To add my perspective:

I fully agree with Francois' vision. What we need long-term is

- a user-facing OS that is stable, but which receives timely updates to UX-relevant parts of the stack (primarily GNOME and its dependencies, but probably also popular browsers, and a few other apps and developer tools). We don't want to split our OS in two for enterprise/consumer, as it would have very problematic effects on the developer ecosystem and the cohesion of the platform (e.g. apps designed for the fresher consumer version might not work on the enterprise one).

- a way to do integration testing with in-development parts of the stack (primarily GNOME and things we need for the phone). Ideally, this would always have nightly versions of the entire GNOME platform throughout the development cycle. Most likely we'd need to do this in close collaboration with some GNOME people.

- great flatpak integration for third-party apps (to alleviate the need to have the latest version of every random app packged) and the PureOS Store

What we need to do to get there is a different question :)

Regarding the current choice between Debian stable and testing: We can't go with Debian stable, unless we find a way to get up-to-date versions of GNOME and all its dependecies on top of that. I have a hunch that this isn't easily possible, but it's hardly my area of expertise :)

Continuing with Debian testing seems like the more sustainable route short-term, though we still need to figure out how to get up-to-date GNOME during freeze periods, such as the current one. Since other Debian-based distributions, such as Ubuntu are going to do this as well, it seems at least theoretically doable.

Longer-term I'd be interested in exploring alternative options, such as rebasing the OS on Endless OS, Ubuntu, or Fedora Silverblue, all of which have different, potentially interesting solutions to this problem. Sooner or later we'll want to go in a fully containerized direction a la Silverblue, so this might be good to factor into the decision we take now.

Cheers,
Tobias

Quoting François Téchené (2019-03-20 12:09:38)

On 19/03/2019 20:50, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:

Ok, so "our users" is one target, not several.

Not "enterprise customers" needing particularly stable system and 
"existing users" expecting a constant flow of updates from Debian 
testing.

All users are in same boat, and the boat goes in the direction that 
the majority need to go.

Makes good sense.

Exactly, I think that in term of expectation, both enterprise and
everyday customers will expect a system that is stable, easily usable
and feature full.

Stability and usability are stronger in that expectation so we 
shouldn't target users looking for cutting edge features that are 
breaking stability and usability on the default experience.

So in term of priority regarding the customers experience, we have the
following :

  1 - Stability
  2 - Usability
  3 - Features

Let me provoke you...

So until the feature and usability improvements are stable integrated 
with the system, we should provide our users a system _without_ those 
improvements?

I translate that to basing PureOS on Debian stable, not Debian testing, 
even if that means missing out on GNOME 3.32 and libhandy.

(except on the phone where Debian stable is "too stable" i.e. broken).

The fact of improving GNOME is directly related to usability in the sens
that we want to create a consistent (convergent) experience across the
different Librem devices along with a tight integration with the Librem
services.

What we can do now, with our current manpower and infrastructure, is 
follow Debian closely - which means a general feature update of our 
system not every 6-12 months, but either every day or every 2-4 
years.

We can develop different/smarter infrastructure and later when that 
is done we can choose a 3rd path similar to Ubuntu, of a 6-12 month 
release cycle meaning that we deviate further from Debian at times.  
Later, not now, with our current infrastructure.  If we want such 
3rd path.

And/or we can hire more people to help maintain PureOS, and later 
when they are settled in and efficient with our infrastructure, we 
can deviate further from Debian even before we have 
different/smarter infrastructure in place, by pouring more man hours 
into the things now covered mostly by Debian - including security 
tracking and regression testing and bootstrapping new packages and 
translating and and and... If we want to deviate more from Debian.

For now we can choose between 2 Debian tracks: Stable or Testing.

What we need, in my opinion, is a stable core OS where we control the 
release cycles of the projects we develop and contribute to (currently 
GNOME)

It may not be doable with the current man power but I imagine the 
following workflow :

  - PureOS "red" matching Debian Experimental (or Sid?) would let the 
devs work on new GNOME features.

  - PureOS "orange" matching Debian Stable with an exception for the 
GNOME packages being updated from PureOS "red" every official GNOME 
releases (starting from RC releases), would let the design team and 
other testers test the latest GNOME in the real (stable) world.

 - PureOS "green" being a snapshot of PureOS "orange" every time 
PureOS "orange" is defined as stable would be the official PureOS 
release for the people.

This is just a proposal that may not reflect the reality of technical 
issues but it is mainly to illustrate the fact that we keep control of 
the testing and stability of what we develop.

Makes good sense to _develop_ such separation between "core OS" and 
other parts.

It is not possible to make such distinction _today_ however: Even if our 
manpower is sufficient today, we can only _today_ choose between Debian 
options.  We have no other options to choose from _today_.

As an example, use of flatpak for other parts is an option _later_ when 
we have gained experience with how it can sustainably and reliably 
integrate with whatever subset of Debian we decide is "core".

I think this is a critical time for us in term of user experience 
so we must not rush in the decisions and make sure we find a good 
compromise.

Reason it is kinda urgent to reflect on this now is that _if_ we 
decide to hit the break and slow down to tracking Debian stable, 
then we cannot take that decision at arbitrary points during the 
Debian development cycle: We need to decide before Debian releases 
the next stable release, likely within few months from now, or 
continue fast-paced tracking Debian testing until the next window 
2-4 years from now.

OK, I understand Jonas. It is the right time to discuss that issue and 
I am sure we will find a good solution for the short and longer term!

We can discuss both what to do now, and what to invest resources in 
developing for a potential (if research is fruitful!) near future.

We can discuss those related but different topics together IF we make it 
VERY clear at all time which part we are talking about when.


 - Jonas

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