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Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux

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  Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> - 2020-06-03 18:10 +0200
    Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2020-06-03 18:50 +0200
    Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com> - 2020-06-03 19:20 +0200
    Re: FW: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Mark Pearson <markpearson@lenovo.com> - 2020-06-03 20:50 +0200
      Re: FW: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> - 2020-06-03 22:50 +0200
        Re: FW: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Mark Pearson <markpearson@lenovo.com> - 2020-06-04 00:10 +0200
          Re: Re: FW: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Hideki Yamane <henrich@iijmio-mail.jp> - 2020-06-05 08:30 +0200
      Re: FW: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Philip Hands <phil@hands.com> - 2020-06-05 21:50 +0200
        Re: FW: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2020-06-06 05:40 +0200
          Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Marc Haber <mh+debian-project@zugschlus.de> - 2020-06-09 17:20 +0200
            Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk> - 2020-06-09 18:20 +0200
            Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux RP <reyadmin@gmail.com> - 2020-06-09 19:30 +0200
              Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Steve McIntyre <steve@einval.com> - 2020-06-09 21:40 +0200
                Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux RP <reyadmin@gmail.com> - 2020-06-10 02:50 +0200
                  Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux Michael Kesper <mkesper@schokokeks.org> - 2020-06-10 14:20 +0200
                    Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux RP <reyadmin@gmail.com> - 2020-06-10 17:40 +0200
          Re: Debian utility live distribution (was Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux) Harshad Joshi <firewalrus@gmail.com> - 2020-06-12 07:20 +0200
          Re: Debian utility live distribution (was Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux) RP <reyadmin@gmail.com> - 2020-06-12 07:50 +0200
    Debian hardware support and enablement for newer devices (was ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux) Hector Oron <zumbi@debian.org> - 2020-06-04 00:10 +0200
      Re: Debian hardware support and enablement for newer devices (was ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux) Paul Wise <pabs@debian.org> - 2020-06-04 05:10 +0200
        Re: Debian hardware support and enablement for newer devices (was ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux) Ansgar <ansgar@debian.org> - 2020-06-05 12:40 +0200
          Re: Debian hardware support and enablement for newer devices (was ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux) Noah Meyerhans <noahm@debian.org> - 2020-06-05 19:20 +0200

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#11875 — Re: [External] Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux

Hi Mark!

On 2020/06/03 15:39, Mark Pearson wrote:
>> I guess it should be possible, but the biggest challenge is probably to
>> get the right contact to talk with. Do we have such a contact ?
>>
> I started replying to this thread late last night and after a few iterations I gave up and went to bed 😊 Here goes attempt 5....

First of all, thanks for the great e-mail and making the time to reach
out. By way of introduction, I'm the current Debian Project Leader
(since a bit more than a month now) and I am happy to be available to
help speed things up, feel free to reach out to me personally at any
time if you're frustrated with getting something done in Debian.

> Short answer - you have the right contact.  I'm the linux technical lead at Lenovo for the PC team and I'd *love* to improve the Debian experience on Lenovo platforms. It's something I have actively been trying to work on for the last 9 months (with limited success). I'm really happy to see this question and the responses - I would really like to have this conversation with the wider community as to what Lenovo and Debian can do to work better together. Debian is an important distro with a lot of users and an amazing community. I was hoping to be at Debconf 2020 and use that as an opportunity to actually get to meet Debian devs as frankly email has been working poorly and maintainers are just very busy people. Sadly I think Covid has likely stomped on that plan.

Talking at DC20 would've been great, but we can also talk via email and
video calls in the meantime!

> So and let me start the ball rolling by highlighting some good and bad:
> 
> The good - Lenovo are expanding what they offer on Linux (we had another big announcement yesterday about doing full config on our workstations with Ubuntu and RHEL). We're asking HW vendors to have Linux support upstream including firmware on LVFS which I think is important. It's not perfect yet but it's getting better and better. We're starting to contribute to open source projects.
> I'm an open source user and a lot of what I see from Lenovo internally is positive and makes me very happy to advocate for what they are doing. Sometimes our process is a bit slow but there is a commitment to doing Linux and doing it right which I'm personally excited by. The Fedora collaboration has worked really well - I think for both sides (obviously talk to your Fedora colleagues for their perspective). They have been a really positive community to work with and it's been productive showing that Lenovo can collaborate with an OS community in the right way.
> Internally at Lenovo there is still a lot of learning about Linux and how it works - and that is happening. Linux is catching on - I have more customer engagements and our Linux sales have been increasing and we haven't turned our websales on yet (coming soon 😉)
> 
> The bad - I love Debian but I don't think as a distro you are ready or capable for being pre-loaded on our platforms. I can explain why and I'm very happy to be corrected but more importantly if it can be solved then we can for sure explore the next steps - that would make me really happy! 

I 100% agree with you, in my first talk as DPL, this is even a topic
that I've covered when talking with the Brazillian Debian community:

https://peertube.debian.social/videos/watch/cdfe5b24-e3ad-4422-a6f2-15ca4fffd895?start=43m52s
(I talk about this for about 5 minutes, and it was almost midnight and I
was up since 5am so sorry for maybe being a bit incoherent at times)

Anyway, let me summarize what I said on the topic in that video with
some additional notes.

Firstly, I think the typical Debian developer might not care about
Debian being available on an OEM laptop per sé. First thing that most of
us would probably do is to re-install it from official installation media :)

But there's probably a vast amount of Debian users out there that would
want a Debian on their ThinkPad pre-configured. And we'd be delighted
from the Debian side if we could help make that happen.

So in the video I posted some of the initial thoughts that I think we
need to sort out in Debian before we can even start thinking about this.
I'm glad you reached out because you'll be able to give us much better
insight for sure, but at least I have some video evidence to prove that
we put at least *some* thought in to it :)

1. Support

I'm not sure what you did in the case with Fedora, but my guess is you
have some agreement with how to handle support calls for Fedora on the
system. Debian isn't backed by any one company, and in the immediate
future our usual community support channels might be as good as it gets.
I suppose if users know this, understand this, and know what they're
getting, then this becomes less of an issue.

2. OEM Mode installer

Currently we don't have an OEM mode install mode in Debian (that is,
skip questions like timezone, user, password, etc and ask that on first
boot instead).

I believe that there's been some work to make a debian-installer module
for this, but it's been shelved since.

Either way, this isn't a difficult problem to solve on a technical
level, and if we need it to get Debian available on laptops then I think
it would happen fast.

3. Rescue partition

Laptop manufacturers usually don't ship with physical media anymore.
Instead, the laptops have a rescue partition on them for
re-installing/resetting the machine.

As far as I know both installers we currently use in Debian are fine
from installing from a rescue partition, we just need a nice way to set
that up when initially performing an oem style setup from our
installation media. (again, not a huge technical problem, but probably a
bit more work than #2).

...and then there's hardware specific stuff...

