Possible Calamares BoF at Akademy

Wed Sep 2 18:35:20 UTC 2020

Hello Flavors!

If any of you use the Calamares installer, this reply/forward may be
relevant to your interests. There is an opportunity for interested Ubuntu
flavors to have a Calamares BoF during Akademy this coming week. In short,
Kubuntu has three main issues to address before they use Calamares:having
minimal and full install options, full OEM install mode, and Ubuntu
autodetect and driver installations. One of the issues Adriaan mentioned
was an issue raised by Lubuntu in 2017, and with the recent switch to
Plasma, Ubuntu Studio might have some useful experience to share.

I know it's only a week away, but if anyone is interested please reply -
Valorie isn't able to read anything but list archives at the moment thanks
to Google troubles, but if there is enough interest and a clear agenda, we
can get something scheduled. And if there isn't, there are things we could
do on our own to try and resolve/address/discuss these issues.

Thanks!

Monica Ayhens-Madon
Documentation, Ubuntu MATE
Communi-tea Enthusiast

On Mon, Aug 31, 2020 at 10:21 AM Monica Ayhens-Madon <mayhens at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Adriaan and Valorie,
>
> Adriaan, thank you for including Valorie, who can get this to the right
> people in Kubuntu, and determine if there is enough of an interest AND and
> a focused agenda to get a BoF organized in 9 days!
>
> Valorie, if there's any way I can help with that - organizing, poking
> people from other flavors, etc. - let me know!
>
> I think this raised a really good issue about downstream and upstream
> communication, and the need for initial design and documentation work.
> Maybe there's someone in the Kubuntu community who would be willing to take
> the lead on this - again, deferring to Valorie on this one.
>
> So, it seems like the next steps are determining if there is interest and
> the ability to get an agenda together, which, as you said, Adriaan, will be
> on the *buntu side. Valorie, I imagine that's largely going to be Kubuntu,
> but could also involve Lubuntu and possibly Ubuntu Studio, if there's any
> interest on their side. Let me know if I can get the conversation started
> with Lubuntu and Studio. I think given what Adriaan mentioned about the
> full OEM install issue raised in 2017 by Neon, it might be good to get them
> involved, but you probably know who to contact in that community better
> than I do. Again, Valorie, if I can poke/contact people, maybe in a group
> e-mail, let me know.
>
> Adriaan, we will get back to you as soon as we can to see if we're able to
> go ahead with the BoF. Let us know if there's a deadline you need to hear
> from us by. Again, thank you for the helpful and thoughtful feedback!
>
> Cheers,
>
> Monica
>
> On Mon, Aug 31, 2020 at 9:50 AM Adriaan de Groot <groot at kde.org> wrote:
>
>> Hi Monica,
>>
>> [[ Valorie added in CC because she started it, sortof ]]
>>
>> On Sunday, 30 August 2020 23:04:35 CEST Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote:
>> > The idea for the Calamares BoF came up during our first meeting, when
>> > Valorie mentioned Kubuntu probably wouldn't be using Calamares in 20.10
>> > because of issues with it and Qt which made a full OEM install
>> difficult.
>>
>> Soo .. I'm going to climb up on my soapbox a little (I'll nuance these
>> down
>> below):
>>
>> - I *don't* see a lot -- any, really -- of issues or feature requests
>> coming
>> from the Ubuntu world in general. There's a handful of OEM issues, mostly
>> from
>> KDE neon and some of them quite old, though. This means there's some kind
>> of
>> communications friction: if I don't know what downstreams are looking
>> for, I
>> can't build it.
>> - There are, frankly, more requests than there are hours in a day, or a
>> week.
>> Although I get paid to do this stuff, and deliver it as a gratis service
>> to
>> the Linux community, that doesn't magically make time or effort appear.
>> Much
>> more effective than a BoF is actual design or documentation work ahead of
>> a
>> feature. I get patches from Manjaro, and new features from KaOS, and that
>> helps move things forward for the things that they care about.
>>
>> > (Full disclosure: Documentation is my forte, not development! I hope I'm
>> > not getting anything too mangled.) Someone then mentioned that Ubuntu
>> > Studio, which switched to the Plasma desktop, was using Calamares
>> without
>> > trouble.  The discussion went from having someone from Ubuntu Studio or
>> > Neon talk to the Kubuntu developers to having a Calamares BoF at
>> Akademy.
>>
>> Seems sensible (especially for the *buntu family to learn from each
>> other). I
>> *kind* of expect the result to be that some *buntus focus on "get it
>> installed
>> at all" and others have a broader interest (and possibly OEM installs,
>> which
>> *are* an issue).
>>
>> > The advantages of a BoF would be that more people outside of the Ubuntu
>> > Studio and Kubuntu development teams could discuss their successes and
>> > challenges using Calamares. Kubuntu's challenges are not wanting to lose
>> > three necessary abilities:
>>
>> OK, going over the open issues more closely against the three
>> requirements you
>> list:
>>
>> > minimal and full install options,
>>
>> https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues/956 (2018, from Lubuntu I
>> think,
>> and it's labeled "wont-implement" because there are already facilities
>> for
>> doing that -- it's waiting on someone discussing whether it's entirely
>> usable)
>>
>> > full OEM
>> > install mode, and
>>
>> https://github.com/calamares/calamares/issues/871  (2017, from KDE neon,
>> but
>> sort-of-stalled on "what does this mean?")
>>
>> > Ubuntu autodetect and driver installation, according to
>> > Rik Mills.
>>
>> This is something I don't know about, and I don't think there's an issue
>> filed
>> for it. That said, it'd probably be closed by some over-eager Calamares-
>> watcher as "distro-specific" so it's probably worth talking about briefly
>> to
>> lift it up to a more general issue.
>>
>>
>> > I know while the latter is rather Ubuntu specific, it is a key
>> > feature (and hence concern) for them. If you think multiple people would
>> > like to talk about making those first two abilities happen, and possibly
>> > address the third, I think it could be a good BoF if there's room in the
>> > schedule.
>>
>> To me it looks like wednesday the 9th in the morning is still open.
>>
>> So, like I said to Valorie, I'm fine with a BoF, but it's the *buntu
>> folks
>> that will need to drive it to find an agenda.
>>
>> [ade]
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-flavors/attachments/20200902/4c0b8f3a/attachment.html>