[gentoo-project] Sticking to GNOME 2 complicated after regressive GNOME 3 stabilization. (was: Call for agenda items - Council meeting 2014-01-14)

[Tom Wijsman]

On Sat, 4 Jan 2014 20:46:05 +0100
Ulrich Mueller <ulm@g.o> wrote:

> In less than two weeks from now, the council will meet again. This is
> the time to raise and prepare items that the council should put on the
> agenda to discuss or vote on.

Hello everyone

There are reasons for an user to avoid upgrading to GNOME 3:

    one reason is that the introduction of systemd is something the
    user would not want to go through; whereas you can get a mostly
    working installation without OpenRC, it is bound to get worse [1];

    the other reason is that whereas GNOME 2 used to be light enough
    to run on older hardware, GNOME 3 has became a much more heavy UI
    both in terms of CPU, Memory and GPU; so, people with older
    computers that upgrade are presented with a regressed broken system.

The former might be an option for the user; however, as seen in the
past as well as to this very day, quite some users would rather not
upgrade to it for various reasons [2]. The latter leaves no option for
the user, the user would love to continue using what the user already
has been using for quite some time; if it ain't broken, why change?

So, both of these reasons yield a lot of trouble [3] because GNOME 3
went stable in the same slot as GNOME 2; therefore, an user that wishes
to stick with GNOME 2 needs to assure he correctly puts a mask on any
GNOME 3 related ebuild. While this would be easy for the obvious main
GNOME packages with >=3, it's less obvious to do this on random
libraries which have other version numbers than 3.x.

This results in a set of mask files floating around in forum threads;
but as things are dynamic as well as the mask on some libraries
mismatches the actual range, it doesn't always work out well. Let alone
that people have to find this hidden in one or another forum thread.

From a pure QA perspective it appears even more problematic; because
another consequence of the upgrade to GNOME 3 is that maintainers have
the same problem when they are requested in a bug to fix a GNOME 2
version, they would need to get GNOME 2 to assure their fix works.

Well, GNOME 2 is so stable that it mostly works as well if you manage
to downgrade back to it or disallow any upgrade; but for how long will
that be? Time is ticking before GNOME 2 is no longer an option.

Since there is a need for this I would like to raise a discussion on
some questions here on project as well as in the Council meeting:

 1. Will removing GNOME 2 when it becomes unmaintainable upset users?

    (From what I've seen, yes, but what do you think?)

 2. What can we do to satisfy users that want to stick to GNOME 2?

    2.a. Bring a fork like MATE to the Portage tree?

    2.b. Split off GNOME 2 to a different SLOT, category or name?
         Can we still do this at this point in time?

3. How can we prevent this from happening in the future?

4. Is a news item needed for this situation? To suggest alternatives?

What do you think?

PS:   For completeness, I should mention my interest with this mail is
      to forward the feedback from users; I run GNOME 3.11 + systemd.

      Rather than a tête–à–tête in #gentoo-desktop with one project
      member or an user discussion on the forums, I am under the
      impression that this needs much wider discussion than remaining
      to be a hidden regression; this mail intents to help the Gentoo
      GNOME project, it thus doesn't request a vote, just a discussion.

Thank you for reading.

References (there's more to be found, eg. on IRC; a small selection):

 [1]: GNOME 3.11 - Features - Systemd for the user session
      https://wiki.gnome.org/ThreePointEleven/Features/SystemdUserSession

 [2]: A set of forum posts regarding avoiding systemd:

          "Systemd headsup of L.P. - reads like at first of april"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-962232.html

          "Are we losing freedom of choice?"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-974262.html

          "Need help building a non-systemd modern system"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-974500.html

          "systemd"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-975018.html

          "Quick guide to preventing assimilation?"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-977278.html

          "please new forum _Advanced_Gentoo_without_KIT_"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-977528.html

 [3]: A set of forum posts regarding avoiding GNOME 3:

          "Masking Gnome 3"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-977288.html

          "installing gnome2"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-977638.html

          "HowTo mask gnome-3.8"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-977750.html

          "emerging gdm pulls in gnome 3.8"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-980528.html

          "Help me block gnome-3.x?"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-980866.html

          "Masking Gnome 3 and installing MATE"
          http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-980922.html

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@g.o
GPG Public Key  : 6D34E57D
GPG Fingerprint : C165 AF18 AB4C 400B C3D2  ABF0 95B2 1FCD 6D34 E57D