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How GNOME Gets into Ubuntu

Jeremy Bícha

GUADEC 2023, Riga, Latvia, 26 July 2023

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About Jeremy Bícha

  • Lives in Florida, United States
  • First GUADEC
  • Packaging GNOME for Debian and Ubuntu starting with 3.0 in 2011
  • Canonical employee since 2022

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Outline

  • Brief History of GNOME in Ubuntu
  • How GNOME gets into Debian
  • Release Schedules
  • Main Inclusion
  • Stable Release Updates
  • Discussion

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Ubuntu Early Distinctives

  • Consistent scheduled release every 6 months timed to include the latest GNOME
  • Brown (later orange) theme

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Language Packs

  • Minimizes the install by only providing needed translations
  • Allow translations to be added and improved without waiting for translations to be accepted upstream or for upstream to make new releases
  • Allows translations for Ubuntu-specific features

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Unity

  • Ubuntu’s custom desktop since GNOME 3.0 in 2011
  • Most apps were still GNOME apps. Unity was basically an alternative to GNOME Shell
  • The Unity vision foresaw providing Ubuntu on a variety of devices all sharing the same UI principles.
  • Canonical stopped development in 2017 and switched back to GNOME

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Ubuntu extensions #1: The Dock

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Ubuntu extensions #1: The Dock

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Ubuntu extensions #2: App Indicators

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Ubuntu extensions #3: Desktop Icons

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Ubuntu extensions #3: Desktop Icons

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Ubuntu extension #4: Tiling

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Ubuntu extension #4: Tiling

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Yaru theme, now with color styles

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sudo apt install gnome-session

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Debian GNOME packaging: git

  • Since 2017
  • git-buildpackage from Guido Günther
  • Merges downstream packaging with full upstream git history

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Debian GNOME packaging: watch files

  • Old system
  • Updated for GNOME 40 style
  • Now watching for beta and rc releases but not alpha

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Debian GNOME packaging: status trackers

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Debian GNOME packaging: status trackers

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Debian release schedule

  • New stable release every 2 years
  • Stable, Testing, Unstable
  • Freeze temporarily stops new GNOME releases from getting into Unstable or Testing

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GNOME release schedule

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Ubuntu release schedule

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Ubuntu Main and Universe

  • Main are officially supported with free security updates for all from Canonical. Universe is basically everything else.
  • Main is everything in the default Ubuntu Desktop & Server installs
  • Also includes toolchains such as rustc, OpenJDK and dotnet even when not installed by default

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Ubuntu Main Inclusion Review

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Ubuntu Stable Release Updates

  • Different process than security updates
  • Intended for “high impact bugs” or “other safe cases”
  • New upstream microreleases are ok if there is a good test suite
  • However, a lot of GNOME components don’t have a test suite. Fortunately, there is a standing exception for GNOME. But SRU team still requests a written manual test plan.
  • Translations are currently only updated for Ubuntu LTS point releases

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Ubuntu Stable Release Updates (SRUs)

  • Requires tracking bug with test case
  • Ubuntu SRU team member manually reviews. If accepted, it is built as a “proposed” update.
  • The tests cases need to be run and manually verified.
  • After a minimum of 7 days, an Ubuntu SRU team member manually accepts it as an Ubuntu update
  • The update then is phased in. 10% at a time, every 6 hours. If no issues, the updates is fully phased in less than 3 days.

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Current happenings

  • Ubuntu now consistently ships the latest GNOME available at release time
  • Debian and Ubuntu 23.10 have the Rust GTK4 0.5 series (GNOME 43). We are starting work on the current 0.6 series now. Then we will work on 0.7 for GNOME 45. Thanks Matthias Geiger for most of the Rust GTK update packaging work.
  • Canonical’s Jarred Wilson is working on automating some of the packaging work for new upstream releases

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Thank you. Questions?

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Questions?

GUADEC 2023, Riga, Latvia, 26 July 2023

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References

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References: Version Trackers

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How GNOME Gets into Ubuntu

Jeremy Bícha

GUADEC 2023, Riga, Latvia, 26 July 2023