5:25 p.m.
There are some changes in GDM and GNOME3 that affect our live cd setup,
and will require some changes:
GDM no longer has a keyboard or language chooser. They were mainly added
to cater to livecd must-choose-before login scenarios, but they proved
to be really problematic ever since we added them, since they cause a
conflict between multiple configuration sources (system keyboard layout
vs stored user configuration vs login screen choice, etc). Without these
choosers, it doesn't really make sense anymore to stop at the login
screen with a time login, and we should consider to just autologin
directly to the user session. The session will start in English, and
users who need a different language will have to select the language in
System Settings > Region and re-login. Keyboard configuration is less
problematic, since it can be changed without requiring a re-login.
We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no immediately
obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to add
it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
(the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
I'd like to propose is to simply autostart the installer. That will make
it hard to overlook, and seems to nicely emphasize the main role of the
live cd as a convenient way to install Fedora.
Thoughts ?
Matthias
6:48 p.m.
On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 23:25 +0000, Matthias Clasen wrote:
We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no immediately
obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to add
it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
(the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
I'd like to propose is to simply autostart the installer. That will make
it hard to overlook, and seems to nicely emphasize the main role of the
live cd as a convenient way to install Fedora.
Autostarting the installer would have been disastrous during the classes
I've taught kids using live media USB sticks. At the beginning of the
class I would have had to remind the kids to not click on it and destroy
the lab machines we were so kindly allowed to use.
As long as it doesn't effect live usb....
~m
7:46 p.m.
On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 19:48 -0500, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Autostarting the installer would have been disastrous during the
classes
I've taught kids using live media USB sticks. At the beginning of the
class I would have had to remind the kids to not click on it and destroy
the lab machines we were so kindly allowed to use.
Interesting. I guess that means for your use case it would actually be
advantageous to 'bury' the install option somewhere in the overview or
user menu. Since if it sits prominently on the desktop, you still have
to tell the kids not to click it, right ?
7:32 p.m.
On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 18:25 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
There are some changes in GDM and GNOME3 that affect our live cd
setup,
and will require some changes:
GDM no longer has a keyboard or language chooser. They were mainly added
to cater to livecd must-choose-before login scenarios, but they proved
to be really problematic ever since we added them, since they cause a
conflict between multiple configuration sources (system keyboard layout
vs stored user configuration vs login screen choice, etc). Without these
choosers, it doesn't really make sense anymore to stop at the login
screen with a time login, and we should consider to just autologin
directly to the user session. The session will start in English, and
users who need a different language will have to select the language in
System Settings > Region and re-login. Keyboard configuration is less
problematic, since it can be changed without requiring a re-login.
This seems pretty reasonable and is actually what all the other desktops
do already. As a wishlist item, it may be nice to have an applet for
language / keyboard layout switching in the default configuration (as,
ew, international editions of Windows do).
We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no immediately
obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to add
it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
(the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
I'd like to propose is to simply autostart the installer. That will make
it hard to overlook, and seems to nicely emphasize the main role of the
live cd as a convenient way to install Fedora.
As you didn't like the idea of displaying a Nautilus window with the
Desktop folder contents by default, that may be the best other choice
for me, though I do worry about people feeling 'compelled' to install
with that setup. It does seem like a decent option, though.
--
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org
http://www.happyassassin.net
7:35 p.m.
On 03/04/2011 06:25 PM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
There are some changes in GDM and GNOME3 that affect our live cd
setup,
and will require some changes:
...
We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no immediately
obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to add
it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
(the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
I'd like to propose is to simply autostart the installer. That will make
it hard to overlook, and seems to nicely emphasize the main role of the
live cd as a convenient way to install Fedora.
Thoughts ?
Matthias
What do you think about the desktop background containing a msg
something like:
This is a live installation of the Gnome desktop. It is a temporary
installation that has not touched your hard drives. To install to your
hard drive, open a terminal and type "install-desktop" (no quotes). Enjoy!!
--
Regards,
OldFart
7:57 p.m.
