Fedora Workstation Working Group Meeting 2025-08-05 (Gemini Summary)

Meeting Aug 5, 2025 at 08:41 CDT

Summary

Michael Catanzaro proposed filtering Flatpaks to control which 
applications are exposed to users, with the long-term aim of making 
Flathub the primary source for applications. Matthias Clasen 
highlighted that the gnome-control-center package was becoming 
orphaned, and Felipe Borges volunteered to maintain it. Matthias Clasen 
also discussed the GNOME 49 beta, noting the new donation notification 
feature.

Details

Flatpak Changes and Fedora's Strategy

Michael Catanzaro discussed a proposal to filter flatpaks to avoid 
exposing all flatpaks to users by default. He explained that the 
long-term goal is to enable the entire Flathub, eventually ceasing to 
ship RPM applications and Fedora flatpaks, making Flathub the primary 
source for applications. Michael Catanzaro noted that FESCo had started 
discussing this, but no conclusion was reached, and he expressed 
concern that the discussion was not progressing as he would like.

Control Center Package Maintainership

Matthias Clasen brought up that the gnome-control-center package might 
become orphaned due to unresponsive maintainers. Michael Catanzaro 
confirmed that it was about to be orphaned and that it needed new 
maintainers. Felipe Borges volunteered to maintain the package, which 
Matthias Clasen supported, noting that Felipe Borges is also the 
upstream maintainer.

GNOME 49 Beta and Donation Notifications

Matthias Clasen raised the impending GNOME 49 beta release and the 
associated changes, including a new donation notification that caused 
some breakage in OpenQA tests. Felipe Borges explained that the 
notification was implemented before the string freeze to allow for 
translations, with the understanding that its behavior could be 
adjusted later. Felipe Borges also mentioned ongoing discussions about 
pulling notification campaigns from the internet and the privacy 
considerations involved, with a potential setting to disable these 
checks.

Donation Notification Frequency and Future Campaigns

Jens-Ulrik Petersen inquired about the frequency of the donation 
notification, and Felipe Borges clarified that it currently appears 
every six months. Felipe Borges also stated that the plan is to enable 
control over the frequency for strategic campaigns tied to calendar 
dates, such as holidays. Matthias Clasen brought up the possibility of 
other entities wanting to use this banner for their own campaigns, and 
Felipe Borges responded that replacing the server side for such 
purposes would be easy.

GNOME 49 Beta Modernization and Dependencies

Matthias Clasen discussed the ongoing gnome-session modernization and 
systemd dependencies rolling into GNOME 49 beta, noting that some 
aspects might be broken initially as these changes land. He explained 
that some modules, like Orca, need to transition from old auto-starting 
mechanisms to systemd services, which could lead to some short-term 
fallout in Rawhide. Matthias Clasen expressed hope that issues would be 
resolved by the Release Candidate phase.

Suggested next steps

Felipe Borges will pick up the control center package.


-- 
_______________________________________________
desktop mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]
Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue