[lubuntu-devel] Lubuntu Next Blockers and Suggestions (WAS: Re: [lubuntu-users] Lubuntu Artful Aardvark Beta 1 has been released!)

[Simon Quigley]

Hello PCMan,

On 09/01/2017 11:48 AM, PCMan wrote:
> Hi Simon Quigley,
> Really Thank you for all the hard work. As an LXQt developer I highly
> appreciate that.

Great to hear, thank you for the hard work you've done! :)

> Maintaining one distribution is already time-consuming enough and now
> you guys even have two.

Yes, that's the truth.

> To make Lubuntu Next and LXQt more successful, I'd like to know what's
> the major blocker to you.

We have several major blockers in my eyes as to why Lubuntu Next hasn't
been rolling sooner, here's what I can think of:
 1. We've been waiting for some patches to land in upstream Qt, that's
taken a while (but now that I'm personally doing work in Ubuntu and
Debian with the Qt team, we shouldn't have this problem again).
 2. We had a team member who believed it was only gilir's job to work on
the Qt port. gilir is, from what I can tell, a very busy developer. This
changed once he left the project and I became Release Manager in February.
 3. In general, the Ubuntu release cycle. Feature Freeze has been a
reason why I don't work on it as much. But I believe I now have a system
where that is no longer an issue.

In general, it's a Lubuntu issue, not an upstream issue. But, going
forward, these have been pretty much resolved.

> How we LXQt developers can help and make it easier for the users and
> developers of Lubuntu?

One thing I can point out for sure is this -- LXQt makes releases too
slow for the amount of new features that are being added and in the
development state that it is in. While I do see the importance of
waiting until the right time to do a release, doing an LXQt release once
every year or so is not, in my eyes, the best way to go. It would be
great (in my opinion) if LXQt upstream could either:
 1. Set out a time-based schedule (even if it's general (give/take a
month)).
 2. Once a new LXQt release has happened (and not long after), set out
clear goals for what features want to be included and what bugs want to
be fixed, and work towards getting those done. Once those are done,
actually release. If bugs are found, fix them along the way.

One way that could be accomplished is having some sort of Continuous
Integration for LXQt. I know Alf has been working on Siduction (I don't
know much about it, though) and I've been hacking up some scripts of my
own. But having some sort of central CI and platform for testers could
really help.

But my point is here, having quicker LXQt releases (maybe 6 months or
something) would be pretty great.


I am personally excited for when Lubuntu Next is production ready and we
can then look at the possibility of sunsetting the LXDE spin of Lubuntu.
While this might be a year or two in the future (I'm thinking between
the release of 18.04 and 18.10 Alpha 1 will be when we have those
discussions and make final plans, 18.04 cycle will be focused on
polish), I can see it happening. The problem is, Lubuntu has been saying
this for so long, that we're going to replace LXDE with LXQt, etc. etc.
etc. but I don't want to continue to be the new Unity 8 where people are
saying, "oh, yet another release with LXDE as default, LXQt Lubuntu will
ship in the year 3410" because in all reality, who *actually* wants
that? I don't like looking at it as "it's not ready for production yet"
on the basis that upstream development is still rapid. I want to make
that assessment (and have) based on the amount of known, fixable bugs we
have. And then we should fix those bugs. Ubuntu policies allow us to fix
bugs in supported Ubuntu releases. We should take advantage of that...

GTK 4 is coming soon, I don't personally want to continue shipping a
product based on GTK 2. That's the core argument for this. If LXDE had a
working, usable GTK 3 port, my opinion would be different. I would like
to ship 18.04 LTS with LXDE as default to give 16.04 users a familiar
upgrade path and compatibility with their existing applications, but
after that, I would like to spend the next 2 years after that making
LXQt stable enough for an LTS and providing a clear transition path for
users. That'll require a good chunk of work, but a lot can be done in 2
years.

These are just my opinions personally, I know gilir has had some
reservations, and I can respect that, as he's been a member of the team
longer than I have. We'll have more discussions as time goes on. But
regardless, those are my personal thoughts for now.


Anyways, thank you for reaching out PCMan. I look forward to talking
with you in the future about LXQt. :)

-- 
Simon Quigley
tsimonq2 at ubuntu.com
tsimonq2 on freenode and OFTC
5C7A BEA2 0F86 3045 9CC8
C8B5 E27F 2CF8 458C 2FA4

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