Bugzilla, I do not like the tone we get answered! | dilemma User <> Developer/Tecnician

The Water Cooler
,
1

I do dislike the fact that a maintainer is insisting calling users "stupid | dumb | or even says

… instead of filing bogus reports like this!

*(please read the whole bug request to see what I mean | L.S.)
Bug 2208097 - lightdm pulls in the Deepin Desktop Environment

In short the Lightdm is a Display Manager (DM). It needs a greeter to give a different look.

Greeter:

It can use various front-ends to draw the user interface,[6] also called Greeters.[7] It also supports Wayland.[8][9]

Story:

I meet Lightdm since I started with Linux Mint. In this time lightdm was always distributed as a package with a default greeter delivered. Depending from which distribution you fork the lightdm package,you got the look of it. The config files are well documented and in the Internet there are a lot of tutorials how to configure a greeter to please the user.

sudo dnf info lightdm 

Name         : lightdm
Version      : 1.32.0
Release      : 5.fc39
Architecture : x86_64
Size         : 585 k
Source       : lightdm-1.32.0-5.fc39.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
From repo    : fedora
Summary      : A cross-desktop Display Manager
URL          : https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/LightDM/
License      : (LGPLv2 or LGPLv3) and GPLv3+
Description  : Lightdm is a display manager that:
             : * Is cross-desktop - supports different desktops
             : * Supports different display technologies
             : * Is lightweight - low memory usage and fast performance

Fact:

The (a) maintainer @leigh123linux of the package lightdm progressed the installation and made a clever choice to be able to install lightdm and the dependency while choosing just the greeter who gives the specific look of lightdm.
Unfortunately he totally forgot to inform his colleagues and the Community that with his approach we can get rid of unwanted dependency. He also forgot to keep an eye on the existing greeters and following a default naming convention for it. As an example see (lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings)

sudo dnf list \*greeter* 
Last metadata expiration check: 0:17:05 ago on Thu 14 Dec 2023 09:04:40 AM -03.
Installed Packages
slick-greeter.x86_64                         1.8.2-2.fc39                @fedora
slick-greeter-mate.noarch                    1.8.2-2.fc39                @fedora
Available Packages
kgreeter-plugins.x86_64                      1:4.11.22-39.fc39           fedora 
lightdm-autologin-greeter.noarch             1.0-18.fc39                 fedora 
lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings.noarch          1.2.2-21.fc39               fedora 
slick-greeter-cinnamon.noarch

Proposal:

To discuss how we could improve the quality of bug reports for Users and Developers/Tecnicians.
It is not just me who recognizes beside being a quite difficult task to report, also to get “offended” while try to report and improve a official software package.

I do really see the side of the Maintainer, and yes he is right, if the user spends a lot of time and make researches he probably not would have to report in first place. Unfortunately this is not “real live”.

I do kindly ask that Developers and Technicians to be more lenient while pushing such users in the right directions and try to understand the Users side too looking for an compromise and help to delegate necessary tasks improve.

P.S.
I really not just started with Linux, and with my professional background I can see both sides. So please lets try to create a useful draft for a new Manual, discuss what else could be done to improove and let’s try to be lenient with each other.

History of my lightdm requests:
what happened to lightdm ?

2

Draft for a lightdm wiki/documentation:

What id did so far, i think it needs some brush up :slight_smile:

I will make this space here as a wiki that we can do it together for those who not want to do it in the fedora wiki

Lightdm Manual
…

3

I agree that this is out of line. Could you please file a Code of Conduct ticket at OpenID transaction in progress — or I can do so on your behalf.

2 Likes
4

I would prefer to invite the maintainer to take position in this topic, instead of condemning him with a Code of Conduct ticket. As already mentioned he makes a good work with his proposal to just installing the greeter and pushing the dependencies.

Discussing how to proceed would in my opinion bring more.

If you know him, pleas invite him with a PM and lets try it first with this topic here.

5

A simpler way to check which display manager you’re using is: systemctl show -p Id display-manager (or even just systemctl status ...).

But you don’t necessarily need that information. You can use systemctl enable -f lightdm to replace the existing symlink. This also has the advantage that it’s more atomic. For example, your systemctl enable command has a typo (lighdm), so if someone ran those two commands and ignored the error message, they’d be left without a display manager on their next boot. The same typo with systemctl enable -f lighdm is harmless.