Re: GNOME and Ubuntu GNOME

[Tim <darkxst fastmail fm>]

On 27/09/14 00:39, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
> On Fri, 2014-09-26 at 15:04 +0200, Alberto Ruiz wrote:
> > From my point of view it is really hard to figure out how to help if
> > we do not know what the problems are. Sebastian's suggestion is not so
> > bad, working closely with the Debian guys and reuse the work, however
> > if you do not state what the problem really is (manpower, technical,
> > infrastructure...) it is really hard for anyone to figure out if we
> > can help at all.
> Ubuntu ought to be our most important distro due to its popularity. It's
> sad that it always releases with obsolete GNOME software. I rarely see
> users recommend Ubuntu GNOME, and I would not myself for this reason.
>
> I tried out Ubuntu GNOME 14.04, opened System Settings, observed that
> you released with gnome-control-center 3.6(!) despite the
> unity-control-center and unity-settings-daemon forks that occurred
> primarily to allow you to update these components, and lost interest
> pretty quickly. You're in a vicious cycle if you can't attract GNOME
> developers due to your obsolete software.
The forks alone were not enough, since we were also blocked trying to
get gnome-desktop update through.
> One possible solution is obvious: ship with your stable PPA enabled by
> default. I know that's currently prohibited by Ubuntu policy, but try to
> change it. It's a very serious problem for you, and it's also a problem
> for Kubuntu (albeit to a much lesser degree). This would solve your
> problems without hurting the Unity developers at all, and is probably
> the only reasonable way out of this mess.
While this would help, I think there is little chance this could ever happen.
Most of the release team is pretty much against this idea.
> Alternatively, you could adjust your release cycle to lag more than one
> month behind GNOME. You seem to set your schedule to minimize your
> chances of successfully integrating a newer GNOME release. I guess
> there's no realistic chance of either GNOME or Ubuntu changing
> schedules, though, which is why I suggest the PPA route.
>
> Some related advice: stop shipping different versions of GNOME software
> in the same release. For example, Ubuntu GNOME 14.04 includes
> gnome-shell 3.10, gnome-settings-daemon 3.8, and gnome-control-center
> 3.6. None of those are designed to work together: that's why you have
> control center panels displayed as if they were applications in the
> overview, and it's surely causing other bugs as well (I heard that
> suspend options were broken?). gnome-system-monitor 3.8, gnome-terminal
> 3.6, most of the games are at 3.8 (and not even the newest 3.8 releases
> either) but some are at 3.10, most everything else is a mix between 3.10
> and 3.8... it seems like you're rolling dice to pick these versions.
> You'd probably be better off sticking with older software than you are
> with mixing and matching to unpredictable effect.
Most of the apps that are still on older versions are shared with Ubuntu proper, these are
blocked for various reasons, mostly relating to UI changes etc. Ubuntu are at this point seem more
or less happy to stick with what they have until unity8 etc lands, add to that all resources being
 taken up by the phone project, it has been hard to get the various bits we need from Canonical unblocked to
update more components.
> Ubuntu GNOME would be a much more popular distro if you could manage to
> overcome these obstacles and start releasing with the latest GNOME.
>
> Michael