Migrating mailing list to Discourse?
by Justin W. Flory (he/him)
Hi all, I wanted to propose a change for us to migrate this mailing list to the Fedora Discussion forum using Discourse.
Why make this change? Many Fedora sub-projects, teams, and SIGs are moving their discussion to the Discourse site. It brings our conversations and discussions closer to the rest of the project. It is also easier to discover there is an i3 SIG if we create a new tag (with the help of friendly neighborhood Discourse admins). There have already been a few i3-related discussions there, although they aren't seen by most packagers and SIG members unless they search them in other categories.
Why not double down on using the mailing list? For me, I find it difficult to engage. Most of the notifications I get as a mailing list owner are about spam. I just deleted 42 threads about spam posts in the moderation queue going back to January 2022, of which there were two legitimate posts on the list. I know we can turn this off, but there are other cases where we do want to moderate that queue for the occasional legitimate mail that comes through. To me, mailing lists feel limited in use today in Fedora and it is also harder now to connect with people who are not deliberately intent on participating with the i3 SIG folks.
When could this change happen? The i3 SIG is not meeting regularly now, so my assumption is that it is up to our own discretion as SIG members if this is a change we want to take and when it could happen. I wanted to start the conversation to get a temperature check on how others feel now that the Fedora Discussion site is live for almost four years.
Any thoughts?
--
Cheers,
Justin W. Flory (he/him) || 🔗 jwf.io
TZ=America/New_York 🕖
1Â year, 11Â months
Feedback on Fedora 36 i3 Spin
by Casey Witt
Hello all,
Today I tried out the Fedora 36 i3 spin beta.
I downloaded it from the link on the F35 spin download page on the
bottom right where it says "TRY A PRE-RELEASE" (direct link is:
https://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/fedora/linux/releases/test/36_Beta...).
Overall it works as advertised, and my experience with it was great.
I have three comments about my personal preferences:
1. I really like that `xfce4-terminal` has replaced `rxvt` (that was
always the first thing I did with the F35 i3 spin)
2. The new default i3 config (at /etc/i3/config) has:
1. added some keybindings for brightness control (which I couldn't
use because I was running in a VM) - but cool to have included this
2. added a keybinding to run `arandr`; but `arandr` is not
installed by default - I suggest to include `arandr` by default
since it is a system utility
3. added lots of color customization (for both i3 and i3status)
which I personally don't like because I switch between solarized
light and dark color schemes (depending on the surroundings) and
the default i3 and i3status colors sit nicely in between these
two color schemes (I assume they sit nicely between most light
and dark color schemes). The colors manually added to the i3
spin config are too bright for my personal preference. I guess
these were added to better match the color scheme of the F36
desktop background (but with i3 it is almost never visible). For
my installation I commented out all color customization.
4. the default `dmenu` keybinding has been updated to change some
display characteristics (colors I think), but since it still
shows everything in the path (and not just .desktop entries) I
still immediately always replace it with `rofi` and uncomment
the `rofi` keybinding (leaving it unchanged). It is a personal
preference of course, but I would vote to make `rofi` the
default launcher. It would definitely help a user new to i3 get
oriented with what software is installed (most importantly so
they can easily see what is not installed and needed to be
installed by them).
5. `xdg-user-dirs-update` is executed at login - which is a good
thing and seems to solve several weird issues (including an
issue with flatpaks if it is never run)
Also, if you run `system-config-printer` (for example) as an
unprivileged user you can't install a new printer, but there is a button
in the upper right corner to "unlock" the settings if you have sudo
privilege. This does not work out of the box because there is no "polkit
authentication agent" installed. To make this work install 'xfce-polkit'
(46kb installed), and then add "exec --no-startup-id
/usr/libexec/xfce-polkit" to the i3 config file to run it.
Personally I like that the installed software is kept to a bare minimum
(ie. no LibreOffice, music players, etc.) so I can add whatever I want.
With `dnf` it is very easy to add whatever is fit for your purpose. I
was going to recommend including `flameshot` by default but then saw
that it pulls in qt and takes 54 MB including dependencies. So I still
support keeping the base spin as lean as possible and leaving it to the
end user. Having said that; perhaps the i3 spin web page could be
updated to show "suggested" apps based on recommendations from other i3
spin users (which is how I learned about `flameshot` for example).
I also recommend that the i3 spin web page be updated to tell new users
the following so they don't give up because they don't know how to
proceed once they boot the live iso:
* the keybinding to open the launcher menu
* the keybinding to open a terminal
* the command to launch the installation (from the terminal) - the
terminal motd says this but you have to get to the terminal to see
it so perhaps it is useful to show users upfront
This spin is awesome, and I really appreciate everyone who worked to put
it together - for me the Fedora i3 spin is the perfect linux distro!
Cheers,
Casey
1Â year, 12Â months