F12 is almost done !
I think we have produced one of our best releases yet. Thanks to everybody who has helped making it a great desktop. As always, there are many exciting new things: Abrt, Bluetooth networking and sound, Dracut, Empathy, IPv6, Thusnelda, etc. But we have also put a lot of effort into making this work well and look sharp. And it shows !
There are certainly still bugs to be found and fixed, and we will spend some time after the release mostly focused on handling incoming bugs, probably until around the time that GNOME 2.28.2 is released (right before Christmas).
Even so, there are some changes to the Desktop spin that I want to make early in the F13 cycle, and that I want to outline here:
- Drop the CD size limitation and target a larger usb stick. We have discussed this in the past. The main motivation for this is that we have to fight every release cycle to make things fit on a CD, and we don't have room to include our default office suite or example content.
- Include OpenOffice instead of abiword. OpenOffice is the premier open source office suite, and abiword is on the current live CD purely for size reasons.
- Use shotwell as the default photo management app instead of gthumb. This may be a bit of a surprise for some. Shotwell is a relatively new application, that is in Fedora only since F12. I have mentioned it on this list before. The 0.3.0 release that has just come out is very close to the feature set that we'd ideally expect to have in a default photo management app. It also starts very fast.
- Remove remaining Bluecurve icons from fedora-gnome-theme. This will probably leave some holes in the menus, and we'll need help from artists to fill those.
- Include example content. We've wanted to do this for a long time, but CD size limitations have always prohibited it. Now we can do it, but of course, we still need to collect good material. If you have proposals for suitably licensed documents, movies, music, etc that are interesting, cool or just funny, let us know ! It might also be a good idea to include some promotional material that could be of use for Fedora ambassadors. If you have proposals in this direction, let us know as well !
Beyond these organizational changes to the live image, I think a focus of our feature work for F13 will be around software installation and updates. Some of our thoughts for how installation and updates should ideally behave can be found on the wiki:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/Whiteboards/UpdateExperience http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/InstallExperience
For application installation, Martin Bacovsky has already started working on an online application database that is tied to pkgdb: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-October/msg01083.html
Some of us will be at FUDCon in a few weeks, where we can hopefully discuss these ideas in more depth.
Matthias
On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Matthias Clasen mclasen@redhat.com wrote:
- Drop the CD size limitation and target a larger usb stick. We have
discussed this in the past. The main motivation for this is that we have to fight every release cycle to make things fit on a CD, and we don't have room to include our default office suite or example content.
So...let me counter-propose this one with a multi-pronged solution:
* Continue trimming the default install. Adam did some work on removing Perl (where were we on that)? The base comps group has grown all sorts of arbitrary stuff. * Include a PackageKit "Complete your installation" hook post-install which does "yum groupinstall @gnome-desktop" * Elevate the livecd inside Fedora to be more of a primary product; if someone uploads a package which takes significantly more space, we ask them to revert or fix
And in addition to these, we generate a 2GB sized "full" install (hopefully @gnome-desktop fits in 2G...) which could also go on a 3+GB USB key or a DVD. This image is spun as the "Full" installer.
- Include OpenOffice instead of abiword. OpenOffice is the premier open
source office suite, and abiword is on the current live CD purely for size reasons.
So in the CD case, this would turn into "no openoffice or abiword" most likely. Practically speaking, it's always made very little sense to ship any app which saves important data to the local filesystem on a live CD. So the intent of this CD image is actually for installation (and recovery scenarios).
Beyond these organizational changes to the live image, I think a focus of our feature work for F13 will be around software installation and updates. Some of our thoughts for how installation and updates should ideally behave can be found on the wiki:
http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/Whiteboards/UpdateExperience http://www.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Desktop/InstallExperience
Yeah.
For application installation, Martin Bacovsky has already started working on an online application database that is tied to pkgdb: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-October/msg01083.html
We should be thinking about how this UI interacts with the Administration->Add/Remove.
On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 16:06 +0000, Colin Walters wrote:
On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Matthias Clasen mclasen@redhat.com wrote:
- Drop the CD size limitation and target a larger usb stick. We have
discussed this in the past. The main motivation for this is that we have to fight every release cycle to make things fit on a CD, and we don't have room to include our default office suite or example content.
