent (sfent) Interested: Tejun Heo (teheo) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: Our current desktop environments lack a good, configurable notification framework like Growl on Mac OS X. With D-BUS in place we could develop/integrate a framework that is desktop independent and could serve both KDE and GNOME applications the same way. This provides one step towards integrating both desktops more closely, thus making the user experience smoother. One such notification system is already in development. It's called mumbles (http://www.mumbles-project.org/) and provides lots of features similar to Growl. * It's customizable * Has theming support * Has plugin support * Desktop independent * Can use compiz for smooth display Using such a framework, more than just integrating desktops could be achieved: * Local notifications on hardware events * Remote notifications on login/hardware events * Easy scriptability for custom notifications Steps necessary to implement such a framework in openSUSE/SLE: * Install and configure framework by default * Integrate framework configuration in desktop environment * Make framework interactive so the user can react on events (optional) * Make applications D-Bus/Notification aware, so they send events, already available: Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, several others Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: Such a framework would be a huge win for the general user experience, as it makes the desktop look more integrated and smooth. It's even a good idea for SLES, so administrators can be easily notified when events occur, without the hassle to set up syslog forwarding+parsing+notifying. Discussion: #2: Guy Lunardi (glunardi) (2008-12-18 08:32:18) I agree this is an important part of the desktop platform. How is this different from the libnotify solution which I believe we use for this purpose today? It is my PM understanding it does most everything you are describing including a CLI (notify-send). Applications such as NetworkManager, PowerManager, Pidgin and Banshee. Reading their FAQ, the reason for not using libnotify is that the author wanted to put more Python dependent software on their system :- ). Is this proposal about switching from libnotify to mumbles? (honestly asking, I have no opinion) #3: Stefan Assmann (assmannst) (2008-12-18 15:46:19) (reply to #2) Honestly I have not much insighted into libnotify myself. Talking to Alex Graf about this, we came up with the idea to teach the libnotify daemon how to forward messages to mumbles. It turns out that libnotify has support for theming, so it should be possible to create a theme that forwards all events to mumbles. Then we would not have to make a decision what we should use and could just switch and see what suits us best. This way we don't lose any functionality. In my opinion mumbles looks a lot smoother than the current libnotify messages. However I guess everything possible with mumbles could be tought to libnotify as well. Frankly said I don't want to make a decision here, what I care for is that the functionality described in this fate will be integrated into our products. #4: Stefan Assmann (assmannst) (2008-12-18 16:15:56) (reply to #3) Update: Talking to the developers I just learned that mumbles will intercept libnotify messages and handle them. There's a plugin for mumbles that does that. #5: Tejun Heo (teheo) (2008-12-22 13:28:54) I think that having the notion of what a "notification" is and how the user can take "action"s to it is quite important. There are multiple classes of notifications - some are ephemeral while others must get acknowledgement from the user. For example, download complete from firefox, new driver or codec installation suggestion and smartd reporting imminent disk failures can and probably should use the same notification mechanism but they need to be handled differently. For ephemeral notifications, I think what libnotify has been doing is fine but for anything else, we at least need a way for the user to ack or take actions accordingly and review and search unacked and acked notifications. I think having such notification mechanism will help us a lot as a distro as it will enable us to suggest things in not-too-intrusive yet friendly way. #6: M. S. (funkym) (2009-01-17 13:05:51) libnotify does all that and ontop is based on a desktop independent freedesktop specification (http://galago-project.org/specs/notification/index.php) for notifications to adopt by any desktop environment. It is written in C which is much more suitable for daemons and provides bindings for D- BUS, Mono, Python and Vala. Interactive notifications are already used widely; take PackageKit as an example. The developer of growl is also interested to improve libnotify as they are closely related and friends with the maintainer. A cross desktop friendly notifications utility in Python is the right thing to make things worse. If you want the bling just create a different theme for libnotify... What libnotify needs though is a bit of coding love to implement stuff like network notifications. Switch to Mumbles -> NO! Contribute to libnotify -> YES! $2c -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=305586