> Debian moves somewhat slowly. The general approach seems to me to be to wait for updates to trickle down from the upstream community and I completely understand that approach - I'm sure it is important to maintaining stability *but* it means that Debian is usually broken on our platforms for the first year they are available because that whole process takes a long time. By the time Debian works it's too late for a pre-loaded offering.  As an aside RHEL has the same problem but they put a lot of effort into backporting fixes so that their customers get the fixes - and that infrastructure doesn't seem available on Debian to my limited knowledge.

We have processes for both stable release updates and backporting too.
Where they fall short, I'm sure we can look into it further.

> As an important example - the X1 Carbon 7 (which is a popular machine) still doesn't work well with any version of Debian (including experimental or testing) as the audio is broken. Debian users have to jump through a few hoops to get it to work. I've let the maintainer know a number of times what is involved to fix that but it's obviously not a priority (as a heads up - Debian on most Lenovo 2020 platforms is going to suck because of this too). I'm not meaning to point fingers - but just explain why it feels as if Debian and the latest hardware is an awkward fit.

I think what we need to figure out from the Debian side is, whether it's
possible to integrate these kind of 'hot fixes' using our usual
procedures and processes, or whether we might need a lenovo-specific
image and even perhaps its own package archive. We'd of course like to
avoid that, but just from me personally, I think it's worth exploring
what it would take to make it work. If you're willing to share what
worked with RHEL, then maybe we can adapt some of that to our processes too.

> From my point of view what I've been trying to do is to get more involved so I can contribute/backport fixes directly. I get good insight into what issues impact our platforms and when fixes land upstream. It seems the best way to make contribute and make a difference. Unfortunately I've still got a *lot* of learning to do and it's a really slow process because the loop between offering a fix, getting it reviewed to find out what you did wrong and contributing the update is crazy slow (for example I have kernel MR 240 open for four weeks for an OLED brightness issue that a lot of users think is important).  My expectation is that as I make fewer mistakes and earn some trust that will help - but until that point (which I'm guessing will take years 😊) I have limited handles that I can pull on to make things happen. 

You're right that the trust factor is important in Debian. It helps when
there's a Debian Developer or two who can guide you through some of the
murkier aspects of the project. Again, if I can help you with any of
that, I'd be happy to. I don't think it needs to take years though :)

> My *impression* is there is limited desire to accelerate fixes for Lenovo platforms - I suspect mostly because people are just plenty busy with the things they care about instead and I understand that.

I think we generally care about the hardware that we have, and that our
employers typically buy and deploy. I think "other people's hardware
problems" will always be less exciting than your own. Usually when more
of the latest hardware starts hitting us personally we tend to care
more. I think part of this is just natural.

Maybe since I have your attention I can share some of my thoughts too
that might be directly relevant to the above.

We have many ThinkPad users in Debian, a very large percentage of Debian
Developers have owned at least one ThinkPad (and some multiple ones over
the years, and some multiple ones even at the same time!)).

The work that these Debian Developers do typically go towards helping
those Lenovo laptops work better with Debian. I understand and feel your
frustrations getting those latest features to work in Debian, but Debian
people have been doing that for decades now, which is great, I'm not
complaining. I like that Debian has run so well on my ThinkPad laptops
for all these years. But, in recent years I've also started to think
that it's kind of horrible and ridiculous that Debian Developers pay
full retail price for their laptops considering how much work they put
in making Debian (and often other Linux systems) run better on it. I've
been considering reaching out to both Lenovo and Dell (and other
manufacturers that are popular or important within the project) to see
if we can get much better pricing for our members, whether they're just
closer to cost or even a little subsidized. Maybe you could shed some
light on this topic too :)

On another note, we sometimes use older laptops not because we're
necessarily stuck with them, but also because we don't want to throw
away/discard perfectly good machines just for the sake of having a new
one, while we could use our older machines and help do a bit to protect
the environment at the same time. My x250 is 5 years old and it's still
adequate for me, and while I often have the itch to buy a new laptop (I
very nearly did buy a friend's 7th gen X1 last week, which he bought
sadly just before he lost his job), but decided to hang on for a Ryzen
based version instead. Sorry, I digress :)

So, we have some people (like me) who use 5 year old (and even older)
laptops and are fine with that, but we also have some developers who are
using really obsolete machines and from the Debian side, I'd like to
make it easier for them to upgrade if we can. Debian can already sponsor
some hardware for developers in need, but personally my vision is that
we can work with a hardware manufacturer to get an already
good/subsidised price that we could perhaps help reduce a bit further as
a benefit for our developers. Over the last weekend we had our first
ever online minidebconf, and in these times being stuck on a core 2 duo
is tough :)

Anyway, I probably overshare but you've put in a lot of thought into
your mail and I thought I'd reply properly too.

> A shout out for Hector Martinez who has been helping me a whole bunch. Without his help I likely would have given up and wouldn't even be reading the threads on this forum. If there are more people like Hector (particularly in kernel, audio and graphics) let me know! 

As I become more aware of your requirements I can help find more Hectors
too :)

> This email took me a long time to write - I'm *very* aware that I'm new to this and don't want to cause offence. Please take all of the above with the recognition that my viewpoint into Debian is still limited and if I've said anything dumb/wrong/offensive let me know so I can learn what I'm missing.

No offense taken whatsoever, Debian Developers are often the biggest
critics of Debian. Not because they want to be mean, but because they
care and want to see things get fixed. Welcome to Debian and I hope that
you'll join us more formally (and perhaps even vice-versa?) in the future!

-Jonathan

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Debian, the universal operating system.

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#11876

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

On Wed, Jun 03, 2020 at 05:53:50PM +0200, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> Hi Mark!

[...]

This is from the peanut gallery, from a simple Debian user.

Thanks you both for this delightful exchange. This is one of the
things why I love Debian -- running, BTW, on a thinkpad, which
is an awesome machine, too (admittedly not the newes one, a 230,
but my current income situation wouldn't justify more. And, I'm
totally happy with that combo.

So cheers to you both
-- tomás

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#11877

Hi Mark,

On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 9:02 AM Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> wrote:
>
> My x250 is 5 years old

So is my T450s, and it's not the first. Lenovo and Debian are a great
combo. Thanks for taking this initiative!

Kind regards
Felix Lechner

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#11878

Hi Jonathan

Thanks for the follow up.

Also - apologies as I realised I used my non-linux friendly email 
account for my original posting with all the horrible outlook mangling. 
I'm posting this from my alternative account which avoids outlook (I'm 
just transitioning between the two accounts...)


On 6/3/2020 1:23 PM, Mark Pearson wrote:
> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org>
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 3, 2020 11:54 AM
>>
>> Hi Mark!
>>
>> On 2020/06/03 15:39, Mark Pearson wrote:
>>>> I guess it should be possible, but the biggest challenge is probably to
>>>> get the right contact to talk with. Do we have such a contact ?
>>>>
>>> I started replying to this thread late last night and after a few iterations I
>> gave up and went to bed 😊 Here goes attempt 5....
>>
>> First of all, thanks for the great e-mail and making the time to reach
>> out. By way of introduction, I'm the current Debian Project Leader
>> (since a bit more than a month now) and I am happy to be available to
>> help speed things up, feel free to reach out to me personally at any
>> time if you're frustrated with getting something done in Debian.
Congrats on the DPL - I did follow that process :)

>>
>>> Short answer - you have the right contact.  I'm the linux technical lead at
>> Lenovo for the PC team and I'd *love* to improve the Debian experience on
>> Lenovo platforms. It's something I have actively been trying to work on for the
>> last 9 months (with limited success). I'm really happy to see this question and
>> the responses - I would really like to have this conversation with the wider
>> community as to what Lenovo and Debian can do to work better together.
>> Debian is an important distro with a lot of users and an amazing community. I
>> was hoping to be at Debconf 2020 and use that as an opportunity to actually
>> get to meet Debian devs as frankly email has been working poorly and
>> maintainers are just very busy people. Sadly I think Covid has likely stomped
>> on that plan.
>>
>> Talking at DC20 would've been great, but we can also talk via email and
>> video calls in the meantime!
>>
I'd be totally up for that.

>>> So and let me start the ball rolling by highlighting some good and bad:
>>>
>>> The good - Lenovo are expanding what they offer on Linux (we had another
>> big announcement yesterday about doing full config on our workstations with
>> Ubuntu and RHEL). We're asking HW vendors to have Linux support upstream
>> including firmware on LVFS which I think is important. It's not perfect yet but
>> it's getting better and better. We're starting to contribute to open source
>> projects.
>>> I'm an open source user and a lot of what I see from Lenovo internally is
>> positive and makes me very happy to advocate for what they are doing.
>> Sometimes our process is a bit slow but there is a commitment to doing Linux
>> and doing it right which I'm personally excited by. The Fedora collaboration
>> has worked really well - I think for both sides (obviously talk to your Fedora
>> colleagues for their perspective). They have been a really positive community
>> to work with and it's been productive showing that Lenovo can collaborate
>> with an OS community in the right way.
>>> Internally at Lenovo there is still a lot of learning about Linux and how it
>> works - and that is happening. Linux is catching on - I have more customer
>> engagements and our Linux sales have been increasing and we haven't turned
>> our websales on yet (coming soon 😉)
>>>
>>> The bad - I love Debian but I don't think as a distro you are ready or capable
>> for being pre-loaded on our platforms. I can explain why and I'm very happy
>> to be corrected but more importantly if it can be solved then we can for sure
>> explore the next steps - that would make me really happy!
>>
>> I 100% agree with you, in my first talk as DPL, this is even a topic
>> that I've covered when talking with the Brazillian Debian community:
>>
>> https://peertube.debian.social/videos/watch/cdfe5b24-e3ad-4422-a6f2-
>> 15ca4fffd895?start=43m52s
>> (I talk about this for about 5 minutes, and it was almost midnight and I
>> was up since 5am so sorry for maybe being a bit incoherent at times)
>>
Awesome - I just watched the video and you make some great points and I 
think there are a bunch of questions in there that I can answer - or 
that we're actively working on.

>> Anyway, let me summarize what I said on the topic in that video with
>> some additional notes.
>>
>> Firstly, I think the typical Debian developer might not care about
>> Debian being available on an OEM laptop per sé. First thing that most of
>> us would probably do is to re-install it from official installation media :)
>>
>> But there's probably a vast amount of Debian users out there that would
>> want a Debian on their ThinkPad pre-configured. And we'd be delighted
>> from the Debian side if we could help make that happen.
>>
>> So in the video I posted some of the initial thoughts that I think we
>> need to sort out in Debian before we can even start thinking about this.
>> I'm glad you reached out because you'll be able to give us much better
>> insight for sure, but at least I have some video evidence to prove that
>> we put at least *some* thought in to it :)
>>
>> 1. Support
>>
>> I'm not sure what you did in the case with Fedora, but my guess is you
>> have some agreement with how to handle support calls for Fedora on the
>> system. Debian isn't backed by any one company, and in the immediate
>> future our usual community support channels might be as good as it gets.
>> I suppose if users know this, understand this, and know what they're
>> getting, then this becomes less of an issue.
>>
So - I'm kinda nervous about the support side to see what happens as we 
enable websales. Up until now it's just been corporate customers and 
best effort support on our Lenovo Linux forums.
We will provide support for HW related aspects of the platforms and 
genuinely we're waiting to see how bad or good it's going to be.
For OS stuff that isn't HW related (e.g. the calendar app crashes) then 
we'll point more at the community. My hope is that Linux users are more 
technically aware and will be reasonable....We will see what happens but 
it is a bit of an unknown.
I'm spending a fair chunk of time at the moment following up with the 
Lenovo support team getting them familiar with the basics of Linux.

>> 2. OEM Mode installer
>>
>> Currently we don't have an OEM mode install mode in Debian (that is,
>> skip questions like timezone, user, password, etc and ask that on first
>> boot instead).
>>
>> I believe that there's been some work to make a debian-installer module
>> for this, but it's been shelved since.
>>
>> Either way, this isn't a difficult problem to solve on a technical
>> level, and if we need it to get Debian available on laptops then I think
>> it would happen fast.
That's a good point - we do have that on Fedora.
>>
>> 3. Rescue partition
>>
>> Laptop manufacturers usually don't ship with physical media anymore.
>> Instead, the laptops have a rescue partition on them for
>> re-installing/resetting the machine.
>>
>> As far as I know both installers we currently use in Debian are fine
>> from installing from a rescue partition, we just need a nice way to set
>> that up when initially performing an oem style setup from our
>> installation media. (again, not a huge technical problem, but probably a
>> bit more work than #2).
Actually I have an ongoing exercise to improve the recovery side of 
things with a meeting later this afternoon.

For Fedora given what we are providing is just Fedora + some docs then 
the recovery solution is currently "go install Fedora using their USB 
installer and the docs are on the support site if you really want them". 
It's not the best but it's what we have.

>>
>> ...and then there's hardware specific stuff...
>>
>>> Debian moves somewhat slowly. The general approach seems to me to be to
>> wait for updates to trickle down from the upstream community and I
>> completely understand that approach - I'm sure it is important to maintaining
>> stability *but* it means that Debian is usually broken on our platforms for the
>> first year they are available because that whole process takes a long time. By
>> the time Debian works it's too late for a pre-loaded offering.  As an aside RHEL
>> has the same problem but they put a lot of effort into backporting fixes so that
>> their customers get the fixes - and that infrastructure doesn't seem available
>> on Debian to my limited knowledge.
>>
>> We have processes for both stable release updates and backporting too.
>> Where they fall short, I'm sure we can look into it further.
>>
>>> As an important example - the X1 Carbon 7 (which is a popular machine) still
>> doesn't work well with any version of Debian (including experimental or
>> testing) as the audio is broken. Debian users have to jump through a few
>> hoops to get it to work. I've let the maintainer know a number of times what is
>> involved to fix that but it's obviously not a priority (as a heads up - Debian on
>> most Lenovo 2020 platforms is going to suck because of this too). I'm not
>> meaning to point fingers - but just explain why it feels as if Debian and the
>> latest hardware is an awkward fit.
>>
>> I think what we need to figure out from the Debian side is, whether it's
>> possible to integrate these kind of 'hot fixes' using our usual
>> procedures and processes, or whether we might need a lenovo-specific
>> image and even perhaps its own package archive. We'd of course like to
>> avoid that, but just from me personally, I think it's worth exploring
>> what it would take to make it work. If you're willing to share what
>> worked with RHEL, then maybe we can adapt some of that to our processes
>> too.
>>
Yep - that would be good.

