fully functional desktop installation

It would be nice to create a desktop.scm file that contains all

necessary packages to have a fully functional desktop installation for

the end user. It is for that user that only uses the machine to write

and read emails, create and read text documents and spreadsheets too. I

know the current desktop.scm contain some of those features and that

after that

guix package --install pidgin libreoffice icecat clawsmail

(and so) can provide the necessary packages. But I would like to make

an installation that is just as trisquel is. It is not necessary to

have the same configuration or the same packages. But it would be

useful to have it as easy to just use as is Trisquel.

Any ideas of how to do this?

--

Saludos,

Quiliro

Hello!

Quiliro <quiliro@riseup.net> skribis:

The desktop example contains all of GNOME, when choosing GNOME, which

provides an email client, Web browser, and lots of other things.

Additional packages like those you mention could be added to the

‘packages’ field, in which case they will be installed globally, like

the rest of GNOME.

I wouldn’t recommend adding those 4 packages you mention by default

though, because it’s really a matter of choice (and it’s redundant with

what GNOME provides, I think.)

WDYT?

Thanks for your feedback!

Ludo’.

Hi Quiliro!

Quiliro <quiliro@riseup.net> skribis:

[...]

This is a bug that needs to be treated separately. Clearly Nautilus

should be able to play videos.

There’s Pidgin, but maybe it’s not really part of GNOME.

I agree, but again, I think GNOME provides everything for these tasks.

Also, at this point, the target audience of GuixSD is not “users that

cannot learn to install”—if someone managed to install GuixSD, surely

they’ll find out how to install LibreOffice.

Sounds like a bug. Could you report all the details to

bug-guix@gnu.org: how to reproduce, what you expected, and what you got?

Thank you!

Ludo’.

The GNOME way is to use Empathy, which depends on the Telepathy

framework:

https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Empathy

--

Ricardo

GPG: BCA6 89B6 3655 3801 C3C6 2150 197A 5888 235F ACAC

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

I think your remark applies to pidgin and clawsmail but not to

Libreoffice and Icecat (Firefox) which are commonly installed OOTB by

mainstream distros (Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora) along with the GNOME

desktop.

--

Mathieu Lirzin

GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761 070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

Hi,

Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:

I’m not sure what we could do, though. Should the desktop example

include a comment like “Uncomment the following lines to add LibreOffice

& co.”?

This is something that the ncurses interface should make more

discoverable.

Thanks,

Ludo’.

Hello,

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

IMHO Guix should mimic what Debian is doing in this particular case.

Meaning having desktop packages that contain a “full” desktop with

default applications for common usages.

This would consist in adding ‘libreoffice’ and replacing ‘epiphany’ with

‘icecat’ in the ‘gnome’ package. Additionally a ‘gnome-core’ package

(or ‘gnome-minimal’ which seems to be the name convention chosen by

Guix) could be created with the minimal set of packages required to have

a working GNOME desktop, for OCD people that don't like having unused

packages installed.

That could be a solution. However even if the current target audience

of Guix(SD) are tinkerer who may like options, I don't think this

approach scales well to a broader audience.

Thanks.

--

Mathieu Lirzin

GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761 070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

On 01/15/2018 at 14:26 Mathieu Lirzin writes:

[...]

+1

Benefit: Helps "less-hackerly" users get started.

Hi,

Mathieu Lirzin <mthl@gnu.org> skribis:

Hmm, OK. Do you think it’s too much to ask, given the current audience

(tinkerers), to add those packages to their config, or to install them

with “guix package -i”?

Admittedly this is a very subjective issue.

Ludo’.

Hi,

I think one of the nice features of Guix is that the user can install packages on their own. Other distributions leave the decision of which packages to install up to the administrator (a separate person in companies). I work in a very large company where often some simple stuff is missing on servers and admins will not install it for fear of fucking up some unrelated already-installed package (understandable since all the dependencies are dynamic in Solaris and applications will just pick up whatever is lying around in the global namespace).

