 So Welcome everyone. This is a session about helping regular desktop users not need their local Debian Geeks How can we iron out the rough parts of the distribution for regular people? Lunar is presenting and everybody. Thank you, Lunar So this is about our favor About yeah, how could we make like I'm asking a simple question How could we make the sub users need their local Debian Geeks less? I have a few Forwards and then we can go up for discussion. I have a few technical point. I'd like to Discuss what issue some more technical issues pop up. It's good So I'm talking about I'm not walking set up. I should have said is that before Interesting. This is not going to work like that. Anyway Probably What? Yeah, I was trying to do that to geeky probably Huh and now I'm last on my own screen shame Yeah Okay Come on Anyway So that were my slides. So I'm going just to follow and and whatever So, I mean that was okay, so I'm talking about desktop users What? I'm not hearing you. Yeah Is that okay? Yeah, I just watching on ISE so if people are on ISE if you have questions Please highlight me bubul on ISE and I relay the questions or comments or whatever So sorry about that So I'm talking about desktop users those are users in Well, I'm when I speak when I talk about the sub users. I mean people having some work to do and I would like to actually do that work and in order to realize what they need to Realize they need to use a computer But I'm not talking about people who actually Have a like work as developers who even are computer Antisys like for our users like people who would subscribe to Demian user main list are for our users in my opinion I'm talking about users that actually I would like to See them having their computers not gets into the way of the work they want to achieve. That's that's who I'm talking about And I mean DBN is in my opinion a great distro to support those users because we have stable release and I mean When you want to realize something having habits on How you do that is a good thing because it enables you to actually stop thinking about How you do something, but the things that you want to do So I'm advocating that we we as DBN she's stable release Releases and those are good because enable our users to have habits and I mean Yeah, two years is two years three years is a good time because I mean I'm If if my system changed every two three years Then I can I don't know take the time when I I'm available enough to actually rethink Think again about my current habits, but for example, you've been to with its every six months really cycle I've seen that that rhythm of release gets Into the in the way of people actually wanting to do work because they had to rethink Again and again how they were actually using the computer every six months And So yeah, they've been is great, and I'm actually I've done that I've convinced many friends actually using dbN And I was I'm happy about it but my issue with that is is now I have to spend less time with them and more time with their computer and Actually, I'd like I'd like dbN. I'd like us. Please help me I'd like to spend more time with my friends and not with the computer or not fixing their computer or not discussing the bug they encountered with dbN and So that's that's why I wanted to have this session with you It's just like how what are the Ralph edges that we still have and That we could actually fix so I'm not getting a phone call at 11 p.m. And and asking hey, I have this black screen. Can you help me? You know So please join the the the Gobi So Gobi is that so it's Software is Gobi 0.5 and it's still not working. Well Gobi dash 1.5 the server is called Gobi at dbN.net and the document is something like DC 11 Both local less local geeks is about people connecting to that Is my Gobi broken you're connected Okay, so my Gobi was out of sync. I'm putting that on screen lots of people Is that big enough? So is there like any Anyone like would like to comment before we get to some technical issues I've found out not right now Okay, the first thing I have been able to you to find and this one thing I like to fix is the So well, I think the dbN installer now is at the point when where most people can actually Do an installation of dbN by themselves If you use the guided partitioning which is the hardest part in my opinion of a fresh install then I mean you're good if you don't want to have any kind of other Opening system on your On your computer, then I think it's okay to The deep like I think the dbN installer mostly fits one of the question that I have suppose all the many many friends is the one Who says what is your demand? Like that one is is is I mean so I have to explain them. Okay, so you see for example when you actually use Bugs done dbN.org then dbN.org is a domain and bugs is your machine But then they say no bugs is not are not my machine and I'm not on dbN and so they get confused Okay So I have been pondering that for a while and I've been when we did the Release online release party for squeeze. We actually discussed that a little bit There's several issues like we can't just hide the question. What is your domain? Because one the feature of DI which is quite useful is that you can fetch a domain from DHCP And so if you are doing a large-scale installation, that makes sense to actually Set up set a domain and have it like automatically fetched so one of the Way to solve that that was thinking about is actually Having not like currently you have a question like what is your last name and what is your domain name? I would like to have to ask you actually merge that into one single question. That would be what is Your system name