I must say, I appreciate the attention to make things not only simpler but less breakable lately. First we had APT being patched to stop users removing essential packages, now the KDE Discover software manager gets a similar upgrade.
Developer Nate Graham has written up another great "This week in KDE" blog post, going over changes and improvements coming to the next release of Plasma and the various applications. One small change really caught my eye though! Discover now has a new way to ensure you keep a working system, with an updated mechanism to detect important packages getting removed and give you a friendly warning on it free of too much technical jargon.
Picture Source - Nate Graham
Graham's comment underneath "Hopefully this is Linus-Sebastian-proof", heh. I hope many more application developers are looking at the way Discover and APT are evolving to ensure things are a bit more idiot-proof.
Another change to make things look a bit friendlier in Discover is that previously, if you had issues upgrading, it would instantly shove a load of technical details in your face. To normal consumers, that's clearly not going to do much to help and could probably scare them away. Now, instead, it will provide a very clear and friendly message, with the option to get more details to report the issue.
Picture Source - Nate Graham
Plenty more upgrades to Plasma are in the works too, like the newer KWin Overview effect gaining the ability to display search results from KRunner, which brings it another step closer to the GNOME Activities Overview feature, which I did always find thoroughly useful.
There's plenty more fixes in the full post.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Quoting: HolzkohlenWow, some of you actually complain about Linux becoming more user-friendly. How have you not outgrown this edginess? I was like that as a teenager. I cringe hard thinking back on that time. Maybe you should try something more obscure than linux eh? Have you heard about the anti-mainstream super edgy OpenBSD? No apt nor discover you need to worry about. And I guarantee that Linus won't even consider using that ever. How does that sound?
I don't think it becomes more user-friendly with the idea of this change. Every package manager could throw a big red list on your face and say if you proceed you will remove the following packages... Big red and stopping any other input from taking over ... But instead some programmers decide what the user want or not want. That is not in the dna of linux , that is not why you want to use a linux. If you want this go to some of the wallet garden os'es which try to force their decissions on you now for years. Thanks alot for reading.
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: tuubiQuoting: GuestI think it was a change that can potentially impact everyone, made without due consideration, all because a youtuber wanted more page views. If distros are going to start doing such things then it can't be a good road to go down, no matter what change is made.
And yes, the more I think on it, the worse the change is. As I wrote - anyone forcing things through by putting in a configuration override (which is almost certainly going to start to be recommended on random internet comments) now won't be warned of potential breakage.
Note that I'm not saying nothing should have been done, I'm instead saying that (in my view) the change wasn't an improvement and doesn't fix anything.
But no warnings were removed. The wishy-washy "You are about to do something potentially harmful." was changed into "Removing essential system-critical packages is not permitted. This might break the system." and the silly prompt was removed in favour of a flag. You'll still see the list of relevant packages and unmet dependencies.
You can easily check the relevant changes in their Gitlab. You're arguing against a strawman.
Am I though? Tell me you think internet comments aren't going to start recommending that flag be applied. So how does changing apt help here?
Are you really trying to tell me that I shouldn't be in favour of better changes, things that might actually improve the situation?
You said "anyone forcing things through [...] now won't be warned of potential breakage." which is clearly a misunderstanding on your part. You invented a problem and argued against it. That's a strawman.
And of course I'm not telling you what you should do or think. Personally I think this change does improve the situation, though admittedly not by much. Then again, there's not much of a problem to fix.
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Quoting: tuubiYou said "anyone forcing things through [...] now won't be warned of potential breakage." which is clearly a misunderstanding on your part. You invented a problem and argued against it. That's a strawman.
And of course I'm not telling you what you should do or think. Personally I think this change does improve the situation, though admittedly not by much. Then again, there's not much of a problem to fix.
I think there's two cases. Hopefully these clear things up a bit.
Case 1
User is blocked from doing harmful operation because user hasn't enabled the flag. User won't have any clue how to proceed as wording doesn't help in creating a bug report (this assumes that user is not able to go and fix the package).
Case 2
User has enabled the flag. If user reads the messages, it ends up in same situation than in the first case (If I remember correctly, APT might ask about proceeding before every installation). If user doesn't understand the output, user will proceed and hose the system or in best case give up.