So...let me counter-propose this one with a multi-pronged solution:
- Continue trimming the default install. Adam did some work on
removing Perl (where were we on that)? The base comps group has grown all sorts of arbitrary stuff.
* Include a PackageKit "Complete your installation" hook post-install
which does "yum groupinstall @gnome-desktop"
- Elevate the livecd inside Fedora to be more of a primary product; if
someone uploads a package which takes significantly more space, we ask them to revert or fix
This is all fine and cool, but it is not going to help at all around the basic fact that an ever-growing percentage of the cd (is it 30% ?, maybe even more) is eaten by localization (translations, fonts, dictionaries). And we are still not going to be able to include example content, eg. a movie to try totem.
And in addition to these, we generate a 2GB sized "full" install (hopefully @gnome-desktop fits in 2G...) which could also go on a 3+GB USB key or a DVD. This image is spun as the "Full" installer.
Noo, I don't want to see more alternatives. We already have the big problem right now that people choose to download the largely unmaintained DVD, just because it is bigger, and thus must be better...
Also, how exactly do you think a 'full' install is going to differ from the regular live image ? Mostly, it is going to add redundancy and things that we didn't include for a reason, no ?
I don't think we want to have a situation of Live CD - minimal install, missing important things Full DVD - all the crap
I'd rather see us work on a single image and try to make that as good as we can, instead of working on two suboptimal images.
On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Matthias Clasen mclasen@redhat.com wrote:
This is all fine and cool, but it is not going to help at all around the basic fact that an ever-growing percentage of the cd (is it 30% ?, maybe even more) is eaten by localization (translations, fonts, dictionaries).
Yes, we will have to tackle that at some point. I am hopeful that it will get some work done at the underlying OS (rpm etc) level because it seems pretty important for virt/appliance-OS scenarios, and those people make money.
And in addition to these, we generate a 2GB sized "full" install (hopefully @gnome-desktop fits in 2G...) which could also go on a 3+GB USB key or a DVD. This image is spun as the "Full" installer.
Noo, I don't want to see more alternatives. We already have the big problem right now that people choose to download the largely unmaintained DVD, just because it is bigger, and thus must be better...
By "DVD" you mean Standaconda-on-DVD, right? My guess is the biggest reason is it's simply listed first, but yes; once we have a larger Live image, that obviates one of the reasons Standadonda DVD exists[1]
Also, how exactly do you think a 'full' install is going to differ from the regular live image ? Mostly, it is going to add redundancy and things that we didn't include for a reason, no ?
No, a Full install is @gnome-desktop.
I don't think we want to have a situation of Live CD - minimal install, missing important things Full DVD - all the crap
I'd rather see us work on a single image and try to make that as good as we can, instead of working on two suboptimal images.
I see it more like we should be sure that @gnome-desktop is good, and then work within the constraints of the CD size to provide the best that we can do.
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Desktop/Whiteboards/UnifiedInsta...
fre 2009-11-13 klockan 17:30 +0000 skrev Colin Walters:
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/w/index.php?title=Desktop/Whiteboards/UnifiedInsta...
"Create a DVD-sized Live image that also includes all of its installed RPMs in standalone .rpm file form"
A live image + drpm:s that - combined with the live image - give you the original rpms, should be a possibility. It would just be incredibly slow.
/abo
On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 16:06 +0000, Colin Walters wrote:
On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 3:24 PM, Matthias Clasen mclasen@redhat.com wrote:
- Drop the CD size limitation and target a larger usb stick. We have
discussed this in the past. The main motivation for this is that we have to fight every release cycle to make things fit on a CD, and we don't have room to include our default office suite or example content.
So...let me counter-propose this one with a multi-pronged solution:
- Continue trimming the default install. Adam did some work on
removing Perl (where were we on that)? The base comps group has grown all sorts of arbitrary stuff.
I stopped investigating the perl thing too closely once we dropped below 670M, but my recollection was that we were within one or two packages of being rid of it. The F12 live ISOs are currently 654M for i386 and 656M for amd64, which is pretty impressive considering where we were during the rawhide cycle.
