Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

hhh · 2025-02-02 05:37:39

I'm a bit late with this, but here's the proposed freeze schedule...

https://release.debian.org/testing/freeze_policy.html

Here's the Debian lists announcement...

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-a … 00004.html

As noted in the second link, this is a very short freeze cycle and announcement. As such, and since we are really trying to release Carbon shortly after the new Debian stable release this cycle, I propose that...

1) We pause Wayland development to focus on a Carbon X11 system.

2) We formally announce dropping i386 support, and moving to Pipewire/Wireplumber for audio.

3) Everyone who's interested in contributing to Carbon... install Trixie after the initial March freeze or the April soft freeze, either in a VM but preferably on a hard drive partition.

4) Compile a ToDo list of Carbon loose ends. I've got some theming to do, that's one thing. BLOB could use some love, but I think that's a minor issue, something that one person could tackle if they want to make a contribution.

Thanks to everyone willing to contribute.

micko01 · 2025-02-02 08:02:35

I'm sure you mean Carbon

For Bunsen the most important missing piece is Yad

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/yad

It was dropped in November last year from testing.

Second would be Tint2, removed in October

https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/tint2

I would suggest that we either find alternatives or build our own post haste. The former may be better for stability.

johnraff · 2025-02-02 08:05:50

s/boron/carbon

But otherwise agreed!

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-02-02 13:01:53

I'm sure it will go fine: BunsenLabs upgrades are always elementary

greenjeans · 2025-02-02 16:59:42

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

I'm sure it will go fine: BunsenLabs upgrades are always elementary

oh dear lawd, I needed more coffee before I read that, lol.

I'll see about clearing out a partition, I can at least do testing and report results. Actually have a couple spares on the local library's computer I just re-habbed for 'em that would work fine for that, older hardware but still works fine.

Sucks about tint2, I have a working iso of trixie I made from another distro, I didn't specifically note whether tint2 was one of the upgraded packages when I rolled it over, at the time there was some 970 upgraded out of about 1300. I'm assuming now that it wasn't, will check version number later to be sure. But it worked perfectly still.

The real hoot was PCmanFM in gtk3, was really worried about that, but it seems good.

Overall the whole thing was smaller in size and actually seemed speedier and used less ram.

hhh · 2025-02-02 17:14:35

Carbon, Boron,
tomato tomato. I never took chemistry. Tomatoes are acidic, I know that. Don't cover your bolognese with aluminium foil, you'll get a weak battery, iirc.

Title and post fixed.

hhh · 2025-02-03 00:24:18

re: yad, zenity?

re: tint2, xfce4-panel with a few plugins (pager, for one)? Would solve the stupid battery icon bug, I think, and I have had success theming it to look good in the past. Plus it's forward compatible with Wayland.

hhh · 2025-02-03 00:55:33

Picom has been removed from testing. Yipes.

PackRat · 2025-02-03 01:09:38

hhh wrote:

re: tint2, xfce4-panel with a few plugins (pager, for one)? Would solve the stupid battery icon bug, I think, and I have had success theming it to look good in the past. Plus it's forward compatible with Wayland.

That would be the way to go.

johnraff · 2025-02-03 02:26:45

zenity can't do everything that yad can, but it would be fine for simple notification popups and the like. I doubt that BLOB would work with zenity though. Yad seems to be in quite a mess.

It's been stuck at 0.40.0-1 for years. There was an attempt to start upgrading - upstream is now at 14.1 - and a new Debian maintainer has taken over, but it was pointed out that there are serious bugs with all yads after the current 0.40.0!! So now it just seems stuck. There's a 7.2.1 in Experimental but I'm doubtful that will arrive in Trixie as-is.

https://github.com/v1cont/yad/issues/240
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1024523
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … =919785#18

Compared with that, the "ftbfs" issues are probably fixable.
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1075695
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1077429

We'll have to wait and see what happens to yad, but it looks quite likely that even with an active upstream it won't be sorted in time for Trixie. Unless there are enough enthusiastic users to provoke urgent action.

So for BL, I think most of the occurrences of yad in scripts could be replaced with zenity for now. I'll try and write a wrapper script that would allow calls to things like yad_question in yad-includes to go on on working without having to rewrite all our scripts!

Another long-term possibility might be that Micko could spin up replacements using gtk3dialog?? Depends on whether he feels like it of course. Even the big yad list dialogs in BLOB might be re-doable with gtk3dialog...

Last edited by johnraff (2025-02-04 04:07:11)

johnraff · 2025-02-03 03:02:43

Tint2 yes I know @hhh has been pushing for a shift to xfce4-panel for some years now. Tint2 has a lot of fans and it's certainly more amenable to tweaking than xfce4-panel, but the latter doesn't look quite as ugly these days as it used to.

hhh wrote:

I have had success theming it to look good in the past

The tint2 Fails To Build From Source issue might get fixed though, especially considering a simple-looking Merge Request has been filed:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1082699
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/tint2/- … ts/3/diffs

So that even leaves the possibility of applying that patch and building our own tint2. Still, tint2 has been announced as half-abandoned, so it might be time to reluctantly move on.
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 44#p140644

As for Wayland, xfce4-panel is supposed now to work, but it still doesn't have anything like a system tray.
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 14#p140114
https://wiki.xfce.org/releng/wayland_ro … fce4-panel

xfce wrote:

On Wayland the panel cannot use GtkSocket/GtkPlug any more to run plugins as external (separate processes). Initially, to advance in the porting of other features, it is enough to run them as internal (same process as the panel, so the crash of a plugin causes the panel to crash). If we want to get this back “natively” afterwards, it seems that we'll have to make the panel a Wayland compositor to some extent (Embedding Compositor, see also Allow embedding foreign wl_surfaces). For the moment the socket/plug structure has been reproduced on Wayland using the layer-shell protocol and D-Bus, which, although not native, has the merit of simplicity and of reusing what exists

For X11, till the recent FTBFS bug came up I was going to advocate keeping tint2 for Carbon, but now maybe it's time to shift to xfce4-panel. If nobody objects?