Long story short, I think it's a good thing that the user has his own profile which isn't magically updated and doesn't magically pick up things not in the user profile - except when it's already in the store bitwise-identical. That way, if he needs some application for work it will not randomly break and he can be sure that it will do what it did yesterday. If he wants to update, he updates. Otherwise not. His choice.

So long story short, I myself prefer having no applications in the system profile and the user installing all (business-relevant) applications themselves. It gives control to the user.

(my "packages" field is:

(packages (cons* nss-certs ;for HTTPS access

font-adobe100dpi font-adobe75dpi font-bitstream-vera font-dejavu font-gnu-freefont-ttf font-gnu-unifont font-liberation font-ubuntu

adwaita-icon-theme

%base-packages)) ; xterm is there by default.

And the ones that are still in there bother me :)

)

As for libreoffice and other large packages, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but huge packages waste disk space and provide an attack surface for exploits - and maybe no regular user uses it.

That said, I've installed it :P

I'd vote for adding libreoffice and icecat to desktop.tmpl and not to gnome (since they are not part of the GNOME project).

Users who like a minimal system can always use lightweight-desktop.tmpl or even bare-bones.tmpl.

And I think it's important to mention the approximate space requirements for desktop.tmpl in the manual (for partitioning).

Hi,

How about organizing Guix in a layered way, with the core distribution

containing narrow-purpose packages (mostly one piece of software), and

another layer (in a distinct module, perhaps with a distinct naming

convention) containing collections of software that works well together

or is useful for a specific application domain? I see other use cases

than just desktop stuff.

The main rationale for distinct layers is that assembling software at

different levels requires different competences and different ways of

documenting the assemblies. In the long run, I'd expect different people

to be in charge of each layer.

Konrad.

Hi Konrad,

Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hinsen@fastmail.net> skribis:

In GuixSD, that’s more or less what happens with ‘gnome-service-type’

and ‘xfce-service-type’, for example. (I’m not sure how that could work

at the Guix level, nor whether this is necessary.)

Ludo’.

Danny Milosavljevic <dannym@scratchpost.org> skribis:

[...]

Agreed, though in this case (GNOME), we’re pretty much talking about

single-user machines.

OK, why not. There’s still the issue that it will make download times

and disk size requirements longer (a problem we should fix, but this

won’t happen overnight.)

Ludo’.

Hi,

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

Definitely not, it is even better for tinkerers to not have those

“bloated” bundles/meta-packages full of defaults they don't like. :-)

--

Mathieu Lirzin

GPG: F2A3 8D7E EB2B 6640 5761 070D 0ADE E100 9460 4D37

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

While I think it's fine to include this in the example desktop

configuration file, I don't see why we couldn't have a few example

configuration files for various use cases. One of those use cases could

mimic what other distros normally include, like LibreOffice etc, and one

of those could be a more minimal desktop environment. Does it add a

maintenance burden to have multiple example desktop configuration files?

--

Chris

Chris Marusich <cmmarusich@gmail.com> skribis:

Not much, though we’d have to make sure they still work.

The only difference in this case would be the ‘packages’ field, which, I

was hoping, didn’t warrant a separate example.

Ludo’.

Hello,

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

[...]

Agree. Maybe we could provide a hint like:

gnu/system/examples/desktop.tmpl

(packages (cons* nss-certs ;for HTTPS access

gvfs ;for user mounts

;; Following packages recommended to be installed

;; per-user with `guix package -i PACKAGE'.

;; Otherwise uncomment them to install globally.

;;

;; icecat ;GNU version of the Firefox browser

;; libreoffice ;office suite

;; Basic administrator tasks

%base-packages))

When I saw a lightweight-desktop template for the first time, there was

a good ad about ratpoison window manager which I didn't know before.

This is a really good way to promote reasonable software. :-)

Oleg.