Ubuntu has the concept of oem image which covers the period between new 
HW availability and it making into the standard image but they also have 
the benefit of a lot of resources working on it.

With Fedora they have the RH team supporting them which was how we 
became more involved with the community - we work with RHEL and have 
done so for a while.

We raise bugs the normal way with Fedora. They weren't public before the 
announcement but we're moving to doing things in a more standard public 
way. We have the advantage that a bug on Fedora is usually something 
RHEL wants so it's easy to get attention and that would be something 
Debian would need to consider. We did get input for their bug triaging 
but ultimately it was for the community to decide what was a blocker or 
not and I didn't win every battle. There was an audio over HDMI nouveau 
driver issue that got fixed after F32 was released - users will get that 
just as part of their regular update and that's OK.

In my mind the best long term solution for Debian is if Lenovo are 
contributing fixes ourselves - after all we usually know what the fixes 
are. We're not technically at the stage where that is doable though - 
but it's what I'm aiming for and I'm the trial guinea-pig.
For me the first step would be an understanding that if we propose a 
patch then we're doing it for a good reason and it doesn't sit there for 
a couple of months.
I don't think we're at the stage where you can trust us to merge things 
in without review but longer term I'd hope to be a more trusted 
community member who can be relied on to deliver quality items. How we 
get from here to there is in my mind the challenge - for that we need 
support and I appreciate peoples time is limited and very precious :)


>>>  From my point of view what I've been trying to do is to get more involved so
>> I can contribute/backport fixes directly. I get good insight into what issues
>> impact our platforms and when fixes land upstream. It seems the best way to
>> make contribute and make a difference. Unfortunately I've still got a *lot* of
>> learning to do and it's a really slow process because the loop between
>> offering a fix, getting it reviewed to find out what you did wrong and
>> contributing the update is crazy slow (for example I have kernel MR 240 open
>> for four weeks for an OLED brightness issue that a lot of users think is
>> important).  My expectation is that as I make fewer mistakes and earn some
>> trust that will help - but until that point (which I'm guessing will take years 😊)
>> I have limited handles that I can pull on to make things happen.
>>
>> You're right that the trust factor is important in Debian. It helps when
>> there's a Debian Developer or two who can guide you through some of the
>> murkier aspects of the project. Again, if I can help you with any of
>> that, I'd be happy to. I don't think it needs to take years though :)
>>
That sounds good.

>>> My *impression* is there is limited desire to accelerate fixes for Lenovo
>> platforms - I suspect mostly because people are just plenty busy with the
>> things they care about instead and I understand that.
>>
>> I think we generally care about the hardware that we have, and that our
>> employers typically buy and deploy. I think "other people's hardware
>> problems" will always be less exciting than your own. Usually when more
>> of the latest hardware starts hitting us personally we tend to care
>> more. I think part of this is just natural.
Agreed. I'm afraid from a Lenovo preload shipping point of view it has 
to be the latest HW though and that's a challenge.
If it's any consolation, whilst I have access to a lot of devices I also 
have to fight for some HW access. I don't have an X1C8 yet (my colleague 
does....I'm not bitter ;)) Getting HW where it needs to be is one of the 
big challenges I face generally.
>>
>> Maybe since I have your attention I can share some of my thoughts too
>> that might be directly relevant to the above.
>>
>> We have many ThinkPad users in Debian, a very large percentage of Debian
>> Developers have owned at least one ThinkPad (and some multiple ones over
>> the years, and some multiple ones even at the same time!)).
>>
>> The work that these Debian Developers do typically go towards helping
>> those Lenovo laptops work better with Debian. I understand and feel your
>> frustrations getting those latest features to work in Debian, but Debian
>> people have been doing that for decades now, which is great, I'm not
>> complaining. I like that Debian has run so well on my ThinkPad laptops
>> for all these years. But, in recent years I've also started to think
>> that it's kind of horrible and ridiculous that Debian Developers pay
>> full retail price for their laptops considering how much work they put
>> in making Debian (and often other Linux systems) run better on it. I've
>> been considering reaching out to both Lenovo and Dell (and other
>> manufacturers that are popular or important within the project) to see
>> if we can get much better pricing for our members, whether they're just
>> closer to cost or even a little subsidized. Maybe you could shed some
>> light on this topic too :)
I've kicked off a discussion on this internally. I did actually look 
into this when I joined the team last year but I know more the right 
people to talk to now and Linux is getting a lot more attention 
internally. I'll see what I can do - I think it's a very reasonable 
suggestion.
>>
>> On another note, we sometimes use older laptops not because we're
>> necessarily stuck with them, but also because we don't want to throw
>> away/discard perfectly good machines just for the sake of having a new
>> one, while we could use our older machines and help do a bit to protect
>> the environment at the same time. My x250 is 5 years old and it's still
>> adequate for me, and while I often have the itch to buy a new laptop (I
>> very nearly did buy a friend's 7th gen X1 last week, which he bought
>> sadly just before he lost his job), but decided to hang on for a Ryzen
>> based version instead. Sorry, I digress :)
I hear you :)

>>
>> So, we have some people (like me) who use 5 year old (and even older)
>> laptops and are fine with that, but we also have some developers who are
>> using really obsolete machines and from the Debian side, I'd like to
>> make it easier for them to upgrade if we can. Debian can already sponsor
>> some hardware for developers in need, but personally my vision is that
>> we can work with a hardware manufacturer to get an already
>> good/subsidised price that we could perhaps help reduce a bit further as
>> a benefit for our developers. Over the last weekend we had our first
>> ever online minidebconf, and in these times being stuck on a core 2 duo
>> is tough : >>
>> Anyway, I probably overshare but you've put in a lot of thought into
>> your mail and I thought I'd reply properly too.
>>
>>> A shout out for Hector Martinez who has been helping me a whole bunch.
>> Without his help I likely would have given up and wouldn't even be reading
>> the threads on this forum. If there are more people like Hector (particularly in
>> kernel, audio and graphics) let me know!
>>
>> As I become more aware of your requirements I can help find more Hectors
>> too :)
>>
>>> This email took me a long time to write - I'm *very* aware that I'm new to
>> this and don't want to cause offence. Please take all of the above with the
>> recognition that my viewpoint into Debian is still limited and if I've said
>> anything dumb/wrong/offensive let me know so I can learn what I'm missing.
>>
>> No offense taken whatsoever, Debian Developers are often the biggest
>> critics of Debian. Not because they want to be mean, but because they
>> care and want to see things get fixed. Welcome to Debian and I hope that
>> you'll join us more formally (and perhaps even vice-versa?) in the future!
Thanks for the follow up - it is appreciated.

>>
>> -Jonathan
>>
>> --
>>    ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
>>    ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
>>    ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
>>    ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Debian, the universal operating system.

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#11881

Hey Mark

On 2020/06/03 20:24, Mark Pearson wrote:
>>> 1. Support
>>>
>>> I'm not sure what you did in the case with Fedora, but my guess is you
>>> have some agreement with how to handle support calls for Fedora on the
>>> system. Debian isn't backed by any one company, and in the immediate
>>> future our usual community support channels might be as good as it gets.
>>> I suppose if users know this, understand this, and know what they're
>>> getting, then this becomes less of an issue.
>>>
> So - I'm kinda nervous about the support side to see what happens as we
> enable websales. Up until now it's just been corporate customers and
> best effort support on our Lenovo Linux forums.
> We will provide support for HW related aspects of the platforms and
> genuinely we're waiting to see how bad or good it's going to be.
> For OS stuff that isn't HW related (e.g. the calendar app crashes) then
> we'll point more at the community. My hope is that Linux users are more
> technically aware and will be reasonable....We will see what happens but
> it is a bit of an unknown.
> I'm spending a fair chunk of time at the moment following up with the
> Lenovo support team getting them familiar with the basics of Linux.

Yeah I had flashbacks to the netbook era where lots of people bought
Linux netbooks and were confused that it didn't run Linux (and the
famous story of the young woman who accidentally bought a Dell machine
with Ubuntu which caused her to drop out of college -
https://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/woman-claims-ubuntu-kept-her-from-online-classes.html)

At least a lot has changed and an increasing number of the general
public are becoming aware that there's something else than "Mac and
Windows". If it was my webshop I'd probably make a final pop-up if they
choose Linux with a table that says, "You chose a Linux system, here's
the difference between Linux and Windows" with a "yes, continue", "No,
take me back". Not to discourage anyone from getting a Linux system on
it, but as I mentioned in my talk I'd be concerned that just a few RMAs
might discourage an OEM from further shipping a distro.

Sorry, I'm just thinking out loudly above, I hope it all works out ok!

>>> 3. Rescue partition
>>>
>>> Laptop manufacturers usually don't ship with physical media anymore.
>>> Instead, the laptops have a rescue partition on them for
>>> re-installing/resetting the machine.
>>>
>>> As far as I know both installers we currently use in Debian are fine
>>> from installing from a rescue partition, we just need a nice way to set
>>> that up when initially performing an oem style setup from our
>>> installation media. (again, not a huge technical problem, but probably a
>>> bit more work than #2).
>
> Actually I have an ongoing exercise to improve the recovery side of
> things with a meeting later this afternoon.
> 
> For Fedora given what we are providing is just Fedora + some docs then
> the recovery solution is currently "go install Fedora using their USB
> installer and the docs are on the support site if you really want them".
> It's not the best but it's what we have.

Ah, good to know that this isn't as essential as I thought.

> We raise bugs the normal way with Fedora. They weren't public before the
> announcement but we're moving to doing things in a more standard public
> way. We have the advantage that a bug on Fedora is usually something
> RHEL wants so it's easy to get attention and that would be something
> Debian would need to consider. We did get input for their bug triaging
> but ultimately it was for the community to decide what was a blocker or
> not and I didn't win every battle. There was an audio over HDMI nouveau
> driver issue that got fixed after F32 was released - users will get that
> just as part of their regular update and that's OK.

Ah I've typed several paragraphs several times and deleted it, drivers
are a big issue, I guess we can take that topic further off of -project :)

> In my mind the best long term solution for Debian is if Lenovo are
> contributing fixes ourselves - after all we usually know what the fixes
> are. We're not technically at the stage where that is doable though -
> but it's what I'm aiming for and I'm the trial guinea-pig.

Fantastic! Yes feel free to reach out to me any time if you need some
help. I can give some guidance with Debian procedures or can help you
with sponsoring fixes, patches and package uploads, but what I can't do
is pressure someone in a team to prioritise an issue or force them to
accept a patch that they don't want, but I think in general, people will
be supportive in getting issues solved to get Debian on an OEM laptop
(and fixing these issues in Debian helps for all our existing ThinkPad
users too).

> For me the first step would be an understanding that if we propose a
> patch then we're doing it for a good reason and it doesn't sit there for
> a couple of months.

I did another talk over the last weekend in our first ever online
MiniDebConf where I talked about our patch backlog, we definitely want
to get better at this.

> I don't think we're at the stage where you can trust us to merge things
> in without review but longer term I'd hope to be a more trusted
> community member who can be relied on to deliver quality items. How we
> get from here to there is in my mind the challenge - for that we need
> support and I appreciate peoples time is limited and very precious :)

Nice! If you're interested, it would be great for you to join us a full
fledged project member too. That takes a lot of work, but in the
meantime we also have a status called Debian Maintainer where you're
allowed to upload some packages without any supervision before you're a
full Debian Developer.

>>> I think we generally care about the hardware that we have, and that our
>>> employers typically buy and deploy. I think "other people's hardware
>>> problems" will always be less exciting than your own. Usually when more
>>> of the latest hardware starts hitting us personally we tend to care
>>> more. I think part of this is just natural.
>
> Agreed. I'm afraid from a Lenovo preload shipping point of view it has
> to be the latest HW though and that's a challenge.
> If it's any consolation, whilst I have access to a lot of devices I also
> have to fight for some HW access. I don't have an X1C8 yet (my colleague
> does....I'm not bitter ;)) Getting HW where it needs to be is one of the
> big challenges I face generally.

I understand. From a preload point of view, I suppose it's possible to
start off with a subset of laptops that might work well? Or is there a
strong preference from Lenovo to support a wide range from the start (I
noticed that that's what Fedora did, so just wanted to check).

<snip>
>>> full retail price for their laptops considering how much work they put
>>> in making Debian (and often other Linux systems) run better on it. I've
>>> been considering reaching out to both Lenovo and Dell (and other
>>> manufacturers that are popular or important within the project) to see
>>> if we can get much better pricing for our members, whether they're just
>>> closer to cost or even a little subsidized. Maybe you could shed some
>>> light on this topic too :)
>
> I've kicked off a discussion on this internally. I did actually look
> into this when I joined the team last year but I know more the right
> people to talk to now and Linux is getting a lot more attention
> internally. I'll see what I can do - I think it's a very reasonable
> suggestion.

Fantastic, thanks!

-Jonathan

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Debian, the universal operating system.

