19:36:49 <brainycmurf> #startmeeting Workstation WG (2025-02-11)
19:36:49 <zodbot> Meeting started Tue Feb 11 19:36:49 2025 UTC.
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19:36:49 <zodbot> The chair is brainycmurf. Information about MeetBot at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zodbot#Meeting_Functions.
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19:36:49 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'workstation_wg_(2025-02-11)'
19:36:50 <brainycmurf> #meetingname workstation
19:36:50 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'workstation'
19:36:50 <brainycmurf> #chair Michael
19:36:50 <zodbot> Current chairs: Michael brainycmurf
19:36:50 <brainycmurf> #info Present members:  Michael, Jens, Allan, Michel, Neal, Tomas, Chris
19:36:50 <brainycmurf> #info Guests: Thomas
19:36:50 <brainycmurf> #info Regrets: Matthias, Kalev,
19:36:52 <brainycmurf> #info Missing:
19:36:54 <brainycmurf> #info Secretary: Michel
19:36:56 <brainycmurf> #topic Deprioritize Fedora Flatpaks and prioritize Flathub in GNOME Software
19:37:00 <brainycmurf> #link https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/463
19:37:02 <brainycmurf> Tomas Popela: asking if we can get some external stakeholders invited to discuss this (Yaakov Selkowitz, Matthew Miller)
19:37:05 <brainycmurf> Allan Day: we can get Yaakov's opinion offline and report back
19:37:07 <brainycmurf> Michael: let's discuss this but defer decision
19:37:09 <brainycmurf> Tomas: disputes minutes from last week that Fedora flatpaks are the worst of all three options
19:37:11 <brainycmurf> Allan: agrees that there are some high profile bugs but they might not be representative
19:37:13 <brainycmurf> Allan: ideally we should not have a highly diverse set of installation mechanisms
19:37:15 <brainycmurf> Neal: historically Fedora flatpaks are tied to modularity, the new flatpaks Yaakov is building are much better
19:37:18 <brainycmurf> Neal: Fedora flatpaks are also more accessible cross platform. Flathub tends to be x86_64 only. Including even Firefox (no ARM). OBS broken on ARM
19:37:21 <brainycmurf> Michel: can we make it an objective criterion - if a flathub package is not available on all "desktop" platform we care about we should prefer our flatpak over flathub for that package
19:37:24 <brainycmurf> Michael: it's still easier to get the flathub package to enable that architecture
19:37:26 <brainycmurf> Tomas: doesn't think riscv will be prioritized by flathub
19:37:30 <brainycmurf> Neal: notes that in Flathub FOSDEM 2024 the consensus is they want to get out of the building business and want prebuilt submissions
19:37:33 <brainycmurf> Michael: notes that there are defenses of Fedora flatpak absent last week. And that we're not going to stop building them, just deciding on the order
19:37:36 <brainycmurf> Tomas: notes Yaakov is only doing this on his free time
19:37:38 <brainycmurf> Michael: reiterates the suggestion to not show Fedora flatpaks, but in F43 we want to ship some Fedora flatpaks out of the box, and we don't want users to have their software swapped post install
19:37:41 <brainycmurf> Allan: thinks the WG should decide, and we reject things all the time anyway so this should not be special
19:37:44 <brainycmurf> Neal: doesn't think we can stop people doing things, esp those not in the WG. suggests filtering them out instead
19:37:47 <brainycmurf> Michael: agrees we are not going to tell people what to package or not, just decide what's discoverable in the UI
19:37:50 <brainycmurf> Jens: we don't want to discourage people esp since if they stop working on it we will lose multiarch support for many packages
19:37:53 <brainycmurf> Neal: notes if we take out fedora flatpak GS will have no sources out of the box since flathub defaults to off too
19:37:56 <brainycmurf> Michael: on first start we prompt users to enable third party repos anyway
19:38:00 <brainycmurf> Allan: most people enable flathub anyway. Problem is that we used to only enable Fedora flatpak and users have to add flathub manually, now we offer it but set the priority as lower
19:38:03 <brainycmurf> Michael: notes we don't have a proposal yet for Matthew and Yaakov
19:38:05 <brainycmurf> Michael: build quality concerns with flathub, but OTOH do we really want to repackage the world (theoretically our flatpaks can be used everywhere, but in practice they do not get adopted by users of other distros)
19:38:08 <brainycmurf> Neal: we never marketed them though
19:38:10 <brainycmurf> Michael: notes that Neal raised legal concerns about flathub too. Fedora legal is aware and decided is OK with the risk (to Fedora) and Flathub's lawyers too
19:38:13 <brainycmurf> Michael: not sure Fedora lawyers are aware of blatant IP violations - e.g. Adobe Flash, Acrobat, video games. Not sure Steam in flathub is proper or not too
19:38:16 <brainycmurf> Neal: historically Valve is *not* OK with alternative sandboxed Steam variants (and has officially complained about the snap but no success)
19:38:19 <brainycmurf> Michael: going over alternatives - e.g. only having flatpak RPMs to add multiarch support
19:38:21 <brainycmurf> Tomas: wants to know Neal's opinion on bringing back verified flathub and putting that above flatpak RPMs. e.g. LibreOffice (maintained by the previous Fedora maintainer)
19:38:24 <brainycmurf> Neal: mixed feeling e.g. doesn't like the OBS package because it's barely maintained and has performance issues, but some are good. Wearing app developer hat, app devs are awful at packaging and delivering software, not a core competency. If we want to do this it's fine if there's UI for changing software sources
19:38:30 <brainycmurf> Neal: notes the Bottles situation - it's a problem when people don't know where software is coming from and where to file bugs
19:38:33 <brainycmurf> Allan: reraises the question of how users, esp inexperienced ones, are supposed to know what software sources to select
19:38:36 <brainycmurf> Tomas: #link https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-software/-/issues/2577 for changing packaging-format-preference in GUI
19:38:39 <brainycmurf> Michael: notes that we don't expect people to have to configure things, but we want to let power users change things, we should let them make their own decisions. Esp since given people have different preferences this is the only compromise that will likely pass
19:38:43 <brainycmurf> Allan: observes people don't notice where software comes from
19:38:45 <brainycmurf> Michael: maybe the UI could be changed to improve visibility
19:38:47 <brainycmurf> Michael: hiding a problem by lowering priority is insufficient
19:38:49 <brainycmurf> Neal: note that when you install from a given source and have a bad experience, it's not easy for users to figure out how to switch (e.g. if you install fractal stable and want to switch to beta, or if you're trying nightly and you want to revert). Setting priority is currently hard
19:38:53 <brainycmurf> #topic Announcements, follow-ups, status reports
19:38:55 <brainycmurf> Michael: Next week Adam Williamson is coming. He's been deferred twice. So maybe the Flathub decision can be deferred. Open ended discussion like the one with mattdm a few weeks ago
19:39:00 <brainycmurf> Thomas: we can ask Adam his perspectives about testing flatpaks
19:39:02 <brainycmurf> Neal: #link https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/460
19:39:04 <brainycmurf> Neal: As of today, Workstation now uses kiwi to build its live images and disk images
19:39:06 <brainycmurf> #topic Open Floor
19:39:08 <brainycmurf> #topic Minutes from previous meeting
19:39:10 <brainycmurf> #link https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-2/2025-02-04/workstation.2025-02-04-18.16.log.html
19:39:13 <brainycmurf> #endmeeting