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[openFate 303532] Reduce size of updates for openSUSE Factory
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: Vitaliy Tomin (HighwayStar) Feature #303532, revision 19 Title: Reduce size of updates for openSUSE Factory Buildservice: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.0: Rejected by Stephan Kulow <coolo(a)novell.com> reject date: 2008-06-06 09:06:29 reject reason: not really attached to a specific openSUSE version Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.1: Rejected by Adrian Schröter <adrian(a)novell.com> reject date: 2008-11-06 16:10:03 reject reason: This is a build service feature, but no distribution feature. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important Requested by: Michael Loeffler (sprudel24) Interested: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) Interested: Gerald Pfeifer (geraldpfeifer) Interested: Klaas Freitag (kfreitag) Interested: Lukas Lipavsky (llipavsky) Interested: Maxi Schimmel (maxxs) Interested: Michal Marek (michal-m) Interested: Peter Poeml (poeml) Interested: Ruchir Brahmbhatt (ruchir) Interested: Ruediger Oertel (oertel) Interested: Stephan Kulow (coolo) Interested: Vincent Untz (vuntz) Interested: Vitaliy Tomin (highwaystar) + Interested: Vitaliy Tomin (highwaystar) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: Each update currently is around 2GB which is already much for broadband bandwith. For user with less bandwith it's by and large impossible to use Factory. Goal is to reduce size of updates and stay with frequent updates to offer latest software to the user. As we want more people using Factory it's usage needs to be conveniant. Discussion: #1: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2008-03-27 16:48:43) According to discussions with Rudi and mls, the delta setup on dist need to be changed to also contain the rpm header and the deltas need to be indexed in a way that zypp will see them. So we can still use drpmsync for internal distribution and put the deltas only in instsource for mirrors. #2: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) (2008-04-22 13:28:56) This will happen automatically once the remaining parts of libzypp deltarpm handling are finished. We only need to agree on the format. I will propose something today. #3: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) (2008-05-26 17:09:31) ZYpp side is done. The only thing that needs to be done is to generate the deltarpm metadata in factory. I will post link to documentation and examples shortly. #4: Gerald Pfeifer (geraldpfeifer) (2009-01-03 14:54:00) Opening this up for openSUSE.org. #5: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-01-16 08:24:42) ok, we discussed this a bit further. We plan to throw away builds that are equal to the previous build and publish deltas generated by the build clients if they are not equal. If a build is equal is to be defined, for now it's a shell script that checks various properties - and works acceptable for now. I rebuild a good portion of 11.1 without further changes and get 7345 binary rpms (including all subpackages). 5666 are considered equal by my current script (based on work by Michael Matz). And many of other packages are possible to fix, so they are equal too. So this gives for uneffected rebuilds a huge reduction of updates. The kernels and kmps are currently seen as !equal after an uneffected rebuild as they put the %release (rebuild counter) in many places. Not sure how much the script should work around such cases. But even for those the download size would reduce: kernel-default.i586 (with base and extra): 25.7MB to download deltas of it: 6.7MB (I think the kernel puts a lot of "rebuild on" info in the code) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=303532

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[openFate 303532] Reduce size of updates for openSUSE Factory
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: Vitaliy Tomin (HighwayStar) Feature #303532, revision 18 Title: Reduce size of updates for openSUSE Factory Buildservice: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.0: Rejected by Stephan Kulow <coolo(a)novell.com> reject date: 2008-06-06 09:06:29 reject reason: not really attached to a specific openSUSE version Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important openSUSE-11.1: Rejected by Adrian Schröter <adrian(a)novell.com> reject date: 2008-11-06 16:10:03 reject reason: This is a build service feature, but no distribution feature. Priority Requester: Important Projectmanager: Important Requested by: Michael Loeffler (sprudel24) Interested: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) Interested: Gerald Pfeifer (geraldpfeifer) Interested: Klaas Freitag (kfreitag) Interested: Lukas Lipavsky (llipavsky) Interested: Maxi Schimmel (maxxs) Interested: Michal Marek (michal-m) Interested: Peter Poeml (poeml) Interested: Ruchir Brahmbhatt (ruchir) Interested: Ruediger Oertel (oertel) Interested: Stephan Kulow (coolo) Interested: Vincent Untz (vuntz) + Interested: Vitaliy Tomin (highwaystar) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: Each update currently is around 2GB which is already much for broadband bandwith. For user with less bandwith it's by and large impossible to use Factory. Goal is to reduce size of updates and stay with frequent updates to offer latest software to the user. As we want more people using Factory it's usage needs to be conveniant. Discussion: #1: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2008-03-27 16:48:43) According to discussions with Rudi and mls, the delta setup on dist need to be changed to also contain the rpm header and the deltas need to be indexed in a way that zypp will see them. So we can still use drpmsync for internal distribution and put the deltas only in instsource for mirrors. #2: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) (2008-04-22 13:28:56) This will happen automatically once the remaining parts of libzypp deltarpm handling are finished. We only need to agree on the format. I will propose something today. #3: Duncan Mac-Vicar (dmacvicar) (2008-05-26 17:09:31) ZYpp side is done. The only thing that needs to be done is to generate the deltarpm metadata in factory. I will post link to documentation and examples shortly. #4: Gerald Pfeifer (geraldpfeifer) (2009-01-03 14:54:00) Opening this up for openSUSE.org. #5: Stephan Kulow (coolo) (2009-01-16 08:24:42) ok, we discussed this a bit further. We plan to throw away builds that are equal to the previous build and publish deltas generated by the build clients if they are not equal. If a build is equal is to be defined, for now it's a shell script that checks various properties - and works acceptable for now. I rebuild a good portion of 11.1 without further changes and get 7345 binary rpms (including all subpackages). 5666 are considered equal by my current script (based on work by Michael Matz). And many of other packages are possible to fix, so they are equal too. So this gives for uneffected rebuilds a huge reduction of updates. The kernels and kmps are currently seen as !equal after an uneffected rebuild as they put the %release (rebuild counter) in many places. Not sure how much the script should work around such cases. But even for those the download size would reduce: kernel-default.i586 (with base and extra): 25.7MB to download deltas of it: 6.7MB (I think the kernel puts a lot of "rebuild on" info in the code) -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=303532

