[wayland] Applications are unable to grab input
by Christian Stadelmann
One main difference between x11 and wayland is that in x11 all applications receive all input whereas in wayland the compositor receives input and decides which application may receive it.
This causes a major issue with application which need input grab for running or showing a nested desktop. This affects e.g. GUI virtual machines (SPICE clients), RDP clients, VNC clients, nested kwin/gnome-shell/whatever. See also: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1285770 . Games might also be affected, I don't know.
I'm posting this here to raise attention because
1. to fix this we need another protocol (extension)
2. this issue can't be fixed in a single application, it needs the whole stack (wayland library, compositors, affected applications) to change
Compared to the other bugs in "WaylandRelated" lists [1] [2], these bugs need architecture design, not just fixing bugs in one package.
I don't know whether this mailing list is the right place to discuss an issue like this. If you know better, please tell me.
[1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=1277927&hide_resolv...
[2] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=757579&hide_resolved=1
6 years, 1 month
I asked Hacker News what developers want from a desktop, and this is
what they said
by Matthew Miller
The startup-scene dev message board Hacker News has an "Ask HN"
section, and I used it to ask what developers want from a desktop in
2017. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12703836> Here's a summary
of what they said:
* Make upgrades painless.
This is often presented as "make it LTS or rolling", but in digging
further, it's almost always "I don't want to have to devote a day of
downtime to upgrading twice a year".
* Other improvements to updates (not necessarily upgrades): make them
happen in the background, and provide a way to roll back if something
isn't good. Also this for user tweaks rather than just updates.
* Give the ability to have package X move at a pace I choose. Separate
dev stack from base OS.
* Hardware compatibility just works. (Wifi, sound, HDMI, graphics,
suspend, etc.)
* Mixed DPI multi-monitor support.
* Look nice, better fonts, general usability, etc.
* Cross-distro packaging
* Containerized GUI apps
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader
6 years, 6 months
Fedora Release Tools Demo (Canceled) - Written Status
by Amanda Carter
Hi folks, due to travel and various obstacles, we're not able to host a recorded demo this month. Instead we've put together a status report that includes some additional highlights we think you might be interested in. If you have feedback and/or think this works well, I'd love to know b/c I think this vehicle covers more information than a demo alone so I might do both in the future if it's worth it.
Apologies for missing the actual show and tell - if there's anything you'd like to see specifically, I'm sure we can arrange something.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ReleaseEngineering/StatusReport#13SEP2016
--
Amanda Carter
6 years, 6 months
Re: DNF and PackageKit background data usage
by Bastien Nocera
----- Original Message -----
> On 31 Oct 2016, at 11:41, Richard Hughes <hughsient(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 30 October 2016 at 01:26, Adam Williamson <adamwill(a)fedoraproject.org>
> > wrote:
> >> 1) Both dnf and GNOME Software / PackageKit default to performing
> >> fairly data-hungry transactions in the background, out of the box,
> >> without telling you about it. GNOME's is particularly bad, as it will
> >> happily download available updates in the background, which can be
> >> gigabytes worth of data.
> >
> > If you're on an "unmetered" connection type...
> >
>
> How does a connection become "unmetered"? It can't just be on interface type,
> as I have metered connections on all interface types, so presumably you use
> some form of web service to distinguish "metered" from "unmetered" based on
> a list of known IP blocks?
>
> Or do you simply assume that all connections are metered until the user says
> otherwise?
They're metered unless you either tag them as unmetered, or hints are provided
to NetworkManager by what you're connected to. For example, Android tethering
is automatically tagged as metered as Android provides a hint in its DHCP
configuration.
6 years, 7 months
DNF and PackageKit background data usage
by Adam Williamson
Hi folks!
I kinda hate kicking off discussions like this without having a solid
solution to propose or being able to promise to work on one, but this
really seems important. Unfortunately I can't claim I'm gonna have time
to do any concrete work on it, though I'd really *like* to. But I
thought it would be worthwhile to kick around still; perhaps someone
else will be inspired.
I just read Hedayat's review of Fedora 25 Beta:
https://hedayatvk.wordpress.com/2016/10/30/fedora-25-beta
and this really jumped out at me:
"And, if you care about your internet usage, make sure that you disable
both dnf makecache timer, and stop PackageKit from downloading updates
automatically. I don’t allow a new Fedora installation to access
internet before doing these, as it might just eat a considerable amount
of data."
There's two things I think are somewhat unfortunate here:
1) Both dnf and GNOME Software / PackageKit default to performing
fairly data-hungry transactions in the background, out of the box,
without telling you about it. GNOME's is particularly bad, as it will
happily download available updates in the background, which can be
gigabytes worth of data. DNF only updates its metadata caches (on a
systemd timer), but even that could be behaviour that users in certain
circumstances really really do not want.
2) There is no particularly obvious or visible mechanism for a 'typical
user' (or, if you prefer, many of the target 'personas' for our
flavors) to configure this behaviour...and you have to figure out two
completely *different* configuration mechanisms in order to shut off
both.
I think this is kind of poor behaviour on our part and we should make
it better. Do I have a specific concrete proposal? No. But I do have
some vague ideas.
* We could have some kind of configuration interface appear on install
/ first boot. This would require integration with anaconda and/or
initial-setup and gnome-initial-setup.
* We could invert the defaults and have the apps ask the user if they
want to enable data-hungry background operations on first interaction:
the first time you use dnf (without -y) it could say 'hey, do you want
to turn on background cache refreshes?' Similarly, the first time you
run GNOME Software or click on an update notification, it could say
'hey, do you want to turn on background update downloads'?