and that could be for example for my laptop Kendra Without any domain name or if you're installing bugs.dbN.org then it would be bugs.dbN.org with the four qualified domain name Do you think that it will help I think that people are confused by the idea that their computer even has a name Honestly, I mean I know that there's an RFC that suggests how to name your computer, but most people haven't read it and it just if I think splitting that out by dots is gonna confuse people who might have a They might just say oh well. This is my space laptop. Is the host name going to be my space laptop? I Don't know how to resolve that problem But I don't know that merging them into one question is actually going to kind of solve the whole thing merging them into one question is even making it worse Because you're presupposing that people will know that the first point separates the system name from the domain name So well, of course even more knowledge my point is that you don't need to have a domain name if you have a Laptop and most laptops shouldn't have a domain name set actually because they jump up from network to network that's my my opinion and And and also Yeah, so that's I Mean you don't have to know that the dots separate if you just want to name your laptop without a domain name That's my point But yeah I think we need to take a step back and figure out how to actually make the desktop more useful and Let me give been begin with a question. How many of you are installing the we see desktop regularly Like once a week or more we see you mean We see yeah, the next one that's supposed to be fixing right daily images All the daily images or PXC or whatever. Okay. How is my name doing that weekly or more? Yeah That's what we have to do to actually test it and fix it and For for Lenny for etch for Woody I've been doing that in DB and edu and finding so many miss features and stupid things and packages that are missing and I seem to be the only one doing it So I think we need to look at the process that will actually get us a useful desktop If you install a fresh desktop installation in GNOME and discover there is no pop-up when an upgrade is available then you actually have to address that if you discover that the Default browser doesn't handle text files properly You have to address that if you discover that the fonts that are used in almost every way pages are missing And these are all problems. I've seen up through the years You have to address that and the problem I think we have is that most people just use their desktop their laptop and They install one packet to fix their problem and forget about it And don't really realize that the desktop task in task cell is missing that Vital piece of packet that's maybe a few kilobyte, but makes the user experience so much better and we don't really Seem to be doing much to integrate all the nice thing that Ubuntu has added to their system to make things work properly for normal users and Really think we need to step back and stop focusing on getting our desktop experience better We need to see would I be able to help? Well pick any random person, you know, that's not really a computer skilled person like a grandmother or something Would I be able to help her through this process over the phone? and if you can't well we need to make it simpler because We need to get to a point where you can actually help people over the phone with a really simple process like upgrading the Distribution or adding a video codec or making sure that flash is working or whatever Stupid thing you have to get Install to actually get web pages or documents or whatever working because otherwise the Linux distribution is getting in their way And we like to think we have the superior position when we are debating software But to a lot of people we are like the retarded Cousin that doesn't really understand the words you are using and it doesn't really understand the documents you are sending to them because they are like less skilled and less Okay in their heads and to actually get away from that we need to make sure it's so easy to explain what the problem is and So easy to understand what the problem is if you're missing Windows media of drivers or if you're missing flash Otherwise we are just being the the stupid Computer system that doesn't work properly I mean I do agree with all that and that's why I actually wanted to make that but happen what I'm going through right now is like when I so I've done I've not done that work on wheezy, but I've done that work on stable and That's I'm more like to just do to go through a few technical points that we could actually change and I do not feel like and it's all to change alone. So that's why I wanted to discuss with more people first But fully agree that we should actually have take this habits of testing What we are developing right now and to make it better for the next three sure Yeah, hi, so I've faced this problem personally when I moved over to Debin So I think there's one the easiest way to solve this would be that you set a default value So the user doesn't have to enter something himself So like the username phase comes first, I guess and then the domain part comes Depends on if you're installing from the network come from a serum If the username part comes first, then you can you know username hyphen desktop laptop. I think like Ubuntu does it so You actually ease problems because the user doesn't have to guess if the value is already there. He'll just click next so Yeah, I mean one of one of the very like the hardest part of the whole thing about the jib and install a but It's it's very flexible and it's used by hardcore sysadmins and by