Comments on: Monthly News – August 2017

By: D D

D D — Sat, 30 Sep 2017 20:18:49 +0000

In reply to Linux Mint. Thanks for the response!

By: Linux Mint

Linux Mint — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 20:05:00 +0000

In reply to D D.

Hi DD,

We probably won’t patch (not fork) just for that.

Libunity does something similar but globally for apps, not for windows. It’s also part of a project which was discontinued and was designed to only work in Ubuntu so we’ve little interest in relying on it or using it in the scope of Cinnamon which is supposed to work everywhere. We could support libunity as an optional dependency (i.e. in some distros and not others) in addition to libxapp in Cinnamon but it wouldn’t be very useful in the window list.. it would be more useful in docks and we don’t ship one. If we were to display app progress globally in the Cinnamon UI somewhere then we could look into it… but then again, we could get that done very easily via libxapp and have it work everywhere in all distributions.

We could support libunity in our tools (mintinstall, mintbackup..etc..). It’s not something we need, but it could make them communicate with docks using libunity. It’s typically something we would merge or approve if somebody proposed a patch or a PR, it’s just not worth spending time on doing it ourselves in the scope of a release because we don’t ship any of these docks.

By: D D

D D — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 16:21:36 +0000

Hi all, I noticed you wrote about orogress bars, and then I remembered Unity has had this for some time. I was wondering if there is any chance at interoperability? Or perhaps the Linux Mint team will have to fork apps to support the Cinnamon progress bars.

Here is a link describing the Unity way of doing it:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Unity/LauncherAPI#Progress

This way is supported by having your app depend on libunity, I believe: https://launchpad.net/libunity

By: Linux Mint

Linux Mint — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 10:44:03 +0000

In reply to Michael.

Michael, libunity isn’t even present in Debian. When something was designed for a single desktop and that desktop was designed for a single distribution and the minute you get away from that ecosystem, there’s no support whatsoever, you don’t spend time supporting it. Not only that but Unity was discontinued. We wouldn’t use libunity even if it implemented what we need (which is window progress, not app progress).

I’m disappointed you feel the same way about libxapp, because it’s clearly designed to work everywhere and for everybody, but that’s your right. If you feel like this then by all means do not spend time supporting it. Wait until it gets adopted broadly or dies silently. Nobody’s asking you to waste your time and effort, so please extend the courtoisie to us and don’t ask us to support things like libunity.

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 21:07:58 +0000

In reply to Michael.

> It’s not incompatible with Unity at all. If Unity was still being developed it could very well support it

Doesn’t make much difference, really. Applications will still need to support the Unity implementation and yours. That’s what I was talking about: duplicate time and effort, for not that much gain. And despite the demise of Unity, several docks (like Dash to Dock, and Plank IIRC) still support the progress bar (the former even introducing support for it _now_).

> First, there’s an issue with libunity itself.. the overall project was abandoned and it’s not available in all the distributions we support
Same problems apply to libxapp, which I doubt is available in more distros than libunity. (If that’s even a hard dependency.)

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 19 Sep 2017 07:29:11 +0000

Why did you implement the progress bar in a way that was incompatible with Unity? Besides Unity there are several docks supporting it. Wasted time and effort, I’d say, especially for the application developers.

Edit by Clem: It’s not incompatible with Unity at all. If Unity was still being developed it could very well support it. When we work on Xapp we have other DEs in mind. This is there for any DE and in any distribution. First, there’s an issue with libunity itself.. the overall project was abandoned and it’s not available in all the distributions we support. Second, it doesn’t really do what we want. It sets progress for apps, not for windows. We don’t want to rely on the presence of a .desktop file and we need to set progress for one particular window. Sometimes that window even is outside of the scope of our own application. For instance when a script launches a Zenity dialog or installs packages via Synaptic.

By: Ahab Greybeard

Ahab Greybeard — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 08:40:36 +0000

@126 Tony

I’m glad to have been of some help. As far as I can tell, appimage.org is for people who want to make Appimages. Mostly, I get appimage files from the application website.

However, you can go to ‘bintray.com/probono/AppImages’ where you will find a large, searchable collection of appimages. I have no idea how ‘safe and secure’ this arrangement is and it might be a good idea to run them as a separate user who has been set up just for that purpose. You can’t be too paranoid when it comes to running software.

By: Dustin

Dustin — Mon, 18 Sep 2017 00:33:23 +0000

I’m really hoping you re-add Samba and various audio/video codecs. I know both can be installed after installation, but, that was one thing which turned me onto this distro in the first place. Everything working right out of the box! I’ve been very happy with 17.3 KDE on 9 computers I personally own and several more than I provide tech support for. Samba is a fantastic package for sharing files; which is one important thing a network should be able to do. Please, please! add it back to 18.3. Along with the codecs. If you want, you can always provide a codec free iso, like 17.3 has and a slightly larger iso with the codecs included. These are important things for an OS of this day and age to have. People typically have small networks at home now and not being able to share data cross the machines without installing additional software can be a turn off for some. Especially less tech savvy folks who just want it to work.

Otherwise, thanks for all that you do and I look forward to seeing what 18.3 offers!

By: kasam Serial

kasam Serial — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 19:00:03 +0000

Clem, you said that “the Backup Tool now simply lists the packages you installed from the Software Manager.” How literally should I take that statement? Will it also list packages installed from other package managers, such as Synaptic or apt on the command line, or only Software Manager?

While the Software Manager is great, I often find that Synaptic is quicker for me to navigate, and almost all online forum and article instructions are given in apt commands. If it only lists packages installed specifically through Software Manager, then it would severely cripple the Backup tool. If it lists packages from wherever you’ve installed it, then we’re all good and you can ignore this question.

By: kasam tere pyaar ki

kasam tere pyaar ki — Sun, 17 Sep 2017 18:59:15 +0000

Sometimes right-click menu doesn’t appear entirely, it got arrows at the top and bottom, I think it would be more aesthetic to always show it entirely.