gnome-initial-setup hardcoded to Ubuntu branding, not overridable

[Erich Eickmeyer]

gnome-initial-setup is hardcoded to Ubuntu branding but there is no way to override. Whoever patched it did not check to see that it was also seeded in Edubuntu before making this call.

This directly affects Edubuntu and is therefore a critical bug.

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/2060817

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you set XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP to 'Ubuntu'? If so you claim to be an Ubuntu session, you get the Ubuntu branding... we can workaround that though.

Could you be more specific about the issue? Is it only the 'welcome' page that got recently added which is the issue? If so we could do something similar to debian/patches/0001-Display-the-ubuntu-welcome-wizard-in-Unity.patch for Edubuntu and define a different set of pages for you which doesn't include the welcome one (assuming that your XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP definition include something specific to edubuntu)

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

>Do you set XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP to 'Ubuntu'? If so you claim to be an Ubuntu session, you get the Ubuntu branding... we can workaround that though.

Yes, we do, and that's intentional as we are using that to get the Ubuntu specifics in the gconf-overrides since we build customizations on top of that. We make modifications via a gconf-override later in the sequence.

If we were to use an "edubuntu" session, that would break this, we don't want to do that.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

After doing some experimenting, it's possible to override using a separate package and doing a `dpkg-divert` to divert the systemd user service for an executable to temporarily change the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP variable for this executable only. This would allow for something you propose. However, time is running short, and if this can be done quickly, then we can do that.

Overriding the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP variable to anything other than `ubuntu:GNOME` makes it default, and I'm not 100% convinced it's useful at that point, meaning we might just blacklist it from the installation altogether.

Really, I'd be happy if I could just override the "Welcome to Ubuntu Noble Numbat" with "Welcome to Edubuntu Noble Numbat" somehow (it looks like it's getting that from /etc/lsb-release), skip the Ubuntu Pro screen (it's ambiguous if it even applies to flavors), and basically be able to s/Ubuntu/Edubuntu/ if possible. The accent colors conforming would be nice, but that's not 100% necessary.

What's really missing is online accounts setup, which was our primary reason for having this in the past. This made it easy for teachers or students to simpy set-up their email accounts first thing. Now they have to be redirected to the system settings, which came as a surprise post-Beta. (I realize everything had been hung-up in proposed during time_t and xz-utils, but I made it *abundantly clear* during the Flavor Sync at Ubuntu Summit that this was not a feature we wanted to be without).

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

It comes from /etc/os-release

Ubuntu Pro definitely applies to flavors.

gnome-initial-setup dropping gnome-online-accounts was an upstream decision. By using the default web browser instead of a webkitgtk popup, it fixed lots of existing bugs and future bugs when Google or Microsoft change their protocols.

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-online-accounts/3.49.0-1
https://discourse.gnome.org/t/removing-online-accounts-from-initial-setup-46/18624

That particular detail happened to land in noble release before the time_t transition began
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-initial-setup/46~alpha-2ubuntu1

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Jeremy,

> Ubuntu Pro definitely applies to flavors.

I, as well as the flavor leads, need to hear this directly from a member of the Ubuntu Pro team. Hearing this from you means nothing as I've told you before. You do not represent the Ubuntu Pro team.

> gnome-initial-setup dropping gnome-online-accounts was an upstream decision. By using the default web browser instead of a webkitgtk popup, it fixed lots of existing bugs and future bugs when Google or Microsoft change their protocols.

Understandable, and this was communicated, but we also discussed that we'd find ways to avoid this downstream. Apparently that didn't matter.

> That particular detail happened to land in noble release before the time_t transition began
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-initial-setup/46~alpha-2ubuntu1

Yet never landed in Edubuntu's ISO image.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

https://ubuntu.com/pro says it applies to over 25,000 packages

https://ubuntu.com/security/esm says it is "security maintenance for the entire collection of software packages shipped with Ubuntu" and later makes it clear that it covers universe.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SecurityTeam/FAQ says "ESM customers (ESM is included in Ubuntu Pro) can receive security updates for high and critical CVEs (common vulnerabilities and exposures) for the the entire collection of software packages shipped with Ubuntu, including the Ubuntu Universe repository, for 10 years." There are a few exceptions listed later, but things like flavor packages or plasma-desktop are not mentioned as excluded anywhere.

