Lubuntu 14.10 and after

[Julien Lavergne]

Hi,

Time to start thinking about 14.10, and after. The future of LXDE
(gtk2+ part) is uncertain, as only a few devs are currently improving
the code (and the work is focused on the panel and the file manager)
with an LTS behind us, we have the possibility to make massive changes
without the fear of having support problem. However, migrate to Qt and
LXQt for 14.10 seems too much optimistic :

- LXQt is in alpha stage, and we are not even sure there will be no
breakage in the future (see next point)

- LXQt is Qt4, and it's migrating to Qt5. I don't think we should jump
into the Qt4 version, if we are going to break things again when
migrate to Qt5.

- Pushing all LXQt into official repositories will take time. Without
them, no real and official ISO testing will be possible. Usually, we
have to set up this things for Alpha 1, to have time to make
adjustments. For now, A1 is out of the target, even with Qt4 version
of LXQt.

- After the LXQt migration, we have to change most of our applications
to have Qt ones. It needs time to discuss, compare, test and integrate
them. We have to change 80 to 90 % of our seed …

- Migrate from Gtk to Qt for the theming is not the easiest thing to
do … We need time in this area too.

For those reasons, I don't think migrate to Qt for 14.10 is a good
idea. I'll propose this plan :

- For 14.10, keep the gtk part and update packages only.

- Preparing the choice of default Qt applications

- Releasing testing ISOs with Qt packages (outside the official Ubuntu
building system).

- Work on Qt5 with LXQt people

- Push LXQt Qt5 version into official repositories

- Look at the state of LXQt + our default applications choices and
make a decision after 14.10 release.

Any comments on this ?

Regarding 14.10, we need a release manager as both phillw and me are
not going to be fully available for this (for different reasons). The
release manager is in charge of delivering the final ISO, by doing
mostly QA work, and coordinates the work of different people according
to the schedule.

If you want to participate in this area, please send phillw and me a
mail with a description of what you will do as a release manager of
Lubuntu (it's like a job interview, be convincing :-)) Also, it's not
necessary a 1 people job, we may take several people for the help).
It's also an important part of the release process of Lubuntu, that's
why it's not open to everyone.


Regarding the Qt migration, LXQt packages are already available in
https://launchpad.net/~lubuntu-dev/+archive/lubuntu-daily You have to
install lxqt-metapackage. They are build directly from git, so be
prepared to various breakages. If you have problem using them, feel
free to ask on the mailing list.

Regarding the change of default applications, I'm preparing blueprints
to discuss every topics, please don't create any extra topics until I
finish the initial ones (I have aprox. 30 topics to set up …). You can
monitor https://blueprints.launchpad.net/lubuntu-brainstorming/qt-migration
for the progress. Please wait those blueprints before starting the
flow of discussion on the audio player and the webbrowser ...


Regards,

Julien Lavergne