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#11883

Hi Jonathan
On 6/3/2020 4:40 PM, Jonathan Carter wrote:
> Hey Mark
> 
> On 2020/06/03 20:24, Mark Pearson wrote:
> 
<snip>
>> In my mind the best long term solution for Debian is if Lenovo are
>> contributing fixes ourselves - after all we usually know what the fixes
>> are. We're not technically at the stage where that is doable though -
>> but it's what I'm aiming for and I'm the trial guinea-pig.
> 
> Fantastic! Yes feel free to reach out to me any time if you need some
> help. I can give some guidance with Debian procedures or can help you
> with sponsoring fixes, patches and package uploads, but what I can't do
> is pressure someone in a team to prioritise an issue or force them to
> accept a patch that they don't want, but I think in general, people will
> be supportive in getting issues solved to get Debian on an OEM laptop
> (and fixing these issues in Debian helps for all our existing ThinkPad
> users too).
> 
That sounds awesome.

And agreed - I would never want to pressure picking up patches that are 
wrong. My general mantra to *anybody* in open source for any of our 
Linux offerings is if you see us doing anything crappy let me know as 
it's very important to me that we do things right. I think any open 
source collaboration has to be correct for both sides or it will just 
get shunned.

My expectation is anything I ask for is upstream so I can't see asking 
for anything controversial :)

>> For me the first step would be an understanding that if we propose a
>> patch then we're doing it for a good reason and it doesn't sit there for
>> a couple of months.
> 
> I did another talk over the last weekend in our first ever online
> MiniDebConf where I talked about our patch backlog, we definitely want
> to get better at this.
> 
>> I don't think we're at the stage where you can trust us to merge things
>> in without review but longer term I'd hope to be a more trusted
>> community member who can be relied on to deliver quality items. How we
>> get from here to there is in my mind the challenge - for that we need
>> support and I appreciate peoples time is limited and very precious :)
> 
> Nice! If you're interested, it would be great for you to join us a full
> fledged project member too. That takes a lot of work, but in the
> meantime we also have a status called Debian Maintainer where you're
> allowed to upload some packages without any supervision before you're a
> full Debian Developer.
I would be really interested in this. This month is crazy with planning 
for the web release (too many meetings...) but Debian is important and 
I'd like to make time for it. Let me know what the recommended steps 
are. So far I've been raising bugs and doing a few kernel merge requests 
(and in the process of that asking Hector probably too many questions 
about how to do kernel tasks)
> 
>>>> I think we generally care about the hardware that we have, and that our
>>>> employers typically buy and deploy. I think "other people's hardware
>>>> problems" will always be less exciting than your own. Usually when more
>>>> of the latest hardware starts hitting us personally we tend to care
>>>> more. I think part of this is just natural.
>>
>> Agreed. I'm afraid from a Lenovo preload shipping point of view it has
>> to be the latest HW though and that's a challenge.
>> If it's any consolation, whilst I have access to a lot of devices I also
>> have to fight for some HW access. I don't have an X1C8 yet (my colleague
>> does....I'm not bitter ;)) Getting HW where it needs to be is one of the
>> big challenges I face generally.
> 
> I understand. From a preload point of view, I suppose it's possible to
> start off with a subset of laptops that might work well? Or is there a
> strong preference from Lenovo to support a wide range from the start (I
> noticed that that's what Fedora did, so just wanted to check).
I think a subset is almost certainly the way to realistically go but 
I'll discuss internally. As I'm sure you appreciate this stuff doesn't 
happen overnight :)

With Fedora on both sides we're still learning what works and doesn't 
for their community. We also need to gauge customer interest and there 
is a cost in Lenovo for every preload we do - we have internal testing, 
manufacturing and support costs that apply so it has to be worth it. I'm 
hoping it's a no-brainer.

Mark

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#11887

Hi,

 Thank you for your mail.

 In short term, Lenovo cannot provide Debian pre-installed laptops
 since there are some blockers for it. But they want to give better
 experience with Linux for their laptop users, including Debian.
 So, we can continue to talk with them, will try to find the root
 cause of those problems and solve it.

 (Maybe it's better to have cross-distro talk about its laptop issue, too).


 Can we do that? Yes, of course improve it :)


-- 
Hideki Yamane <henrich@iijmio-mail.jp>

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#11900

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

Mark Pearson <markpearson@lenovo.com> writes:

>>> 3. Rescue partition
>>>
>>> Laptop manufacturers usually don't ship with physical media anymore.
>>> Instead, the laptops have a rescue partition on them for
>>> re-installing/resetting the machine.
>>>
>>> As far as I know both installers we currently use in Debian are fine
>>> from installing from a rescue partition, we just need a nice way to set
>>> that up when initially performing an oem style setup from our
>>> installation media. (again, not a huge technical problem, but probably a
>>> bit more work than #2).
> Actually I have an ongoing exercise to improve the recovery side of
> things with a meeting later this afternoon.

You could do a lot worse than providing a copy of Grml on the disk:

  https://grml.org/

Of course, Grml isn't a direct output of the Debian project, so perhaps
people might take issue with having that as the "Debian Recovery
Option", but it is closely based on Debian, and includes a couple of
ways of installing vanilla Debian, having booted into Grml.

Then again, Grml inherits anyi problems with unsupported hardware that
Debian has, so may need things fixed before it's suitable, depending on
the current issues on any particular hardware.

Cheers, Phil.
[ Typed on my X230 :-) ]
--
|)|  Philip Hands  [+44 (0)20 8530 9560]  HANDS.COM Ltd.
|-|  http://www.hands.com/    http://ftp.uk.debian.org/
|(|  Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34,   21075 Hamburg,    GERMANY

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#11901

On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 7:46 PM Philip Hands wrote:

> Of course, Grml isn't a direct output of the Debian project, so perhaps
> people might take issue with having that as the "Debian Recovery
> Option", but it is closely based on Debian, and includes a couple of
> ways of installing vanilla Debian, having booted into Grml.

Debian used to publish a "recovery" variant of Debian Live, but that
was dropped due to lack of maintenance at one point. I note there are
several Debian derivatives producing rescue/recovery live media (Grml,
rescatux, Finnix come to mind), I wonder if any of them would be
interested in forming a new Debian rescue/recovery team to publish
console and GUI recovery variants of Debian Live images.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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#11903

On Sat, Jun 06, 2020 at 03:09:26AM +0000, Paul Wise wrote:
> Debian used to publish a "recovery" variant of Debian Live, but that
> was dropped due to lack of maintenance at one point. I note there are
> several Debian derivatives producing rescue/recovery live media (Grml,
> rescatux, Finnix come to mind), I wonder if any of them would be
> interested in forming a new Debian rescue/recovery team to publish
> console and GUI recovery variants of Debian Live images.

Why would we want to do that when downstream distributions for this
purpose are available. Frankly, I don't currently see that a Debian
rescue image could reach grml's level of matureness in time. We do have
more important things to spend our personpower on that are not alreadys
solved downstream.