clueless users It's very hard. She actually have some way But probably changing the order of question and actually Could be helpful to answer that Daniels were raised which was okay. Some people don't know that computers should have name Yeah, because if the user is once he can enter to himself and if he doesn't know what it is He'll just just click next and be over with it. So But problem with that it's it. Yeah, and then we can probably figure out the domain later I know I just noticed people are adding about partitioning schemes to the document I think we're talking about people who will not be doing partitioning In general like these are these are people for whom a graphical partition manager is no more help than a text-based partition manager They don't know what a partition is. They don't want to know what a partition is and they shouldn't need to know What a partition is so I mean, yeah It would be great for the people who are sort of in between to be able to have a GUI version But I think we need to make it just work and maybe that means that they can't install it in a dual boot mode with their windows Machine, but you know what? These are folks who are not going to be successfully dual booting. Anyway, there are too many problems involved with a dual boot persistently, I think my my I mean the friends who Have been stalling they didn't They they want to get rid of viruses windows and non free software They're like interested and want to have free software and use free software And they actually are more happy now that they have DB and then they were with their previous System so I they don't want to go back. I mean They don't want to buy software to have to do stuff for the computer Personally, I think the installer is simple enough now. I've never had any complaint about Installing and basically it's done once and then they will keep running the system I think we need to focus more on the desktop experience and Like the problem that occurs several times and all the times Instead of one that's happening once per computer and then you will have two years of stupid questions about why is this video not working? So Partisaning yeah, it could be made simpler and there are some questions you could get rid of and in DB and edu We have done that by just asking a few questions and pre-seed everything else And it's perfectly possible to put one question in front of DB and installer Do you care about all these things or do you just want everything to work and you just have a yes-no question and Partitioning and everything will just happen. It's perfectly possible to do that probably would be like A hundred lines of shellcode and then you would have an installer that's so simple that anyone couldn't install it But I don't think we need that because the installer is so simple these days. It's very hard to actually Not be able to install and at the installation process You can just redo it if it didn't work out you just reinstall again Because you haven't anything sensible on your machine yet. It's fresh machine with a fresh installation So if you get one question wrong, you just redo it and Flip the answer but when you have a working desktop with hundreds of and thousands of documents you want to make sure are stored properly and You want everything to be just working and not get in your way when you want to have Your work done that's where we have to focus and that's where we have been really not doing a lot of work Recently to improve the experience of users One one quick comment one of the other question. I would like to actually raise the priority So it would be hidden for most user is the one that asks for HTTP proxy who has used an HTTP proxy for the last two years Okay But do you think that you could switch to export mode to do it even install using? Would that be correct? Yeah, no Okay, well this time the Debian bootmail is probably but we'll see So yeah, I agree that we need more people interested in fixing the desktop But at the same time those who are not interested in the desktop should still appreciate the desktop Yesterday on Debian IRC channel there was somebody trying to configure DNS and He received like two pages of flame how crappy network manager is and then they were telling him to Use nano to edit resolve conf and then use CH utter to make sure that a network manager cannot write over result Conf so I think that's also also a social problem that people should recognize That some people are not interested in learning everything in the system Okay, I like I like to I like to move to the next point that was like feeling very controversial in my point of view, but It's I'd like to I'd like to switch this a second fix configuration viable in the odc default SES to yes by default on new installations from now on so what what does that? Flag means is that in case the the file system is broken on boot. It tries to fix it without asking user inputs at all Because right now if you it happened to a few friends It means like issue issue pulling the plug and it box the file system good enough then way the file system comes back Well, but the computer comes back. They get prompted with a shiny black screen saying messages in English Asking to type scary come on lines that people ever thought about and it's only What get I mean? And if you don't know anything the system will not boot either. So I mean a few friends. They were like It's telling me that for a while now. I've tried to rebuild it and and again and again, and it's a little working Can you help me because? And I would like I'm I don't want to ask these folks who can use the dbn install archer actually have to edit the config file using nano