Ubuntu Flavor Sync Meeting Notes - May 8, 2023

Representatives from the Ubuntu Flavors along with various Canonical and community leads met on May 8th 2023 to discuss the upcoming release of Ubuntu 23.10 Manic Minotaur among other desktop and flavor developments:

  • Mauro Gaspari ( @ilvipero ) reached out to Canonical’s release team to move forward with new subiquity flutter-based installer for Ubuntu Flavours.
    • Brian Murray ( @bdmurray ) Offered to help and asked if Ubuntu Budgie wants an additional ISO with new installer, and if so, which one would be the default.
    • David Mohammed ( @fossfreedom ) confirmed he needs help from the release team to spin a new ISO with new installer. For 23.10, Ubuntu Budgie will follow Ubuntu’s lead, and have 2 ISOs. Default ISO with new installer, and an alternate ISO with old installer. Once Ubuntu is ready to drop the old installer ISO, Ubuntu Budgie will do the same, in sync with Ubuntu. David also said that he will share all documentation with flavour leads once it is complete.
    • Sean Davis ( @bluesabre ), Erich Eickmeyer ( @eeickmeyer ) and Joshua Peisach ( @itzswirlz ) are interested in the new Installer .
  • Philipp Kewisch ( @kewisch ) Asked if flavours could share sticker designs, so that Canonical Community team could print and bring those to conference and have a more flavourful sticker table
  • Aaron Prisk ( @aaronprisk ) mentioned that we are looking to improve new flavour documentation, to add timelines, requirements and expectations for upcoming new flavours. This will help new flavours with a clear list of tasks they are expected to complete during their first release cycle.
  • Ken VanDine ( @kenvandine ) and Jeremy Bicha ( @jbicha ) updated us on new upcoming changes with 23.10:
    • NetworkManager will switch its backend to netplan. We are not expecting issues for users. Flavours can keep track of the changes on this Discourse post.
    • dbus-broker
    • New Desktop Installer - migration plans,
    • ZFS guided install option scheduled to return for 23.10
    • New PolicyKit version using JavaScript rules (powered by duktape)
      • Sean Davis ( @bluesabre ) asked if this requires config file or not. Ken VanDine ( @kenvandine ) and Jeremy Bicha ( @jbicha ) mentioned that there will be a migration plan, but worth to track this with the Desktop team.
    • Ubuntu Desktop considering switching the installer to use the minimal option by default for 23.10
      • Erich Eickmeyer ( @eeickmeyer ) asked if there is a seed name change, as Edubuntu uses minimal install by default. Desktop team confirmed there will be no change. Only default value of the existing option in the installer will be changed.
    • Flavours are encouraged to keep track of 23.10 Mantic Minotaur release schedule on this discourse post Mantic Minotaur Release Schedule
  • Brian Murray ( @bdmurray ) Mentioned that the Ubuntu Release team was notified that the Ubuntu Unity flavor was waiting for a bug fix on release day -1. If we were to have been notified earlier we might have been able to help get the bug fixed more quickly. Additionally, as we move closer to release day it becomes harder to respin.
  • Erich Eickmeyer ( @eeickmeyer ) asked if flavours would be willing to adopt a new style logo to be more in line with the new Ubuntu Logo
    • David Mohammed ( @fossfreedom ) said that Ubuntu Budgie old logo is in flux and new design might consider latest changes in the Ubuntu logo to match.
  • David Mohammed ( @fossfreedom ) shared updates from Ubuntu Budgie
    • General consensus from team and community is that this release has had a big impact due to late changes in the compositor. Other Budgie based distributions held Mutter 44 and shipped Mutter 43 instead, to prevent issues
    • Jeremy Bicha ( @jbicha ) asked for specific details on what broke after beta. Jeremy will discuss with GNOME developers to avoid last minute changes.
    • Jeremy Bicha ( @jbicha ) mentioned that GNOME could be forked to provide Mutter 43 for Budgie
    • Ken VanDine ( @kenvandine ) asked if Budgie would look at MIR to support wayland. David Mohammed ( @fossfreedom ) confirmed his interest in Mir and asked for more documentation.
    • Ken VanDine ( @kenvandine ) will introduce David Mohammed ( @fossfreedom ) to the Mir team.
    • Mir documentation: https://mir-server.io/docs/developing-a-wayland-compositor-using-mir
    • Recognised that there maybe announcements in due course about X11 maintenance, the question being raised is how Canonical will meet those challenges with no planned upstream
    • Canonical pushing wayland by default, unless NVIDIA driver is installed. Nvidia promised new drivers that would allow wayland by default on 23.10. Ken VanDine believes Nvidia is not there yet. It is not likely that X11 will be dropped on our upcoming 23.10 and 24.04 releases.
  • Sean Davis ( @bluesabre ) informed us that xfce is ramping up efforts to bring Wayland support.
  • Joshua Peisach ( @itzswirlz ) brought updates and comments from Ubuntu Cinnamon

Ubuntu Flavor Sync Meetings take place every 2 months on the second Monday of that month. There are two sessions, 3PM UTC and 10PM UTC, to best accommodate our global community. All are welcome to join and participate in the discussion!

Special thanks to @jbicha, @seb128 and @tim-hm for reviewing meeting notes and adding useful links and comments.

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That should be GNOME 43!

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@kenvandine and @jbicha I’ve yet to see any sort of follow up with this, but it seems like it’s not only been implemented, but does require a config file. The Lubuntu installer requests a password to run the installer and this is solved by installing the old polkitd-pkla package. That said, I’d love to hear more on this migration plan, especially as it relates to flavors like Lubuntu.

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