There are several ways to contact the Ubuntu Security Team if you are skeptical.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

You can file a separate bug if you think there is something we need to avoid downstream.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

I'll rephrase: We discussed keeping GOA in the mix of things able to set-up in gnome-initial-setup downstream, but that didn't happen. I was pretty adamant about keeping that feature. That didn't happen. And yes, that needs to be a separate bug.

As for everything else, for now, I've blacklisted gnome-initial-setup until these issues can be addressed.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

GOA issues filed at LP: #2061927

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Lowering importance and removing milestone since Edubuntu took an alternative option

Some comments

> I, as well as the flavor leads, need to hear this directly from a member of the Ubuntu Pro team.

It's unclear to me what you are requesting there. To quote https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-pro-faq/

`Ubuntu Pro provides an SLA for security fixes for the entire distribution (‘main and universe’ packages) for ten years`

> Overriding the XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP variable to anything other than `ubuntu:GNOME` makes it default

What do you mean 'makes it default'? That's a list of value, if you want to match ubuntu:GNOME I would expect you to make it 'edubuntu:ubuntu:GNOME' which would get you the current behavior (usually code checks are on the line of 'is that value in the list') but also add edubuntu specifics tweaks

> Understandable, and this was communicated, but we also discussed that we'd find ways to avoid this downstream. Apparently that didn't matter.

Such claims don't help, it's not that it didn't matter. The Ubuntu Desktop team is understaffed and sitting between a rock and an hard place. Due to lack of resources we just can't work on the changes you are requesting, which let us the option to ship outdated, unmaintained upstream and potential less secure code to most Ubuntu users. That's not really a compelling option either.

If you have a flavor that rely on GNOME I think it's fair to say that it is your job to keep up with upstream and adapt to incoming changes if you need to. We try to help when we can but that's just not always possible...

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I suggest that you get an account on https://discourse.gnome.org and set your notifications for these 2 tags to Watching:

https://discourse.gnome.org/tag/announcement
https://discourse.gnome.org/tag/distributor

[Lech Sandecki (lsandecki)]

As far as I know we do not support or test Ubuntu Pro on any Ubuntu flavours. but I suppose that Ubuntu Pro would just work if there isn't anything very specific introduced or missing in a given Ubuntu flavour.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Lech,

One of the qualifications to be an official Ubuntu flavor is that the flavor must be built from the Ubuntu repositories without additional repositories. They are built exactly the same way as every other image (livecd-rootfs, ubuntu-image, ubuntu-cdimage, etc.). That is a hard requirement. With that in mind, what would the Ubuntu Pro Team's stance be on official Ubuntu flavors?

[Seth Arnold (seth-arnold)]

Erich, I think the only 'Ubuntu system builds' that would have Ubuntu Pro enabled in any way are the images at cloud providers that automatically attach to Ubuntu Pro with on-demand subscription pricing:

- https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2023/04/amazon-ec2-ubuntu-pro-subscription-model/
- https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/canonical.0001-com-ubuntu-pro-jammy
- https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/compute/ubuntu-pro-available-on-google-cloud

I don't think any images have been prepared for flavors that enable Ubuntu Pro through the cloud infrastructure automatic provisioning. I'm not sure flavors even make much sense in the cloud environments.

Are there other images being built somewhere out of packages only available with an Ubuntu Pro subscription?

Thanks

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

Seth,

No, not in the cloud infrastructure automatic provisioning. However, Pro is still optional for Ubuntu Desktop via subscription for the security updates. This would also make sense for Ubuntu Desktop Flavors as well, but due to the 3-year support span there is some ambiguity so we're looking for some clarification there.

Discussion continues at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/question-about-ubuntu-pro-for-official-ubuntu-flavors/44290 where I'm looking for replies from reps of the pro team, who I'm sure are discussing this before replying.

Cloud doesn't really have much to do with it, this is more in the context of universe security updates and ESM.

[Erich Eickmeyer (eeickmeyer)]

So, the blacklist was ineffective, so we're just going to roll with it and we can SRU a fix with an edubuntu:ubuntu:GNOME session in the future to work a fix into this.