right after Their arm to actually set up to set this like to yes, and I don't want to to I'm not going to have this very holy boot message going graphical or Translated even because I think it's it would be hard work To do and I think it's it's far more easier that we acknowledge that we've gigabytes of Data or even like terabytes of that. I know one is actually going to answer the fsck question manually except these are like fast system experts, but Just just to point you out. I'm quoting Josh triplet and a recent system D Come on a system D blog Who we acknowledge that he was strange. It was not true And also later in the just just after that in the goby you have the last discussion that I have been able to found about this Configure option is it's a message from that so who is like e2 fsck maintainer actually and it's it's from august Two thousand yeah, and it so it's three years old And it's it's not exactly that issue, but it's quite related and I think one additional usability Buck in the standard devian installation is the intervals when fs checks are being run I think when I I recently helped someone or who had basically more or less a fresh squeeze installation and I think with the defaults which are being installed on the standard file system the I think the interval is about 31 boot ups and if you're using the computer just to to check email once a while This essentially leads to an an e2 is s check which roughly runs at least a month if not even if not even more often if two people share the same computer and If you use ex tier 3 which is the default on a really on one of the typical hard disk sizes That you have on a current computer which has a terabyte hard disk and it actually takes up to 20 minutes of completely scary non-understandable messages and I think we should either switch to Because in e2 fs check. There's also the possibility to set a default which is set in days So that is rather set to something along the lines of three to six months or to even go one step further and seem simply have it Triggered as a specific administrative task like for example having a gnome pop-up Notifications such as your computer hasn't been checked for half a year Would you want to check it with the next boot up because I think this is essentially also a usability problem for everyone who runs a server Because I think everyone knows the problem that the whole thing has been running for for the whole while And then you have a really serious problem need to reboot it And this is always the time when the next e2 fs check kicks in So I think this is essentially not only not only usability problem the desktop, but I think something which even Spends out to to the typical server use Interesting thanks I had my file system check yesterday On my laptop when it was running on battery and I am waiting for an option to postpone it That shouldn't be that hard actually it should do that by default I mean there is good that there is logic already that knows how that it should skip file system check on battery It's there. So it's a bug Or you have to install laptop mode for this, okay, so Another example of these small tools that should be installed by default But I just wanted to remind everyone that the fsck Operation doesn't really have to happen at boot and it doesn't really have to happen manually in free BSD Do you have a background fsck that actually run while the system is running? Maybe Linus current should get one of those. I mean I When I talk to you to change it back to some people around that comes some of them like we're really against it because they told me hey When I'm when I'm on my server, I don't want to lose any file And I say okay, but if you have a server your system means so you know how to change that flag back to no, right? so Is that anyone like okay? So I'm with a convinced audience right now. So maybe I'm it's flowed but yeah So I wanted to ask a question about it's sort of a more general Like in terms of what we're doing here I feel like we're identifying a lot of places where there are rough edges that have some pretty much common sense Choices that we're not yet making in the distribution How are we going to resolve these things should should these just be bugs that are filed? Is there a common tag in the in the BTS that we're using to say? Common sense fix or something like that. How can we make it so that? These sort of things are encouraged and and accepted within the distribution Rafael Actually Ubuntu at this notion of paper cut a really small fix that enhance the user experience and they are collecting those and Trying to fix a specific number for each release. Maybe we should have something similar. I don't know You We shouldn't really be focusing too much on changing the faults either We might be able to use some of the other mechanisms we have around in the distribution preceding and and that constant questions that can be Doing more Sensible things during installation to detect what's a sensible default For example the proxy thing the obvious thing to do for the install I believe is to actually see if it can get on the internet And if it can get on the internet the proxy question is a really low priority question if it can't it's a high priority question And that's probably like five lines of shellcode in the in the code. That's actually asking the profile question Not the proxy question. I think we can do similar things with With the fsck thing we can see if you are going to install a desktop and it is a laptop then we flip the Default value to to know or to yes it there's so many things we can do if it's stop talking about what should be the default for everyone and Instead