For Wayland, there's sfwbar, which micko01 has made configs for to quite closely replicate the BL tint2. That's perhaps what we should ship for our basic Wayland plugin on Carbon, but long-term it would be nice if xfce4-panel worked well on both X11 and Wayland.

Last edited by johnraff (2025-02-04 04:00:01)

johnraff · 2025-02-03 05:06:20

Losing picom would be a hard blow.
But it might be OK. Picom 12.5.1 arrived in Sid only yesterday, and if all goes well we'll get it in Trixie before long.
https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/picom

johnraff · 2025-02-03 05:19:51

hhh wrote:

We pause Wayland development to focus on a Carbon X11 system.

Pretty much, yes, except in decisions we make for X11 Carbon that will make life easier for us in the Wayland future - package choices and the like.

What it's looking like right now is that the X11 setup will allow a Wayland session to be started via LightDM (which seems to be reasonably OK after all) provided bunsen-meta-base-wayland is installed. That will be optional but will enable a "BunsenLabs Wayland" item in LightDM's login menu, pull in a minimal list of necessary packages and add (via bunsen-configs-wayland-base) the needed configs. Micko01 has already pretty much made all those configs, and I don't think finalising the package list will be too hard. Most of the work has already been done.

So polishing the X11 session should be our target right now, and some improvements will likely contribute to the Wayland session too.

johnraff · 2025-02-03 05:32:43

hhh wrote:

We formally announce dropping i386 support

Yes, at least no more i386 isos from live-build. Without supported kernels, live-build or debian-installer we'd have far too much work - not least probably having to build our own 32bit kernels.

For users (like me) with 32bit machines they want to continue using:
1) Stay on Boron as long as Debian Bookworm support continues - another couple of years?
or
2) Switch to AntiX, MX or DSL - I think all of those are planning to go on with 32 bit support a while longer? (Anyone have the latest on that?)

BL could in principle think about a netinstall script, but that would still require a Debian base system. That could be done from Bookworm and the script handle an upgrade to Trixie, but the user would still end up with a kernel no newer than what they could get on Bookworm backports anyway, and probably a slightly heavier system.

Maybe some Bunsenization could be added to a 32bit Damn Small Linux? That might be an interesting project for someone with a bit of free time...

johnraff · 2025-02-03 05:53:46

hhh wrote:

moving to Pipewire/Wireplumber for audio

I think we've already agreed to do that. Pipewire anyway - not sure about Wireplumber.
https://github.com/BunsenLabs/bunsen-me … an/control

johnraff · 2025-02-03 05:56:19

hhh wrote:

Compile a ToDo list of Carbon loose ends. I've got some theming to do, that's one thing. BLOB could use some love...

ToDo list is a good idea. We can always link out to subthreads if any of the points get too big.

Thread for BLOB? What issues do you have in mind?

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-02-03 07:45:37

johnraff wrote:

not sure about Wireplumber

That's the only session manager left, pipewire-media-session was pretty broken and is now dropped.

EDIT: and I think you will need pipewire-pulse and probably pipewire-alsa as well. Not sure how the PipeWire dependencies will work with Recommends disabled.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2025-02-03 07:47:50)

johnraff · 2025-02-03 08:43:10

So what is an audio "session manager" used for? The Arch Wiki page looks pretty fearsome:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/WirePlumber
Will regular users who just want to listen to music need this?

I think you will need pipewire-pulse and probably pipewire-alsa as well. Not sure how the PipeWire dependencies will work with Recommends disabled.

They're Dependencies - not Recommends - of pipewire-audio so no problem.
Oh, so is wireplumber.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-02-03 15:51:26

Yes, wireplumber is need for sound to work properly.

The pipewire-audio metapackage looks to supply everything that would be needed for a desktop user. I'll be using that in deadbang to make the switch away from PulseAudio.

Here's a nice overview of Wireplumber by one of the devs: https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog … n-manager/

tl;dr: Wireplumber provides functionality that was part of PulseAudio but not handled by PipeWire.

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2025-02-03 18:07:13)

johnraff · 2025-02-04 04:41:59

yad 0.40.0 works OK for our purposes, but FTBFS on Sid.
7.2 is in experimental, but might have some regressions.

I guess we could try to backport 0.40.0 from Sid and hope it builds on Trixie.

Or try to backport 7.2 from Experimental and hope we don't get bitten by a regression.

Being able to go on using yad would save us quite a lot of work compared with the other workarounds.

#1 2025-02-02 05:37:39

Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#2 2025-02-02 08:02:35

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#3 2025-02-02 08:05:50

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#4 2025-02-02 13:01:53

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#5 2025-02-02 16:59:42

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#6 2025-02-02 17:14:35

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#7 2025-02-03 00:24:18

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#8 2025-02-03 00:55:33

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#9 2025-02-03 01:09:38

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#10 2025-02-03 02:26:45

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#11 2025-02-03 03:02:43

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#12 2025-02-03 05:06:20

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#13 2025-02-03 05:19:51

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#14 2025-02-03 05:32:43

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#15 2025-02-03 05:53:46

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#16 2025-02-03 05:56:19

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#17 2025-02-03 07:45:37

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#18 2025-02-03 08:43:10

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#19 2025-02-03 15:51:26

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

#20 2025-02-04 04:41:59

Re: Trixie Freeze/Carbon Release

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