There's only really one awkward perl dep chain left: anaconda's mk-images.x86 calls syslinux' isohybrid, which is a perl script. mk-images used to be in a separate scripts subpackage, but that got re-merged during F12 by Jeremy shortly before he left; I don't know why. The scripts that compose the anaconda runtime images and the anaconda runtime itself are logically separate, and I don't think there's any real objection to splitting them back off, so I'll look at getting that done for F13.
I think we should do both things though. We should keep refining the packaging to fit as much good stuff in as little space as possible, but we should be targeting a larger image than 700M.
- Elevate the livecd inside Fedora to be more of a primary product; if
someone uploads a package which takes significantly more space, we ask them to revert or fix
What's the state of our tools for monitoring this? My guess is "dire".
- ajax
Adam Jackson (ajax@redhat.com) said:
- Elevate the livecd inside Fedora to be more of a primary product; if
someone uploads a package which takes significantly more space, we ask them to revert or fix
What's the state of our tools for monitoring this? My guess is "dire".
There are no tools, AFAIK. There are daily composes, and one can then examine the images by hand.
Bill
On Tue, 2009-11-17 at 10:16 -0500, Adam Jackson wrote:
What's the state of our tools for monitoring this? My guess is "dire".
Not very dire at all. This falls in the AutoQA realm, in the post-build checking. One of the post-build checks we can do is size changes, comparing the size of the new build to the size of the old build. If the size grows significantly (probably a % amount) we throw up red flags.
Taking it further, when AutoQA is rockin' and rollin' we could trigger post-build to see if a given package is in the Desktop set, and if so, use yum to get a size estimate of the entire desktop set to see if the desktop set is pushed over the size limit.
We have lots of good stuff cooking and coming soon. I really think our talks about it at FUDCon will make this clear.
On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 10:24 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
- Include OpenOffice instead of abiword. OpenOffice is the premier open
source office suite, and abiword is on the current live CD purely for size reasons.
- Use shotwell as the default photo management app instead of gthumb.
This may be a bit of a surprise for some. Shotwell is a relatively new application, that is in Fedora only since F12. I have mentioned it on this list before. The 0.3.0 release that has just come out is very close to the feature set that we'd ideally expect to have in a default photo management app. It also starts very fast.
- Remove remaining Bluecurve icons from fedora-gnome-theme. This will
probably leave some holes in the menus, and we'll need help from artists to fill those.
I have now made these changes in comps / spin-kickstarts, so that have some nightly spins before Fudcon to see how these changes look in practice - my own build with these changes came out around 850M.
I didn't enact changes to cut the discussion short, though. I do think that the unified installer idea is interesting and should be explored further, maybe at Fudcon.
Matthias
On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 10:24 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
- Drop the CD size limitation and target a larger usb stick. We have
discussed this in the past. The main motivation for this is that we have to fight every release cycle to make things fit on a CD, and we don't have room to include our default office suite or example content.
Resurrecting an oooooold thread here:
The above change has been made, and we keep telling people via IRC and mailing lists to get with the program already, of COURSE the live ISOs don't fit on CDs any more...but AFAICT it hasn't actually been announced very loudly anywhere. This thread is the best 'announcement' I could find.
Should we announce this a bit more widely, with maybe a blog post by someone prominent, a mail to the -announce lists (pick any one or two :>), and something in the Release Notes?
On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 09:14:33AM -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
On Fri, 2009-11-13 at 10:24 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
- Drop the CD size limitation and target a larger usb stick. We have
discussed this in the past. The main motivation for this is that we have to fight every release cycle to make things fit on a CD, and we don't have room to include our default office suite or example content.
Resurrecting an oooooold thread here:
The above change has been made, and we keep telling people via IRC and mailing lists to get with the program already, of COURSE the live ISOs don't fit on CDs any more...but AFAICT it hasn't actually been announced very loudly anywhere. This thread is the best 'announcement' I could find.
Should we announce this a bit more widely, with maybe a blog post by someone prominent, a mail to the -announce lists (pick any one or two :>), and something in the Release Notes?
Also see: https://fedorahosted.org/fesco/ticket/354
-Toshio
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