discuss when should this be set to this value and when should it be set to that one? And how can we automatically detect when the different scenarios are in place? so I also wonder well most of those Pre-configuration are tied somehow to the usage of the even installer but more and more Server or virtual servers or whatever are installed just with the bootstrap and here you don't get all those funny pre-configuration things It's something maybe that we should take in keep in mind at least Because it would be sad to have two different experience depending on the way you install David so I Remember we had a few years ago a drive To reduce the number of questions that you are asked in a default install so We did that kind of things if a few dedicated people come together Make a team and make a team a mailing list and larger discussions that need to be launched and file the books that need to be filed it happens, but yeah a Few people have to get together and form the group one of the other thing I was actually in just but need is when I did the And I'm still ongoing the transition from my friend's computer from Lenny to squeeze and I mean There is no way you can actually using graphical interfaces. We have we have a lot of things that you can tweak your apps Repositories graphically you can do security Updates using graphical interface you can tweak your packages and stuff. There's no way you can actually change the line in Etc app source list that list that says Lenny to squeeze like that single change is not possible using agree right now Except from that if you make that change using command line and then switch to depth comb priority critical Then and you can do a full upgrade of Lenny to squeeze and you get only Free depth conf questions that probably should be lowered Asked at lower priority which are about restarting services of the JLPS for for the JLPC like we start in cron and Gdm and Addee and stuff and I mean come on like who don't want to get the system Like if you're doing a security update like full system upgrade, then you want to restart the services, right? so Jerry we Yeah, I'm sorry. It's a little bit late because it comes from ISE so we will go one step backwards There was a question about does there exists a design guide for the different tasks cell targets Which is related to what do we install by default? I guess this is asking how should be done to design the task cell Stuff so as we have Joey around I guess he can answer or not We have 10 minutes left There's not really a design guide for the test cell tasks. It's mostly common sense or Just whatever seems best at the time Come on. Come on. That's why only a few people can modify the test cell tasks. Unfortunately I just wanted to point out that that if you do an upgrade while running gnome for example And you allow it to reboot to restart Gdm. You're just fucked No, you're not The script does it perfectly. It says reloading. Okay. I'll so then the I experienced it with Katie and KDM And you're fucked that was I mean I've done the test from linear to squeeze Okay, we like switching from default desktop installs of Lenny to squeeze and it's been always fine Okay, but then Okay, the last the the remaining Question that you asked and that I think you can't actually have it Skipped is the one that says I'm grub. I want to upgrade myself Please confirm where I should trash your hard drive Because that one is not going I don't feel like we could skip that one with people to say hey Please that's my hard disk so as far as I Remember Gdm is fine on upgrade, but a gnome really doesn't like being upgraded a gnome in general Really doesn't like being upgraded while it's running About every time I have a significant upgrade to gnome and I run it from From running gnome random random gnome programs just crash. Yeah, you have error messages popping up But what I what I am advocating is probably we can if so if we if we have Some of the critical questions prairie lower too high probably and if we have some kind of if you do some tests I'm pretty sure we can come up with a software solution that could drive Upgrades from old stable to stable and who who could enable our users to actually do that switch using graphical tool I think it's doable task because it's not that hard. It's for gnome It's probably it's probably about killing the demons that are popping up stupid error messages before they are breaded Probably we can come up with something like that. I mean Okay, so it's a bit of a shame because I'm not caring much about KDE because I mostly install thinking about the default Debian installed right now. I've never tried to do some kind of graphical Upgrades using KDE for example other desktop environments, but Yeah, it's something I will very much like us to to have for for wheezy So another issue I see from for non-expert upgrades Is these well as a confile handling after I'm not quite sure what to do about it because DPKG can cannot just always use a debcon for it's to low level But maybe optionally or and and also The messages have more Handholding because right now the question is asked on the terminal and even even if it was asked graphically with the same prompts People who wouldn't know what to do or how to do it so Maybe UCF brings part of an answer if it would just the default to To merge or something but see I remember that someone was working on a patch for DPKG They would use depth comp to ask questions about com files. Do you remember that that that's what? it's yes any progress merge no nothing it's like But there have been some code written for that at some point. Okay. Yes, and we have five minutes more One thing about a bit