18:16:54 <brainycmurf> #startmeeting Workstation WG (2025-02-04)
18:16:54 <zodbot> Meeting started Tue Feb  4 18:16:54 2025 UTC.
18:16:54 <zodbot> This meeting is logged and archived in a public location.
18:16:54 <zodbot> The chair is brainycmurf. Information about MeetBot at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Zodbot#Meeting_Functions.
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18:16:54 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'workstation_wg_(2025-02-04)'
18:16:54 <brainycmurf> #meetingname workstation
18:16:54 <zodbot> The meeting name has been set to 'workstation'
18:16:54 <brainycmurf> #chair Michael
18:16:54 <zodbot> Current chairs: Michael brainycmurf
18:16:54 <brainycmurf> #info Present members:  Michael, Allan, Chris, Jens, Tomas
18:16:54 <brainycmurf> #info Guests:
18:16:55 <brainycmurf> #info Regrets: Matthias, Kalev, Neal
18:16:57 <brainycmurf> #info Missing: Michel
18:16:59 <brainycmurf> #info Secretary: Chris
18:17:03 <brainycmurf> #topic Deprioritize Fedora Flatpaks and prioritize Flathub in GNOME Software
18:17:05 <brainycmurf> #link https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/463
18:17:07 <brainycmurf> Tomas: regarding workstation ship pre-install flatpaks, we have the ability to do this.
18:17:09 <brainycmurf> Michael: Good news, possibly in the F43 time frame.
18:17:11 <brainycmurf> Dallas Strouse: prefers flathub flatpak, users will assume it
18:17:13 <brainycmurf> Michael: who does support Fedora flatpaks
18:17:15 <brainycmurf> Christian Schaller: prefer Fedora packages first, flatpaks and RPMs, another option to achieve the goal is reduce the packages that are turned into flatpaks
18:17:18 <brainycmurf> Dallas: I'm fine with verified flathub being higher priority than other flatpaks
18:17:20 <brainycmurf> Michael: one of the options
18:17:22 <brainycmurf> Tomas: Yaakov is getting Fedora flatpaks into much better shape than they were in; also we can't tell contributors not to contribute
18:17:25 <brainycmurf> Michael: need to keep going, many hands raised
18:17:27 <brainycmurf> Allan Day: design perspective, historically becomes unpredictable experience, different options between formats and source, and you don't know what happens when you push the button - roll of the dice where it comes from - user experience not good, not easy to understand, perhaps surprising - we should try to narrow down the range of choice; other main thought, adding configuration options or changing the priority
18:17:34 <brainycmurf> list, it's just a work around, the problem is there are buggy apps, we ought to be checking the issue at source rather than asking the end user to work around it with a switch
18:17:37 <brainycmurf> Michael: my long term is get rid of RPMs
18:17:39 <brainycmurf> Zoey: user not developer, my two cents - prefer flathub flatpaks; example of an app RPM is better quality than the flathub flatpak
18:17:42 <brainycmurf> Michael: we're not shipping pre-installed from flathub; good to hear the counter example of RPM being better
18:17:45 <brainycmurf> Georges Stavracas: if two or more apps, such as two flatpaks from different sources we prefer the verified over unverified; recently spent days trying to troubleshoot our flatpaks, tiny detail gave it away that it wasn't our flatpak it was the fedora flatpak; nobody is against fedora flatpaks as a concept, but we strongly prefer the users get our flatpak because it's what we spend our time testing; another alternative
18:17:50 <brainycmurf> we discussed is to clearly mark the fedora flatpak as not official
18:17:52 <brainycmurf> Michael: complications, if we get OBS studio flatpak, user still would not get the flathub flatpak, they'd get Fedora RPM; other things we need to keep in mind
18:17:55 <brainycmurf> Christian: we're all agreeing, Matthew Miller was clear we don't want to say we don't want Fedora contributors anymore, that's something we need to accept the gradual process, but we're not there  yet, might be some time before we're there; there's no guarantee what format or source produces a better user experience; we can't disregard efforts of Fedora community as all of this matures
18:18:00 <brainycmurf> Bart Piotrowski: general concern I see is quality of flathub flatpaks, if user gets flathub flatpaks I think we need further discussion about how to triage fixes, how to expedite, bit unclear
18:18:05 <brainycmurf> Michael: we've had quality issues with both repositories, our Firefox flatpak is unsandboxed?
18:18:07 <brainycmurf> Dallas: not true, does still use seccomp, could be better by using flatpak spawn; some examples from Steam and favoring verified over unverified
18:18:10 <brainycmurf> Michael: root of the problem, removing packages that don't work well might be a possibility
18:18:12 <brainycmurf> Tomas: (arch statistics)
18:18:14 <brainycmurf> Bart: supporting ARM is difficult, let alone ppc64 for example
18:18:16 <brainycmurf> Dallas: what are technical aspects of installing the Fedora flatpak out of the box? And then what happens if you choose flathub preferred later?
18:18:19 <brainycmurf> Michael: let's not continue the ppc part of that question; core apps will need to remain Fedora flatpaks; no one has objected to deprioritizing Fedora flatpkas
18:18:22 <brainycmurf> Tomas: prioritizing is the key, and we don't want to be prioritizing unverified, but we need to coordinate with Matthew and Jakob
18:18:25 <brainycmurf> Zoey: re: KDE doens't have the issue because user can just remove a repo, is there any plans to make it possible in GNOME Software
18:18:28 <brainycmurf> Michael: this can be done now
18:18:30 <brainycmurf> Dallas: problem is reording priority
18:18:34 <brainycmurf> Michael: part of the compromise to change priorities, is expose the ordering UI
18:18:36 <brainycmurf> Jamie: exposing that to the user, seems the best to focus on the user and what they want, we're already behind other OS with our store let's not make it worse with priorizing repos for the wrong reasons
18:18:39 <brainycmurf> Michael: we don't want users to actually have to do this but it's a useful option to expose it from a pragmatic perspective, don't mind burying that in the settings
18:18:42 <brainycmurf> Jamie: our default should be good
18:18:44 <brainycmurf> Michael: we have concensus it's a problem, and we need to fix it, we will just need time to figure out the details and need another meeting and more dicussion; another topic we didn't get time for today, we have security considerations on both sides, possibly use it as a carrot for developers...
18:18:48 <brainycmurf> Dallas: regarding sandbox holes, portals don't have implementations for what apps need
18:18:50 <brainycmurf> Michael: that needs work, we'll need followup discussion on that
18:18:52 <brainycmurf> Tomas: should focus on making flatpak the vehicle for devlivery and then enhancing that vehicle
18:18:54 <brainycmurf> Michael: going to push back next week's meeting a week, and schedule this topic again next week, because I'd like to resolve it sooner than later; discuss in the ticket, thanks
18:18:57 <brainycmurf> #topic Announcements, follow-ups, status reports
18:18:59 <brainycmurf> #topic Open Floor
18:19:03 <brainycmurf> #topic Minutes from previous meeting
18:19:05 <brainycmurf> #link https://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-meeting-2/2025-01-22/workstation.2025-01-22-03.47.log.html
18:19:08 <brainycmurf> #endmeeting