Case 2 might be harder to fix. Though if APT still asks before proceeding, it might be as good enough for now at least. If somebody comes up with better solution, I would assume that it's possible to make bug report or pull request.
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Out of the box ->
"with great power comes great responsibility" ... if i am completly under control of my os (from the beginning to end ...) , it's my resposibility to know what i do. If i don't want to have this responsibility i need to give away power.
We should ask ourself do we want to give away power or do we want to handle the responsibility? For Windows / Mac OS / Android / ChromeOS some companies defined how much power you have and therefor how much responsibility. For Linux i guess we should make sure people understand that this is power and not a burden. Some distributions can ease this and take over responsibility , but in the end there is only so much you can do without removing power and freedom.
Some of us might think it's better to give others the responsibility. Many oldschool it people will feel totally uncomfortable , cause we had this vendor lockins. We are currently already going again into vendor lockins. A few of us might still remember IE being shit but the only way to browse the internet. A few of us might remember when all the messenger protocols weren't opensource and you could never use all the "features". A few of us might remember the time, when something as easy as doing a click on windows (multi monitor) was calculating modlines on linux ...
Some of us have gone throu all of this because we believed that the flexibility to make the system exactly how we wanted it to be and being free of vendor lockins was worth all the trouble we had. A few of those guys wrote tools and improved the situation by alot. Being able to plug and play most hardware has been a hell of a ride. (remembering when i needed to compile a fucking kernel during installation to get support for a gfx card -> waves at slackware)
Some of those people say --> be careful .. the most easy way out has been never the best way out and usually makes you do things multiple times.
I personally say -> I can live very well because people have not even a basic understanding how a pc or how tech works today. "Usability" has become an synonym in many cases for "just works". "Just works" has become an synonym for yeah easy to attack. Easy to attack has become a synonym for all the bad experience modern users have on tech. Stolen Data & Datamining , Maleware , identity stealing -> i guess everyone can add something to this list.
If you ever want to break this cycle people need to understand again what is happening on their pc. For me LTT was the worst showcase of why i look happy and unhappy in the future. Happy because damm i can live of that behaivior. Unhappy cause i don't want to know when again a company or a person has so much power over the people like for example microsoft had in the 90's.
I guess noone is against making usage of pc's easier, but i guess alot of people are against letting people use pc's who (added "maybe") should not. There is a reason why we do driving licences (to give just a hint of a comparable powerful device)
Last edited by Glog78 on 21 November 2021 at 2:49 pm UTC
"with great power comes great responsibility" ... if i am completly under control of my os (from the beginning to end ...) , it's my resposibility to know what i do. If i don't want to have this responsibility i need to give away power.
We should ask ourself do we want to give away power or do we want to handle the responsibility? For Windows / Mac OS / Android / ChromeOS some companies defined how much power you have and therefor how much responsibility. For Linux i guess we should make sure people understand that this is power and not a burden. Some distributions can ease this and take over responsibility , but in the end there is only so much you can do without removing power and freedom.
Some of us might think it's better to give others the responsibility. Many oldschool it people will feel totally uncomfortable , cause we had this vendor lockins. We are currently already going again into vendor lockins. A few of us might still remember IE being shit but the only way to browse the internet. A few of us might remember when all the messenger protocols weren't opensource and you could never use all the "features". A few of us might remember the time, when something as easy as doing a click on windows (multi monitor) was calculating modlines on linux ...
Some of us have gone throu all of this because we believed that the flexibility to make the system exactly how we wanted it to be and being free of vendor lockins was worth all the trouble we had. A few of those guys wrote tools and improved the situation by alot. Being able to plug and play most hardware has been a hell of a ride. (remembering when i needed to compile a fucking kernel during installation to get support for a gfx card -> waves at slackware)
Some of those people say --> be careful .. the most easy way out has been never the best way out and usually makes you do things multiple times.
I personally say -> I can live very well because people have not even a basic understanding how a pc or how tech works today. "Usability" has become an synonym in many cases for "just works". "Just works" has become an synonym for yeah easy to attack. Easy to attack has become a synonym for all the bad experience modern users have on tech. Stolen Data & Datamining , Maleware , identity stealing -> i guess everyone can add something to this list.
