Pantheon Desktop

Summary

The Pantheon desktop environment is the DE that powers elementaryOS. It builds on GNOME technologies, but utilizes components that were written from scratch in vala, using the GTK+3 toolkit.

Owner

Name: Fabio Valentini

Email: decathorpe AT fedoraproject DOT org

Release notes owner:

Current status

Targeted release: Fedora 30

Last updated: 2018-12-05

Tracker bug: #1649555

Release Notes tracker: #256

Detailed Description

The Pantheon desktop will be another viable choice for users of fedora. In particular, this is also interesting for users who like the Pantheon desktop, but would prefer to use fedora instead of an ubuntu-based distribution.

Most of the components of the Pantheon desktop shell and the applications developed by elementary have already been packaged for fedora.

Benefit to Fedora

This change will make fedora the first linux distribution other than elementaryOS to support the Pantheon Desktop environment and elementary applications.

It gives users of fedora another choice for their desktop environment, and it gives users of Pantheon and elementary applications the ability to choose a different linux distribution for the first time.

Scope

Proposal owners

Packaging Status

Package Status pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass switchboard-plug-datetime inprogress switchboard-plug-locale inprogress switchboard-plug-parental-controls inprogress switchboard-plug-power inprogress switchboard-plug-security-privacy inprogress switchboard-plug-useraccounts inprogress

TODO Items

investigate improving missing switchboard plugs for fedora support, and submit them for review: Date and Time plug: behavioral differences between fedora / ubuntu Locale plug: implement dnf / PackageKit backend for langpack installation Power plug: remove dependency on ubuntu-specific patches to gnome-settings-daemon Security and Privacy plug: implement FirewallD backend to replace ufw



do testing for components not yet in official fedora repositories, and package them: Parental Controls plug: does this actually work on fedora? Sharing plug: does this actually work on fedora? User Accounts plug: investigate behavioral differences between fedora / ubuntu



All these switchboard plugs are already packaged and available from one of my COPR repositories:

https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/decathorpe/elementary-staging/

The .spec files are maintained in a GitHub repository until the packages pass package review:

https://github.com/decathorpe/elementary-staging-rpms

improve screensaver / lock screen support: RHBZ#1644858 possibly patch Pantheon session components to use standard interfaces consider implementing shim for GDM / gnome-screensaver and LightDM / light-locker compatibility, or consider implementing adapter for translating different DBus calls for this



create metapackages or comps groups: Pantheon Session (Desktop Environment without apps) (changed my mind) Pantheon Desktop (Desktop Enviromnent with apps) ( DONE )



Creating these meta-packages or comps groups is planned to happen well before the fedora 30 branch point.

The "Pantheon Desktop" comps group got merged into fedora-comps: https://pagure.io/fedora-comps/c/5f94809

Other developers

This is not a system-wide change - however, some components require the latest releases from the accounts-SSO / signon stack.

In particular, needs an update to version 2.0 to allow packaging the Online Accounts support for switchboard and some elementary applications.

The necessary updates are now available on fedora 30.

Release engineering

No impact

Trademark approval

N/A - not needed for this Change

This Change is about adding the missing components of the Desktop Environment to fedora, and fixing show-stopper bugs. If we decide to make this a spin in the future, that will be a separate Change.





Upgrade/compatibility impact

Packages for the Pantheon DE and elementary applications have been available since fedora 25 in some cases, and most components have been available since fedora 27. Upgrading to the latest fedora release brings users the latest versions of (most of) these packages.

However, due to upstream changes, some desktop applications might lose user settings when upgrading from fedora 28 to 29, because upstream changed their GSettings path between releases. For that reason, the updates containing these breaking changes were not pushed to stable releases < 29, following the Updates Policy for stable and beta releases.

How To Test

install the Pantheon Desktop Environment: or "Pantheon Desktop" group

choose Pantheon session at login

use the system as usual

try out elementary applications

check if screensaver kicks in (should work atop LightDM, but possibly not atop GDM)

When also testing the "WIP packages" from my elementary-staging COPR repository, there are two metapackages available:

pantheon-session: depends on all session and desktop shell components

pantheon-desktop: depends on session, shell, and applications

User Experience

no impact for users who don't already have the Pantheon session or elementary applications installed

usability and stablilty improvements for users who already use it

Dependencies

N/A

Contingency Plan

Contingency mechanism: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Contingency deadline: N/A (not a System Wide Change)

Blocks release? N/A (not a System Wide Change) - No

Blocks product? N/A

Documentation

The current status of the project and detailed instructions on how to install the Pantheon session on fedora are available here.

Release Notes

The improved Pantheon Desktop Environment and elementary applications found in the latest release of elementaryOS 5.0 "Juno" will officially be available on fedora 30 as well.