Greetings
Marc

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Haber         | "I don't trust Computers. They | Mailadresse im Header
Leimen, Germany    |  lose things."    Winona Ryder | Fon: *49 6224 1600402
Nordisch by Nature |  How to make an American Quilt | Fax: *49 6224 1600421

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#11904

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

Quoting Marc Haber (2020-06-09 17:08:25)
> On Sat, Jun 06, 2020 at 03:09:26AM +0000, Paul Wise wrote:
> > Debian used to publish a "recovery" variant of Debian Live, but that
> > was dropped due to lack of maintenance at one point. I note there are
> > several Debian derivatives producing rescue/recovery live media (Grml,
> > rescatux, Finnix come to mind), I wonder if any of them would be
> > interested in forming a new Debian rescue/recovery team to publish
> > console and GUI recovery variants of Debian Live images.
> 
> Why would we want to do that when downstream distributions for this
> purpose are available. Frankly, I don't currently see that a Debian
> rescue image could reach grml's level of matureness in time. We do have
> more important things to spend our personpower on that are not alreadys
> solved downstream.

Seems to me you are both talking about same thing with different words:

Downstream has already implemented this.  How about asking those 
downstream developers if they might be interested in "upporting" their 
work so that it is a) implemented in Debian itself and therefore 
benefits both Debian and all of its downstreams, and b) is done by those 
already experienced with this without repeating effort.


(please, either of you, correct me if I am missing something)

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private

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#11905

On 6/9/20 8:08 AM, Marc Haber wrote:
>
> Why would we want to do that when downstream distributions for this
> purpose are available. Frankly, I don't currently see that a Debian
> rescue image could reach grml's level of matureness in time. We do have
> more important things to spend our personpower on that are not alreadys
> solved downstream.
>
> Greetings
> Marc
>
This makes sense.  I for one was looking for something ala Arch where we 
can use the install disk as an all around rescue disk.

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#11906

On Tue, Jun 09, 2020 at 10:24:53AM -0700, RP wrote:
>On 6/9/20 8:08 AM, Marc Haber wrote:
>> 
>> Why would we want to do that when downstream distributions for this
>> purpose are available. Frankly, I don't currently see that a Debian
>> rescue image could reach grml's level of matureness in time. We do have
>> more important things to spend our personpower on that are not alreadys
>> solved downstream.
>> 
>> Greetings
>> Marc
>> 
>This makes sense.  I for one was looking for something ala Arch where we can
>use the install disk as an all around rescue disk.

You can - there's a "rescue mode" if you look in the boot menus...

-- 
Steve McIntyre, Cambridge, UK.                                steve@einval.com
"I suspect most samba developers are already technically insane... Of
 course, since many of them are Australians, you can't tell." -- Linus Torvalds

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#11907

On 6/9/20 12:19 PM, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> use the install disk as an all around rescue disk.
> You can - there's a "rescue mode" if you look in the boot menus...
>
That's true, but I was looking for more tools than what busybox comes 
with.  Like an all purpose installer/rescue disk.  The suggestions above 
like Finnix and Grml gave me an idea - make my own with debian-live.  I 
now have my own custom live cd for rescuing systems with only the tools 
I personally need.

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#11908

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

Hi all,

On 10.06.20 01:59, RP wrote:
> On 6/9/20 12:19 PM, Steve McIntyre wrote:
>> use the install disk as an all around rescue disk.
>> You can - there's a "rescue mode" if you look in the boot menus...
>>
> That's true, but I was looking for more tools than what busybox comes with.  Like an all purpose installer/rescue disk.  The suggestions above like Finnix and Grml gave me an idea - make my own with debian-live.  I now have my own custom live cd for rescuing systems with only the tools I personally need.
> 

It would be nice if such a thing would be available as an official Debian live cd rescue image.
No debian-live currently includes tools like lvm, for example.
So you depend on a working network setup for rescueing encrypted partitions etc.

Just my 2 cents
Michael

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#11910

On 6/10/20 4:52 AM, Michael Kesper wrote:
>
> It would be nice if such a thing would be available as an official Debian live cd rescue image.
> No debian-live currently includes tools like lvm, for example.
> So you depend on a working network setup for rescueing encrypted partitions etc.
>
> Just my 2 cents
> Michael
>
Sorry for hijacking this thread but Finnix should have lvm2 in its tool 
chest.  I think the best thing about building your own is that you can 
make it as small or as large as you want it to be.  Both Finnix and GRML 
have documentation on how to customize their images.  Its a very nice 
project.

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#11912 — Re: Debian utility live distribution (was Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux)

[Multipart message — attachments visible in raw view] — view raw

Till stretch release, live build did had a standard rescue package.

It's not there anymore.

--sent from OnePlus device--

Check out newly released IIoT Gateway
https://sourceforge.net/projects/iiot-gateway/files/20_may_2020/

On Fri, 12 Jun, 2020, 9:01 AM Ryan Finnie, <ryan@finnie.org> wrote:

