Re: Workstation Working Group Meeting: November 4, 2025

Here is my Gemini-assisted summary for this week's meeting.

Summary

The Working Group, including Michael Catanzaro, Allan Day, and Chris 
Murphy, reached a consensus to remove the ABRT GUI application while 
keeping the core crash reporting functionality, citing a lack of 
progress on issue 130. Michael Catanzaro proposed removing 
low-memory-monitor as its functionality has been replaced, which Neal 
Gompa (Conan Kudo) agreed with, and Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) also 
suggested utilizing AI on crash telemetry data to improve tooling and 
development. Michael Catanzaro, Chris Murphy, and Neal Gompa (Conan 
Kudo) discussed challenges with dual-booting Windows and Fedora due to 
BitLocker, while also addressing a major regression in the "install 
updates and power off" functionality, which Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) 
suggested is related to systemd 258. Michael Catanzaro also informed 
the group about Fabio orphaning Rust packages and a difficulty building 
WebKitGTK, and Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) announced the release of Dracut 
109, expressing concern over its interoperability with the potentially 
unstable systemd 258.

Details

Future of ABRT (Automatic Bug Reporting Tool)

Michael Catanzaro initiated discussion on issue 130, "Give ABRT some 
love," noting that it is the second oldest open issue and that little 
progress has been made over six years. Michael Catanzaro's proposal is 
to remove the ABRT GUI application unless an active maintainer can be 
found, as the current Bugzilla API key requirement makes the GUI 
unusable for most users. Allan Day supported the plan, suggesting 
advertising the removal plan and mockups, and giving contributors six 
months to pick it up. Chris Murphy agreed with the plan, noting the 
difficulty for users who are required to obtain and maintain a Bugzilla 
API key, which expires without notification.

Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) suggested using AI on the available crash 
telemetry data — which spans two decades — to identify crash 
patterns, suggest fixes, and build useful developer tools. Michael 
Catanzaro agreed that the crash telemetry data is incredible but 
underutilized by developers. Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) stressed that 
someone should pitch the AI idea internally at Red Hat, believing the 
tooling potential would be desirable.

The Working Group reached a consensus to remove the ABRT GUI only, 
while keeping the underlying automatic crash reporting functionality. 
Michael Catanzaro confirmed they would call for new maintainers, and if 
none stepped up, the removal would proceed. Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) 
insisted that someone suggest the AI idea to improve the existing 
tooling.

Low Memory Monitor Removal

Michael Catanzaro proposed removing the low-memory-monitor component 
from the default install because its functionality has been replaced, 
due to the component being archived following Red Hat layoffs. Kate 
from Red Hat reimplemented the GMemoryMonitor API on top of systemd. 
Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) agreed with retiring the package since it is 
primarily used by GLib and not by others like Qt or KDE frameworks.

Future of Dual Booting Windows and Fedora

Chris Murphy and Michael Catanzaro discussed issue 278, which concerns 
the difficulties of dual-booting Windows and Fedora, primarily due to 
BitLocker being enabled by default in new Windows 11 installations. 
Chris Murphy noted that BitLocker prevents volume shrinking, and secure 
boot prevents using Windows bootloader options in GRUB. Neal Gompa 
(Conan Kudo) clarified that the core problem is the need for a Windows 
application to orchestrate shrinking the volume before installation.

Michael Catanzaro pointed out that the functionality to boot into the 
UEFI boot menu is currently hidden behind the Alt key press during 
restart in GNOME. Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) stated that hidden 
functionality is bad and suggested turning the boot options into an 
exposed button, and confirmed that this menu allows booting into 
Windows. Michael Catanzaro argued they should optimize for the default 
Windows 11 case with BitLocker enabled, which is a growing majority. 
Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) suggested that the existing Windows 10 case is 
still relevant, although the requirements are not substantially 
different from Windows 11.

Michael Catanzaro asked if they should stop creating the Windows boot 
entry in GRUB. Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) confirmed that os-prober has 
been disabled for a while, and suggested adding a GRUB boot entry for 
EFI systems that jumps directly to the EFI boot menu. Neal Gompa (Conan 
Kudo) proposed sketching out the idea for a Windows application to 
automate multiboot bootstrapping, which is an absolute requirement for 
the future due to the inability to shrink the Windows volume from 
Anaconda. Chris Murphy and Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) agreed to update the 
issue report with action items and a clear path forward.

Regression in "Install Updates and Power Off" Functionality

Michael Catanzaro announced a major regression where the "install 
updates and power off" functionality is broken, possibly due to a 
regression in gnome-session or systemd. The bug results in the system 
powering off without installing updates, or installing updates upon the 
next power-on attempt. Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) noted that this is the 
third regression heard of concerning systemd 258 that week.

systemd 258 Regression Concerns

Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) expressed concern about several initialization 
races at early boot related to systemd 258, including issues where SDDM 
does not come up and instances of the initramfs crashing. Neal Gompa 
(Conan Kudo) also worried that the broken scheduled reboot 
functionality might affect KDE Plasma as well and encouraged testing. 
Michel Lind jokingly suggested that dracut should be part of systemd so 
they would have to own the issues.

Fabio Orphaned Rust Packages

Michael Catanzaro announced that Fabio orphaned their Rust packages due 
to a minor dispute, necessitating a plan to maintain them, which might 
involve assigning a paid Red Hat employee to the task.

WebKitGTK Build Issue

Michael Catanzaro also reported difficulty building WebKitGTK 2.51.1 
due to missing debug information, and Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) offered 
to troubleshoot the issue later.

Dracut 109 Release and systemd Interoperability Risks

Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) announced the release of Dracut 109, warning 
that its adoption in rawhide could exacerbate systemd 258 issues. Neal 
Gompa (Conan Kudo) mentioned that Dracut CI detected a few issues, 
which they are hoping will not appear in the real world 00:33:56. Neal 
Gompa (Conan Kudo) expressed nervousness about systemd 258, believing 
it might be a "brown paper bag release" given the difficulty in 
debugging multiple related issues.

Suggested next steps

 - Michael Catanzaro will send the bug report link to Neal Gompa (Conan 
Kudo), who will help later in the afternoon with troubleshooting the 
WebKitGTK 2.51.1 build problem.
 - Chris Murphy and Neal Gompa (Conan Kudo) will update issue 278 with 
action items and a clear path forward for the future of dual booting 
Windows and Fedora.


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