Am Freitag, den 04.03.2011, 18:25 -0500 schrieb Matthias Clasen:
There are some changes in GDM and GNOME3 that affect our live cd
setup,
and will require some changes:
GDM no longer has a keyboard or language chooser. They were mainly added
to cater to livecd must-choose-before login scenarios, but they proved
to be really problematic ever since we added them, since they cause a
conflict between multiple configuration sources (system keyboard layout
vs stored user configuration vs login screen choice, etc).
What exactly were the problems here? User configuration overwrites
system configuration and the choice from the login overwrites the user's
setting since it is more recent. There may have been technical problems
under the hood, but I think GDM solved them very well and the users were
happy. They will be way unhappier with what you are proposing.
Without these
choosers, it doesn't really make sense anymore to stop at the login
screen with a time login, and we should consider to just autologin
directly to the user session. The session will start in English, and
users who need a different language will have to select the language in
System Settings > Region and re-login. Keyboard configuration is less
problematic, since it can be changed without requiring a re-login.
Only ~ 40% of our users are using en_US. Forcing the majority to log in
to a language they don't use and perhaps not even understand seems very
drastic to me.
I have to admit that this is what LXDM on my LXDE spin does, too, but I
know people see it as the biggest problem of the spin and really hate
it. QA told me that it's a major problem and that's why I'm working on
changing this for F15.
We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no immediately
obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to add
it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
(the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
I'd like to propose is to simply autostart the installer. That will make
it hard to overlook, and seems to nicely emphasize the main role of the
live cd as a convenient way to install Fedora.
I don't think this is the main role of the live CD and if the desktop
team had come to FUDCon Tempe they knew that many of our contributors
and developers agree with me.
As an ambassador I want to showcase Fedora and the people who come to
our booth want to try it. This is the main role of the live CD. If
people wanted to install it straight away they could also use the
installation DVD with all it's advantages
The anaconda folks are already unhappy with the installation from live
CD and I guess advertising the installer so prominent will not make
things better.
Thoughts ?
Yes, a lot, besides the ones I already wrote down.
First of all I'd like to see an open discussion but you are stating
facts: "GDM no longer has...", "We no longer show...". It seems the
desktop team already agreed on this and I wonder where the discussion
took place.
Having this discussion here is a good start, but as GDM is not only used
by the desktop live CD I'd like to see all affected parties involved.
Regards,
Christoph
8:46 p.m.
On Sat, 2011-03-05 at 02:57 +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
Am Freitag, den 04.03.2011, 18:25 -0500 schrieb Matthias Clasen:
> There are some changes in GDM and GNOME3 that affect our live cd setup,
> and will require some changes:
>
> GDM no longer has a keyboard or language chooser. They were mainly added
> to cater to livecd must-choose-before login scenarios, but they proved
> to be really problematic ever since we added them, since they cause a
> conflict between multiple configuration sources (system keyboard layout
> vs stored user configuration vs login screen choice, etc).
What exactly were the problems here? User configuration overwrites
system configuration and the choice from the login overwrites the user's
setting since it is more recent. There may have been technical problems
under the hood, but I think GDM solved them very well and the users were
happy. They will be way unhappier with what you are proposing.
There's really quite a few problems.
gdm offered only a limited choice of a single layout with no variants,
which was sufficient for entering your password, but then some people
were upset that they had to select their keyboard layout again in the
session, so we made the gdm choice transfer in the session. That in turn
made people upset who have a complicated, multi-layout or variant-using
setup in the session and did not want that overwritten. Then we made it
so that the gdm layout is only added to the existing session
configuration, then we made further tweaks ... and still, it was never
right.
Ultimatively, 99% of all passwords out there consist of ascii only, so
why not keep it simple and forego all this crazyness ?
> Without these
> choosers, it doesn't really make sense anymore to stop at the login
> screen with a time login, and we should consider to just autologin
> directly to the user session. The session will start in English, and
> users who need a different language will have to select the language in
> System Settings > Region and re-login. Keyboard configuration is less
> problematic, since it can be changed without requiring a re-login.