pissed about also is I think we should we should think about the use case of people who Will actually want to use a computer without any kind of internet connection At all you still would I mean it's still a For some kind of work it makes sense to actually have a computer that had no internet connection at all and so in squeeze it's too late probably but the The multi-arc DVD which is advertised as the only Installation medium that you that you need has this little bug that it has no network managerk no in it so probably it's not it's not a Problem issue don't intend to actually use the any kind of network connection at all for the walk life of the computer But if you're doing the unstar we've had a good internet connection and then you go back to internet then you're fine so and That and I mean that's it that was a stupid test and could have been figured out way earlier But no one made it so I think we should It's a good news now that we have a date for the freeze which is July next year No June sorry, then so it's June next year so starting of July. We can do actually produce CD images and start testing them and see if the resulting desktop is working and we can do tests with like Okay, net-inst CD DVDs all that kind of insultion median media we have Well, I'm not burning Was that our fellow were saying there's no reason to wait for the freeze I mean, I'm not going to burn any DVD and find a spare fold laptop that I can trash every week I mean I have to ask friends to do that You can test some stuff on on virtualization, but like just one machine, but some of them really needs Real computer to to to do so Very little needs a real computer to be tested. I've been installing Daily and in periods or multiple times per day on the virtual machine and you can test almost everything on the virtual machine There's no need to burn a CD. You just put it on a USB stick And if you have the spare hardware you do that if you don't use a virtual machine Come on, it's not that hard and if someone actually need to do it It's it's not that hard time time time time sink with no limits, but yeah I'm advocating the test of science sake if we start doing that after the freeze than before but if people like Doing it right now. I mean, it's doing it after the freeze There are so many problems you will discover after the freeze as the freeze will be pointless if we start after the freeze Well, that was the bug I'm at work. I'm talking about which is network manager. No is not at the DVD He's totally unrelated to the freeze. It's the way we actually make this DVD and the CD So that's a bug against CD image So we have three more minutes That I'm pretty happy because the the Gobi session has been like filled with many ideas And I'm going to post that on the depth conference mainly and see at least Is that is there any other comments? one of the Things that I expected to see in this talk coming into it was ways to remotely manage your Less experienced users workstations either some kind of System where they have a menu option to set up a remote session with you or where you Just log in silently once in a while by SSH, but some way to open up whatever ports you need and actually set up the Screen sharing or SSH or whatever else to automate some of that. I don't know if Rafael actually with GNOME, there already is an option that you can Enable share your computer with you can password protect it if you want or you can disable that depending on how The way the computer is located. I do that with my mother. So it's working fine. I mean When I installed our computer, I just clicked this checkbox and No, well, I look back with SSH and connect over the but SSH and VNC But basically VNC is integrated in GNOME desktop in the standard on desktop. So I Don't know what more you'll what do you want more than that? I'm expecting that users would not necessarily remember to turn the service on and off and Wouldn't want to leave it running all the time and Basically just something more turnkey that really dumps it down Anyway, I Thought maybe that would be covered It's kind of what I expected coming in here a little not the whole thing Well, my point is also that I'd like I'd like I'd like those users to actually not need my help at all Which means no need to actually remotely help them Other way that I'd rather have them and see them and have a cup of coffee in real life, you know That's timing. That's one thing. My friends. What do you do when you're in Bosnia? What then what do you do when you're in Bosnia, right? Well, they wait, I don't know So there's a couple of bug we could already feel some of those items means a hell lot more work I think I think that in the real proper process Already that exists like a team of people who like to make the perfect best up I know that for example Ronda has been doing a lot of work trying to fix bugs that are reported against table There is a few things probably maybe we can actually if people are really interested Maybe you could gather for a sprint at some point and try to fix as many of these Desktop issues. I don't know. I think there are a lot of work that can be that can be done and and it's it's great that to see many people interesting in that making DBN more friendly to our desktop users so What's your call for for it times up probably? Yeah So we have we have to yeah, we have to we have to decide for user tag address. Let's let's do that Yeah, that's Pick one. Okay. We'll see like something like that We'll see I'm not a hurrying you so I say we close up the session and then come and we I'm going to put something on the main list thanks for coming and And yeah, well we'll walk together and all that