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[openFate 305586] Desktop independent global notification framework
by fate_noreply＠suse.de 17 Jan '09

17 Jan '09

Feature changed by: M. S. (FunkyM) Feature #305586, revision 10 Title: Desktop independent global notification framework openSUSE-11.2: Evaluation Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Stefan Assmann (assmannst) Interested: Alexander Graf (algraf) Interested: Garrett LeSage (glesage) Interested: Guy Lunardi (glunardi) Interested: Jared Allen (jpallen) Interested: Matthias Eckermann (mge1512) Interested: Ruchir Brahmbhatt (ruchir) Interested: Siegfried Olschner (sdolschn) Interested: Stefan Fent (sfent) Interested: Tejun Heo (teheo) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: Our current desktop environments lack a good, configurable notification framework like Growl on Mac OS X. With D-BUS in place we could develop/integrate a framework that is desktop independent and could serve both KDE and GNOME applications the same way. This provides one step towards integrating both desktops more closely, thus making the user experience smoother. One such notification system is already in development. It's called mumbles (http://www.mumbles-project.org/) and provides lots of features similar to Growl. * It's customizable * Has theming support * Has plugin support * Desktop independent * Can use compiz for smooth display Using such a framework, more than just integrating desktops could be achieved: * Local notifications on hardware events * Remote notifications on login/hardware events * Easy scriptability for custom notifications Steps necessary to implement such a framework in openSUSE/SLE: * Install and configure framework by default * Integrate framework configuration in desktop environment * Make framework interactive so the user can react on events (optional) * Make applications D-Bus/Notification aware, so they send events, already available: Firefox, Thunderbird, Pidgin, several others Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: Such a framework would be a huge win for the general user experience, as it makes the desktop look more integrated and smooth. It's even a good idea for SLES, so administrators can be easily notified when events occur, without the hassle to set up syslog forwarding+parsing+notifying. Discussion: #2: Guy Lunardi (glunardi) (2008-12-18 08:32:18) I agree this is an important part of the desktop platform. How is this different from the libnotify solution which I believe we use for this purpose today? It is my PM understanding it does most everything you are describing including a CLI (notify-send). Applications such as NetworkManager, PowerManager, Pidgin and Banshee. Reading their FAQ, the reason for not using libnotify is that the author wanted to put more Python dependent software on their system :- ). Is this proposal about switching from libnotify to mumbles? (honestly asking, I have no opinion) #3: Stefan Assmann (assmannst) (2008-12-18 15:46:19) (reply to #2) Honestly I have not much insighted into libnotify myself. Talking to Alex Graf about this, we came up with the idea to teach the libnotify daemon how to forward messages to mumbles. It turns out that libnotify has support for theming, so it should be possible to create a theme that forwards all events to mumbles. Then we would not have to make a decision what we should use and could just switch and see what suits us best. This way we don't lose any functionality. In my opinion mumbles looks a lot smoother than the current libnotify messages. However I guess everything possible with mumbles could be tought to libnotify as well. Frankly said I don't want to make a decision here, what I care for is that the functionality described in this fate will be integrated into our products. #4: Stefan Assmann (assmannst) (2008-12-18 16:15:56) (reply to #3) Update: Talking to the developers I just learned that mumbles will intercept libnotify messages and handle them. There's a plugin for mumbles that does that. #5: Tejun Heo (teheo) (2008-12-22 13:28:54) I think that having the notion of what a "notification" is and how the user can take "action"s to it is quite important. There are multiple classes of notifications - some are ephemeral while others must get acknowledgement from the user. For example, download complete from firefox, new driver or codec installation suggestion and smartd reporting imminent disk failures can and probably should use the same notification mechanism but they need to be handled differently. For ephemeral notifications, I think what libnotify has been doing is fine but for anything else, we at least need a way for the user to ack or take actions accordingly and review and search unacked and acked notifications. I think having such notification mechanism will help us a lot as a distro as it will enable us to suggest things in not-too-intrusive yet friendly way. + #6: M. S. (funkym) (2009-01-17 13:05:51) + libnotify does all that and ontop is based on a desktop independent + freedesktop specification + (http://galago-project.org/specs/notification/index.php) for + notifications to adopt by any desktop environment. It is written in C + which is much more suitable for daemons and provides bindings for D- + BUS, Mono, Python and Vala. Interactive notifications are already used + widely; take PackageKit as an example. The developer of growl is also + interested to improve libnotify as they are closely related and friends + with the maintainer. A cross desktop friendly notifications utility in + Python is the right thing to make things worse. If you want the bling + just create a different theme for libnotify... What libnotify needs + though is a bit of coding love to implement stuff like network + notifications. Switch to Mumbles -> NO! Contribute to libnotify -> YES! + $2c -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/?rm=feature_show&id=305586

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