Only ~ 40% of our users are using en_US. Forcing the majority to log in
to a language they don't use and perhaps not even understand seems very
drastic to me.
This is really only an issue for the live cd, though. In a regular
installation, it is just a one-time annoyance. You log in once, select
your language, and you are all set. Next time you log in, you get your
language right away.
9:46 a.m.
On 03/04/2011 09:46 PM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
On Sat, 2011-03-05 at 02:57 +0100, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> Am Freitag, den 04.03.2011, 18:25 -0500 schrieb Matthias Clasen:
>> There are some changes in GDM and GNOME3 that affect our live cd setup,
>> and will require some changes:
>>
>> GDM no longer has a keyboard or language chooser. They were mainly added
>> to cater to livecd must-choose-before login scenarios, but they proved
>> to be really problematic ever since we added them, since they cause a
>> conflict between multiple configuration sources (system keyboard layout
>> vs stored user configuration vs login screen choice, etc).
>
> What exactly were the problems here? User configuration overwrites
> system configuration and the choice from the login overwrites the user's
> setting since it is more recent. There may have been technical problems
> under the hood, but I think GDM solved them very well and the users were
> happy. They will be way unhappier with what you are proposing.
There's really quite a few problems.
gdm offered only a limited choice of a single layout with no variants,
which was sufficient for entering your password, but then some people
were upset that they had to select their keyboard layout again in the
session, so we made the gdm choice transfer in the session. That in turn
made people upset who have a complicated, multi-layout or variant-using
setup in the session and did not want that overwritten. Then we made it
so that the gdm layout is only added to the existing session
configuration, then we made further tweaks ... and still, it was never
right.
Ultimatively, 99% of all passwords out there consist of ascii only, so
why not keep it simple and forego all this crazyness ?
>> Without these
>> choosers, it doesn't really make sense anymore to stop at the login
>> screen with a time login, and we should consider to just autologin
>> directly to the user session. The session will start in English, and
>> users who need a different language will have to select the language in
>> System Settings > Region and re-login. Keyboard configuration is less
>> problematic, since it can be changed without requiring a re-login.
>
> Only ~ 40% of our users are using en_US. Forcing the majority to log in
> to a language they don't use and perhaps not even understand seems very
> drastic to me.
This is really only an issue for the live cd, though. In a regular
installation, it is just a one-time annoyance. You log in once, select
your language, and you are all set. Next time you log in, you get your
language right away.
which get's you back to what's the purpose of the LiveCD. Isn't the
primary use case to give users an impression of what they would get with
an install - without taking risk and time to actually install ?
I wonder what kind of impression you provide by completely ignoring the
fact that they might not use en_US or understand English well enough to
*find* and *use* the language settings. Not to mention the relogin -
this is juts so 1995
If you want to ignore a minority of users requirements, then do exactly
this and don't change anything. I didn't consider the outlined use cases
overly relevant for the LiveCD, but I might be missing something.
Just my 5 cents
Lars
10:11 a.m.
On Sat, Mar 05, 2011 at 10:46:17 -0500,
Lars Herrmann <herrmann(a)redhat.com> wrote:
which get's you back to what's the purpose of the LiveCD.
Isn't the
primary use case to give users an impression of what they would get with
an install - without taking risk and time to actually install ?
Note that there isn't just one livecd. Even if you are mainly referring to
the Desktop spin, there are a few other spins that use it as a base. The
use cases for these different spins could be quite different.
As the maintainer of the games spin, which is based off the Desktop spin,
my view of the purpose is that is is for demoing Fedora. I don't think
running off optical media is a good way to use it. It may also be used for
installs. However, I also use custom spins of USB devices, so I don't
need to have as much trust in strange PCs when I want to use them and so
that I can use Fedora instead of Windows. In this latter case I don't want
to be asked about installs every boot.
11:36 p.m.
On 03/04/2011 05:25 PM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
An alternative
I'd like to propose is to simply autostart the installer. That will make
it hard to overlook, and seems to nicely emphasize the main role of the
live cd as a convenient way to install Fedora.
I'm not sure about this solution.