If you ever want to break this cycle people need to understand again what is happening on their pc. For me LTT was the worst showcase of why i look happy and unhappy in the future. Happy because damm i can live of that behaivior. Unhappy cause i don't want to know when again a company or a person has so much power over the people like for example microsoft had in the 90's.
I guess noone is against making usage of pc's easier, but i guess alot of people are against letting people use pc's who (added "maybe") should not. There is a reason why we do driving licences (to give just a hint of a comparable powerful device)
Last edited by Glog78 on 21 November 2021 at 2:49 pm UTC
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Mblackwell Nov 21, 2021
Windows kind of trains people to just click "next".
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Quoting: BeamboomIf you just want to play Windows games, install Windows.
No.
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Quoting: Glog78Something to think -> is a good example which did come up denyasis (for other reasons)
If someone removes Network Manager -> is this package essential with systemd networkd still being around or not ?
Just a question :)
Question 2 to make it hard -> if one distribution says it is essential and the other says it isn't -> what would you as an developer of a not distribution package choose as an answer ?
Question 3 to make it completly lost -> what if the user wants to exchange network manager against wicd ?
Good questions. I'm not sure if it's "Essential", in terms of apt's "Essential" or not ( or for the basic functioning of Sude) It's default on both my systems, but, jumping to #3, that's actually a graphical option in YAST in openSuse (which requires authentication).
Back to #2, I would probably mark things that effect core functionality of what you expect to function on a Desktop as Essential. So yeah, I'd mark it "Essential" if I were a Dev. Here's my thought. If I remove it ( without having a replacement setup), you likely don't have a functioning system anymore. Can't look up why the network is failing (no internet), nor install alternatives to wickd, networkd or connman, etc (no internet). You can't automatically assume they have an alternate internet connection (phone, other computer, friends, public internet) to diagnose and fix the problem.
I think that decision really comes down to the goals and objectives of the Distro (including user thier expected user base) I wouldn't expect that on Arch/Gentoo/LFS where you might pick you network deamon during setup. But I might on a Distro that installs it by default and targets general users like me. (I can't really expect a user to know what every package is, or it's importance from the package name).
PS. Thanks for the PolKit info. Gives me some doors to peek at. In a stroke of good UI, XFCE tells you exactly what is requesting permission when it asks for the admin password. I know it's PolKit's org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.modify.system.settings rule (I'm paraphrasing the name a bit), because it lists it. Sadly (perhaps bad UI?), I know what the rule request is, but not what exactly invoked the rule.
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Damn, they're taking out the fun in my linux experience bricking my system. Not very nice of them.
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Quoting: Glog78Quoting: NociferQuoting: Glog78So KDE Discover now prevents you to deinstall kde plasma but you can go on and deinstall xfce or gnome which might used on a second user of this pc ? (Linus usecase ->) He doesn't liked dolphin as far as i got it and used another filemanager which can be in this scenario still be deinstalled ...
Ah yes, that's another point I read and wanted to reply to but then forgot, so I'll reply to this instead: IMHO it makes absolute sense for a GUI tool that is part of a GUI family of packages and is not meant to work on its own to actually prevent you from uninstalling said GUI family of packages, including itself.
If you really want to uninstall your DE (or other GUI-related stuff like Xorg) you should be doing so via CLI, i.e. a tool/environment independent of your DE, in the same way that e.g. reformatting your root should be done via a second system independent of your root device.
Regarding Gnome or XFCE, they're just non-essential packages from the point of view of an active KDE environment.
While i understand the arguments i still want to ask a question here too:
kdiscovery considers kate to be an essential part for editing text
gnome software center considers gedit to be an essential part for editing text
..... (you see a pattern here)
Now the question ->
What is the essential part of editing on the distribution for the package manager ?
I think the answer is simple in this case: text editors should never be considered as essential and thus should be removable at whim via any kind of package manager, be it GUI or CLI. In general, the only packages that should be protected against easy/accidental removal are those which if missing would render a system unusable and/or unbootable.
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Here is a little story from former Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst: https://youtu.be/tjO_Ae-gTPs?t=544
It's not only new users who accidentally nukes their system.
It's not only new users who accidentally nukes their system.
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