* We could at least make both of them respect one single config setting
for 'do data hungry background operations' (this is kinda one small
part of the bigger issue that is 'dnf and PK-based stuff don't share
any configuration aside from repo definitions').
Anyone have thoughts on this? Any DNF or Software devs want to say I'm
totally wrong and an idiot? Anyone inspired to do something more
concrete than a mailing list post? :)
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
6 years, 7 months
Re: DNF and PackageKit background data usage
by Adam Williamson
On Mon, 2016-10-31 at 11:55 +0000, Tom Hughes wrote:
> On 31/10/16 11:41, Richard Hughes wrote:
> > On 30 October 2016 at 01:26, Adam Williamson <adamwill(a)fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> > > 1) Both dnf and GNOME Software / PackageKit default to performing
> > > fairly data-hungry transactions in the background, out of the box,
> > > without telling you about it. GNOME's is particularly bad, as it will
> > > happily download available updates in the background, which can be
> > > gigabytes worth of data.
> >
> > If you're on an "unmetered" connection type...
>
> The problem, as I believe has been repeatedly explained, is that you
> don't really have any idea whether the connection is metered. Yes you
> may be trying to guess by considering things like 3G connections as
> metered but that is an extremely poor proxy for whether a connection is
> metered.
>
> It's not something that can be tied to connection types anyway. A wifi
> interface might be unmetered if I'm at home but metered if I'm in a cafe
> or hotel. An ethernet interface might be metered at certain times of day
> and not at others.
>
> The idea that you can programatically determine, using a simple
> heuristic, if a connection will be metered is just nonsense.
One of the bugs has a note I was not aware of before: there's actually
a DHCP value that can be sent by the server to denote a metered
connection. If that's actually widely respected, and set by phone wifi
AP applications and the like, it could be pretty accurate. Not perfect,
but better than heuristics. I've no idea how widely it's used in the
real world, though.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
6 years, 7 months
Re: DNF and PackageKit background data usage
by Bastien Nocera
----- Original Message -----
> On 31/10/16 12:18, Bastien Nocera wrote:
>
> > They're metered unless you either tag them as unmetered, or hints are
> > provided
> > to NetworkManager by what you're connected to. For example, Android
> > tethering
> > is automatically tagged as metered as Android provides a hint in its DHCP
> > configuration.
>
> What if you're not even using NetworkManager?
>
> Only my laptop, which needs the easy UI of Network Manager to connect to
> different networks, uses NM while all my non-mobile machines just use
> systemd-networkd to manage the network.
>
> So how do I tag a connection as unmetered with systemd-networkd?
You can't. You get a box of bits if you start replacing parts of the
Workstation experience, eg. the network status icon also won't work
as expected. That's par for the course.
> More to the point how do I tag it as unmetered at certain times of day...
Right now, you'd script it.
6 years, 7 months
Fedora 25 Final blocker status mail #1
by Adam Williamson
Hi folks! The Fedora 25 Final freeze is fast approaching (it's 2016-11-
01), so it's time for a blocker status mail. As there's only five
blockers, I'll skip the tl;dr summary, the mail is quite short anyhow.
Bug-by-bug detail
=================
1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1378156 - python-blivet - POST
TypeError: Must be number, not str
Funny story - I started writing this mail yesterday afternoon,
got distracted trying to straighten out the three different iSCSI
blockers that were listed at that time, and wound up spending all night
fixing iSCSI. So, I've sent a fix for this, it's going through review
now. We'll need dlehman or vpodzime to merge it and do an F25
build+update, then QA will have to test and karma the update.
2. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1376471 - gnome-shell - POST
global menu can't be used for 15-30 seconds, startup notification stuck, missing item in alt+tab (on wayland)
The POST status here seems to reflect that Florian has attached some
patches to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=768531
(the upstream bug). Presumably those need reviewing and porting
downstream, CCing Rui as he was mentioned in the RHBZ.
3. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1381996 - libblockdev - ON_QA
TypeError: SynchronizedABCMeta object argument after ** must be a mapping, not NoneType (Intel firmware RAID discovery fails when RAID set is 'migrating')
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2016-4720fedecc should fix this and just needs karma. You kinda have to build an
installer image (or at least an updates.img, but I'm not sure
libblockdev in an updates.img really works) to test it, though.
4. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1370222 - sddm - NEW
KDE doesn't start if hostname changes during boot due to network (infamous xauth issue)
There does not seem to have been any movement on this since it was
accepted as a blocker on 2016-09-19. We need KDE team to look at it.
5. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1382001 - sddm - NEW
Switching between users doesn't work and freezes the desktop
Similarly there's been no response from KDE team since this was
accepted as a blocker on 2016-10-17. We need them to take a look at it.
That's a pretty short blocker list for 4 days before freeze, which is
great, but there are still some tests we have not run, so QA folks,
please do help make sure all Alpha, Beta and Final tests have been run
on a recent candidate. You can use
https://www.happyassassin.net/testcase_stats/25/ to help you with this
- it shows a 'history' for each test case, it makes it easy to spot
ones that need running. Thanks everyone!
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
http://www.happyassassin.net
6 years, 7 months
Proposal for adding Chrome to software available in GNOME Software
by Christian Schaller
Hi,
So as a first formal step since we instituted the new 3rd party software policy
I am proposing Chrome. We been communicating with Google for a little bit and things
are looking good in terms of getting the things we need included in the Chrome repository.
Once we have gotten this appstream patch merged (https://codereview.chromium.org/2424093003)
we should have all the pieces needed to include Chrome as a third party application in
GNOME Software. So I want to propose that we add discussing this to the next workstation
meeting agenda.
Christian
6 years, 7 months