Sometimes my use case for a Live Image is for troubleshooting a broken
system. I don't wish to install Fedora in this case. I realize I could
just 1) cancel out of the installer 2) ignore it or 3) roll my own Live
image, but I'm not so sure I am alone.
I'm not sure about Gnome 3's design of a icon-less desktop either. I run
Gnome 2 with no icons, but this is my personal choice. Once Gnome 3
widgets (or whatever they'll be called) start spawning I won't be
surprised if someone makes a desktop icon widget. I realize this topic
is for another thread so I'll stop here.
2:29 a.m.
pe, 2011-03-04 kello 18:25 -0500, Matthias Clasen kirjoitti:
The session will start in English, and
users who need a different language will have to select the language in
System Settings > Region and re-login.
This will make things very difficult for users who don't know English
well. With the previous version of GDM, we could at least explain the
language selection with one screenshot, because the login screen was so
simple.
If GDM won't support language selection any more, then we should come up
with another simple way for choosing the language before login. Maybe in
the GRUB screen, like Ubuntu apparently does it?
--
Ville-Pekka Vainio
6:56 a.m.
How about having desktop Icons *JUST* for the Live CD? That way, the
installer link can still be prominently shown. Let the installer turn them
off if that is what we want for the installed versions?
(I also like the convenience of desktop icons and I suspect they will become
default again a few releases down the road.)
12:46 p.m.
Am Samstag, den 05.03.2011, 10:29 +0200 schrieb Ville-Pekka Vainio:
pe, 2011-03-04 kello 18:25 -0500, Matthias Clasen kirjoitti:
> The session will start in English, and
> users who need a different language will have to select the language in
> System Settings > Region and re-login.
This will make things very difficult for users who don't know English
well. With the previous version of GDM, we could at least explain the
language selection with one screenshot, because the login screen was so
simple.
If GDM won't support language selection any more, then we should come up
with another simple way for choosing the language before login. Maybe in
the GRUB screen, like Ubuntu apparently does it?
--
Ville-Pekka Vainio
The language selection in the ISOLINUX screen sounds like a good
solution. It's what openSUSE and Ubuntu are doing as well and therefore
shouldn't be too hard to implement.
It would also have the huge advantage to solve this problem for the
other desktops as well, who have not yet found a way of dealing with
this it seems (KDE, XFCE and LXDE all autologin you to an english
desktop).
CCing the spins list as this might be an interesting thread for them.
Regards,
Julian
11:26 a.m.
On Sun, 2011-03-06 at 19:46 +0100, Julian Aloofi wrote:
Am Samstag, den 05.03.2011, 10:29 +0200 schrieb Ville-Pekka Vainio:
> pe, 2011-03-04 kello 18:25 -0500, Matthias Clasen kirjoitti:
> > The session will start in English, and
> > users who need a different language will have to select the language in
> > System Settings > Region and re-login.
>
> This will make things very difficult for users who don't know English
> well. With the previous version of GDM, we could at least explain the
> language selection with one screenshot, because the login screen was so
> simple.
>
> If GDM won't support language selection any more, then we should come up
> with another simple way for choosing the language before login. Maybe in
> the GRUB screen, like Ubuntu apparently does it?
>
> --
> Ville-Pekka Vainio
>
The language selection in the ISOLINUX screen sounds like a good
solution. It's what openSUSE and Ubuntu are doing as well and therefore
shouldn't be too hard to implement.
It would also have the huge advantage to solve this problem for the
other desktops as well, who have not yet found a way of dealing with
this it seems (KDE, XFCE and LXDE all autologin you to an english
desktop).
CCing the spins list as this might be an interesting thread for them.
Language selection before GDM is a good idea, but it should be done in
an X interface, so we can use translations, multiple windows, etc.
Rather than a straight list of languages written in a script that the
users might not know, with fonts that would leave to be desired.
To put it another way, it should be firstboot with only one question.
8:24 a.m.
On Fri, 04.03.11 18:25, Matthias Clasen (mclasen(a)redhat.com) wrote:
it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
(the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
Hmm, is there a reason why the favourite icons don't have anything
resembling tooltips? It's kinda annoying that there's no way to figure
out what an icon starts unless you click on it. I for example was
wondering about the shotwell icon (which is apparently enabled by
default) what it was for until i clicked on it.