> Quoth pabs:
> > On Fri, Jun 5, 2020 at 7:46 PM Philip Hands wrote:
> >
> > > Of course, Grml isn't a direct output of the Debian project, so perhaps
> > > people might take issue with having that as the "Debian Recovery
> > > Option", but it is closely based on Debian, and includes a couple of
> > > ways of installing vanilla Debian, having booted into Grml.
> >
> > Debian used to publish a "recovery" variant of Debian Live, but that
> > was dropped due to lack of maintenance at one point. I note there are
> > several Debian derivatives producing rescue/recovery live media (Grml,
> > rescatux, Finnix come to mind), I wonder if any of them would be
> > interested in forming a new Debian rescue/recovery team to publish
> > console and GUI recovery variants of Debian Live images.
>
> As the developer of Finnix, I'm open to a few ideas and this will be a
> bit of a ramble going off in a few directions.  But first, a bit of an
> introduction.  Finnix is a utility Live CD, in production since 2000[0].
>  I recently released Finnix 120[1] after a 4+ year gap, but thanks to
> the updated work of Debian's live-build by Lyndon Brown making it easier
> to maintain a derivative[2], I've committed to regular releases again.
>
> Finnix's goals are feed into one another:
>
> - Text-based live distribution.
> - Boot to root shell prompt as quickly as possible.
> - As many system utilities as possible.
> - Relatively small size.
>
> Grml's goals are similar but we diverge on a couple of philosophies, but
> that's perfectly fine.  To that end, I think a first-party (to Debian)
> utility live distribution would be fine as well.
>
> Let's say Debian wants to do a utility live distribution, using Finnix's
> goals as a model.  So let's start with a package list, which is simple
> to do based on Finnix's list[3], and could easily become e.g. a
> live-task-utility metapackage to go along with the rest of the
> live-task-* packages.  I would be willing to maintain such a
> metapackage, to keep it from going stale.
>
> Now, pretty much the only other thing the Finnix build repository[4]
> does is execute some hooks; everything else is wrapping live-build.
> Those hooks are[5]:
>
> - systemd: Defines finnix.target.  Also disables as many services as
> possible in the name of speed.  For example lm-sensors.service since
> lm-sensors is installed; the service does nothing in Finnix, but these
> take a bit of time to do nothing and add up.
> - bash-profile: Makes a stylized PS1, couple other aliases/tweaks.
> - distro: Standard derivative distro info diversions.
> - getty: One of the largest changes IMHO.  Strips out the non-superuser
> getty generator and puts in its own getty overrides to go straight to
> root bash prompt.
> - gpm: Sets up and enables a gpm service for useful console mouse access.
> - live-config: Finnix-specific live-config defaults, and disables
> openssh-server key generation (see below).
> - remove-packages: Currently removes rsyslog in favor of having no
> syslog (just systemd's journal).
> - ssh: Overrides ssh.service so key generation is done if the user tries
> to start ssh.service, as opposed to at boot time, saving seconds if the
> user has no intention of starting an SSH server.  Also sets up a
> per-user shared SSH agent, to be shared by the multiple VTYs.
> - s390-kernel: Heh.  Currently a hack to get around s390x kernel + QEMU
> currently being broken in sid[6], it manually downloads a vanilla-ish
> kernel from Ubuntu.
> - recompress: Something hacky that I'm quite proud of: it goes through
> all .gz files in the chroot, decompresses them and recompresses them at
> level 0 (gzip header + original data).  It also needs to mess around
> with the dpkg md5sums as a result.  Why?  mksquashfs xz produces better
> compression than stacked gz + mksquashfs xz, so a larger looking
> internal chroot results in a smaller overall ISO.
>
> Which of those hook modifications would be needed for a Debian utility
> live distribution?  Arguably, none, as they all fall under 1) branding,
> 2) efficiency/speed, or 3) convenience.  IMHO they are all useful to
> Finnix, but some of the features would be nice to upstream to Debian,
> such as the recompression logic, shared console SSH agents, etc.  But I
> imagine things such as an automatic root prompt would be a source of
> contention for an official Debian image, so it would make more sense for
> it to boot into the standard live user.
>
> I would be willing to discuss a utility distribution with Debian Live.
> One complication is the current live builds don't use live-build, but
> instead live-wrapper which AIUI doesn't even use live-build at its core
> anymore.  I certainly haven't had a chance to look at it, nonetheless.
> Currently the sid live-build is the only system I "know", and if I were
> to step up to maintaining a Debian utility live distribution (for
> anything beyond a dependency metapackage), I would need to learn the
> current system.
>
>
> [0] Making it the oldest Live CD still in production, and one of the
> first few full stop, after DemoLinux and LinuxCare's BBC off the top of
> my head.  Maybe Yggdrasil's installer if you want to count that as a
> live disc.  I'm dating myself, aren't I?
> [1] https://www.finnix.org/Finnix_120_release_notes
> [2] Finnix was previously a Debian derivative, but used a completely
> bespoke kernel/initrd/early boot system.  I wrote a bit more about this
> at https://blog.finnix.org/2020/05/19/behind-the-scenes-of-finnix-120/ .
> [3]
>
> https://github.com/finnix/finnix-live-build/blob/master/lists/finnix.list.chroot
> [4] https://github.com/finnix/finnix-live-build
> [5] https://github.com/finnix/finnix-live-build/tree/master/hooks
> [6] https://bugs.debian.org/961838
>
>

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#11913 — Re: Debian utility live distribution (was Re: ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux)

On 6/11/20 8:30 PM, Ryan Finnie wrote:
> As the developer of Finnix, I'm open to a few ideas and this will be a
> bit of a ramble going off in a few directions.  But first, a bit of an
> introduction.  Finnix is a utility Live CD, in production since 2000[0].
>   I recently released Finnix 120[1] after a 4+ year gap, but thanks to
> the updated work of Debian's live-build by Lyndon Brown making it easier
> to maintain a derivative[2], I've committed to regular releases again.
>
IMO, Finnix should be the model.  Grml is a very good project but I 
think is a bit of an overkill for an install/rescue disk.  Like I 
mentioned before, I used Arch before and the convenience of having an 
installer/live rescue on a single usb is very handy.

I was working on an Ubuntu project this morning and just realized that 
their server image is actually a live disto. During install if one 
switches to the virtual console, it opens not Busybox but a full bash 
command prompt.

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#11882 — Debian hardware support and enablement for newer devices (was ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux)

Hello,

> > A shout out for Hector Martinez who has been helping me a whole bunch. Without his help I likely would have given up and wouldn't even be reading the threads on this forum. If there are more people like Hector (particularly in kernel, audio and graphics) let me know!

> As I become more aware of your requirements I can help find more Hectors
> too :)

There are more companies expecting better hardware support, this issue
is not limited to Lenovo, they are willing to pay consultancy time
and/or sponsor Debian events, however on volunteer premises, it has
been really hard to provide adequate support for them, companies would
like to have quick turn around fixes, while Debian takes ages to land
something and/or to backport those changes to stable (which is the
installer advertised at our debian.org website). There is a workaround
by creating a consultancy and pay Debian developers, a la Debian LTS,
but that has been at least controversial and, to my knowledge, no
general solution has been provided.

As a project, how can we improve the current entry level to new
companies wanting support for their devices?

Note: companies now understand they need to contribute upstream first,
however that's not enough to get timely fixes to Debian.

Regards
-- 
 Héctor Orón  -.. . -... .. .- -.   -.. . ...- . .-.. --- .--. . .-.

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#11885 — Re: Debian hardware support and enablement for newer devices (was ThinkPad laptops preinstalled Linux)

On Wed, Jun 3, 2020 at 10:03 PM Hector Oron wrote:

> There are more companies expecting better hardware support, this issue
> is not limited to Lenovo, they are willing to pay consultancy time
> and/or sponsor Debian events, however on volunteer premises, it has
> been really hard to provide adequate support for them, companies would
> like to have quick turn around fixes, while Debian takes ages to land
> something and/or to backport those changes to stable (which is the
> installer advertised at our debian.org website). There is a workaround
> by creating a consultancy and pay Debian developers, a la Debian LTS,
> but that has been at least controversial and, to my knowledge, no
> general solution has been provided.

There was the etch-and-a-half initiative a while ago, where backports
of hardware support packages (Linux, xorg drivers) were added to
stable itself. Users had to opt-in to some of the updates.

https://wiki.debian.org/EtchAndAHalf

There are many existing consultancies that could do this work, some of
them listed on the website. Some resources for companies wanting to
hire folks to work on Debian & FLOSS stuff in general:

https://www.debian.org/consultants/
https://lists.debian.org/debian-consultants/
https://lists.debian.org/debian-jobs/
https://www.fossjobs.net/
https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources

> As a project, how can we improve the current entry level to new
> companies wanting support for their devices?

Is the backports archive not sufficient for this? I see it doesn't
contain mesa backports at this point and probably other hardware
enablement, but that could be fixed.

The alternative option of backporting entire drivers and hardware
subsystems to old versions of Linux doesn't seem like it would be a
useful use of developer time to me.

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise

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