Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

cloverskull · 2018-05-18 17:19:35

-mod edit by hhh- Continued from here...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 997#p71997
/edit

Hey guys,

Spinning off from the Ship backported tint2 by default? thread, I wanted to fork off into a new thread to discuss what else might be worth shipping outside of traditional stable Debian channels.

Are there benefits to more recent builds of some of our core desktop packages? Namely

conky
openbox
lightdm

I'm happy to update the list. FWIW I haven't investigated any of these packages myself, and things feel like they work just fine in my current Stable desktop, but I wanted to open things up to discussion.

DeepDayze · 2018-05-19 01:33:02

I would say the 3 packages mentioned in Debian stable repo are usable straight from Debian with no issues, albeit with custom config files that the BL team and members create and maintain for the releases for the best OOTB experience after a fresh install.

cloverskull · 2018-05-19 02:11:02

Yeah, I don't disagree. I think perhaps I failed to capture the scope of what I thought this conversation would be. My feeling is that everything we ship right now is usable with no issues, but if we consider tint2 as an example, it has a bit of flawed functionality - would some of these other packages fall under that category?

lbdesign · 2018-05-19 13:43:30

What about snaps? It was built for this reason but I haven't used it at all. Openbox wise it might be an bad idea. I don't know so I'm just throwing it out there.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-05-19 15:20:02

lbdesign wrote:

What about snaps?

Not a good idea, IMO, see http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=137502 for a reason why not to use them.

I don't like the idea of straying too far from Debian stable, I think we should try to avoid that.

I would much prefer to follow @pvsage's idea of making BunsenLabs into a Debian Pure Blend:

https://blends.debian.org/blends/index.html

tknomanzr · 2018-05-19 17:14:56

At one point, we offered a backported Xfce-power-manager to get around some known bugs in that program. It is correct to stick with Debian stable as much as possible. If we do offer backports it should be because a backported package offers additional features/improvements or because there are bug-fixes available to a package that affects our core system.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-05-19 17:19:44

^ We have tended to switch packages rather than compile patched versions, this is why we keep flip-flopping about the systray volume tool.

DeepDayze · 2018-05-19 22:40:39

tknomanzr wrote:

At one point, we offered a backported Xfce-power-manager to get around some known bugs in that program. It is correct to stick with Debian stable as much as possible. If we do offer backports it should be because a backported package offers additional features/improvements or because there are bug-fixes available to a package that affects our core system.

Agreed, making a fixed or improved package (perhaps even backported from Sid if a package in that branch has fixed bugs or has improved features) in the BL backports repo does sound like a fair idea. For example, siduction does this for their distro (which is based on Sid) so BL doing a similar thing would go a great way to help BL's users .

DeepDayze · 2018-05-19 22:45:47

lbdesign wrote:

What about snaps? It was built for this reason but I haven't used it at all. Openbox wise it might be an bad idea. I don't know so I'm just throwing it out there.

Snaps are nice but you need to consider only getting them from trusted sources as it is possible for malicious snaps to be put into the Snap store as mentioned in that thread HoaS linked to. I do hope that security of snaps and flatpaks will continue to improve.

The only snaps I have on my system are Skype and Spotify as the native Linux versions are not quite as good.

Last edited by DeepDayze (2018-05-19 22:46:44)

johnraff · 2018-05-21 07:22:58

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

I would much prefer to follow @pvsage's idea of making BunsenLabs into a Debian Pure Blend:
https://blends.debian.org/blends/index.html

+1

This would be nice, and is a good thing to keep in our heads IMO. Maybe at that point in the (not near) future when Debian are sufficiently happy with BL, none of our core packaging will need such treatment, and we can use 100% Debian Stable. That would be ideal, and won't be so easy if we have a lot of backported packages in our main repo then.

Meanwhile, let's try to keep it to a minimum, but have an open mind when a package that is important to us has a bugfix or improvement further up the queue.

The biggest snag IMO with backports is that once you are pushing out to our users something that is compiled by the BL team, then we have the responsibility to keep it up to date with any security fixes that come up. WRT the specific apps in the OP, I don't know of any urgent upgrades needed by conky, openbox or lightdm, and especially with lightdm - which is an interface with the outside world - would not like to take on that security maintainance responsibility.

jalfonsi · 2018-05-28 18:37:24

Hello everyone, I'm new in the forum, I just hope this is the right place for my suggestion. There was a very nice distribution very similar to Bunselabs called Semplice Linux but it's no longer under development. It was interesting because there was a dynamic menu builder called alan, which I was very comfortable with, since I don't have much time for configuring and I'd like to get things done quickly. When I installed some package the icons in the menu were already there. It was very cool and a great commodity for non-experts. Here is the repo for the code:
https://github.com/semplice/alan2

It would very nice to have this committed into Bunsenlabs source repository. It's Python code and it should be quite easy to build the deb package and add it to BL deb repository. It's likely some dependencies need to be updated.
I really hope Bunsenlabs developer could consider it.

Jessica

ohnonot · 2018-05-29 03:54:49

there's a whole slew of dynamic menus, and has been discussed around here.

about the original Q:
imo, only tint2.
definitely not required for openbox - changes will be minimal and far between. one of the few packages that are on the same verison on stretch and archlinux.
conky, imo, will always be buggy, no point using newer versions (rather more buggy i guess).

Head_on_a_Stick · 2018-05-29 06:11:30

jalfonsi wrote:

Hello everyone

Hello!

jalfonsi wrote:

a dynamic menu builder called alan [...] It would very nice to have this committed into Bunsenlabs source repository

Thanks for the suggestion but we favour a static menu here at BunsenLabs (as ohnonot says this has been discussed at length several times) and we also try to restrict the number of BL-specific packages to as few as possible.

jalfonsi wrote:

it should be quite easy to build the deb package

Yes indeed, there seems to be a debian folder in your linked github repository so you can install it yourself with

sudo apt install git devscripts
git clone https://github.com/semplice/alan2 && cd alan2
debuild -us -uc
sudo gdebi ../alan2*.deb

jalfonsi · 2018-05-29 06:19:29

Thanks a lot, indeed I was considering that option. Anyway, I just hope you can give it a try and let me know.

#1 2018-05-18 17:19:35

Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#2 2018-05-19 01:33:02

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#3 2018-05-19 02:11:02

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#4 2018-05-19 13:43:30

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#5 2018-05-19 15:20:02

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#6 2018-05-19 17:14:56

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#7 2018-05-19 17:19:44

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#8 2018-05-19 22:40:39

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#9 2018-05-19 22:45:47

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#10 2018-05-21 07:22:58

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#11 2018-05-28 18:37:24

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#12 2018-05-29 03:54:49

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#13 2018-05-29 06:11:30

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

#14 2018-05-29 06:19:29

Re: Thoughts on shipping various backported packages by default?

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