Lennart
--
Lennart Poettering - Red Hat, Inc.
8:40 a.m.
On Sat, Mar 5, 2011 at 3:24 PM, Lennart Poettering <mzerqung(a)0pointer.de> wrote:
On Fri, 04.03.11 18:25, Matthias Clasen (mclasen(a)redhat.com) wrote:
> it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
> (the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
> the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
Hmm, is there a reason why the favourite icons don't have anything
resembling tooltips? It's kinda annoying that there's no way to figure
out what an icon starts unless you click on it. I for example was
wondering about the shotwell icon (which is apparently enabled by
default) what it was for until i clicked on it.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=642871
7:29 p.m.
On 03/04/2011 03:25 PM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no immediately
obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to add
it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
(the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
I'd like to propose is to simply autostart the installer. That will make
it hard to overlook, and seems to nicely emphasize the main role of the
live cd as a convenient way to install Fedora.
Another thing we could perhaps do is have a persistent notification up.
8:07 p.m.
Am Samstag, den 05.03.2011, 17:29 -0800 schrieb Christopher Aillon:
On 03/04/2011 03:25 PM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no immediately
> obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
> alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to add
> it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
> (the favourite does not display any text, leaving the user to guess from
> the icon, the user menu requires a gnome-shell patch). An alternative
> I'd like to propose is to simply autostart the installer. That will make
> it hard to overlook, and seems to nicely emphasize the main role of the
> live cd as a convenient way to install Fedora.
Another thing we could perhaps do is have a persistent notification up.
"Click here to install Fedora on your hard drive"
/me likes this, great idea!
Regards,
Christoph
7:36 a.m.
On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 18:25 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no immediately
obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to
add
it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
(the favourite does not display any text,
I was wondering about this earlier ... I noticed there are no tooltips
for favorites or applications. This does make it difficult for
applications with long names, or uncertainty around what the application
does. Is this expected?
Thanks,
James
9:56 a.m.
James Laska (jlaska(a)redhat.com) said:
> We no longer show icons on the desktop, so there is no
immediately
> obvious place to show the 'install to hard disk' launcher. The
> alternatives are to make it a favourite in the shell overview, or to
> add
> it as a menuitem in the user menu. Both of these have some drawbacks
> (the favourite does not display any text,
I was wondering about this earlier ... I noticed there are no tooltips
for favorites or applications. This does make it difficult for
applications with long names, or uncertainty around what the application
does. Is this expected?
No, it's an open bug.
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=642871
Bill
11:02 p.m.
On Fri, 2011-03-04 at 18:25 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
There are some changes in GDM and GNOME3 that affect our live cd
setup,
and will require some changes:
This morning, Ray and I spent some time implementing some of the changes
and proposals in this thread:
- We are now doing autologin instead of timed login
- 'Install to harddisk' is shown in the dash, in the application
overview and in the user menu
- Various customizations (such as disabling screen locking) have been
revived by porting them from GConf to GSettings
Still to do:
- Implement a better way to select language
11:39 p.m.
On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 11:02 PM, Matthias Clasen <mclasen(a)redhat.com> wrote:
This morning, Ray and I spent some time implementing some of the
changes
and proposals in this thread:
Thanks Matthias! I sincerely appreciate you taking the time to
respond to some of the items addressed in this thread.
--
Jared Smith
Fedora Project Leader
4783
days inactive
4795
days old
desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
21 comments
18 participants
participants (18)
-
Adam Williamson -
Bastien Nocera -
Bill Nottingham -
Bruno Wolff III -
Christoph Wickert -
Christopher Aillon -
Clyde E. Kunkel -
drago01 -
James Laska -
Jared K. Smith -
Julian Aloofi -
Lars Herrmann -
Lennart Poettering -
Matthias Clasen -
Michael Cronenworth -
Máirín Duffy -
Naheem Zaffar -
Ville-Pekka Vainio