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Apparently no software management main menu entry


Sergei Steshenko

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Hello All,

 

I've tried Armbian_5.59_Xt-q8l-v10_Ubuntu_xenial_dev_4.18.6_desktop.img image taken from

Though the system mostly works, in the main desktop menu (the one that opens clicking on left upper corner of the screen) I see no menu entry that can be interpreted as software management.

 

By software management I mean a GUI application allowing to browse available package, read their descriptions and install or remove the packages. Examples of software management are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synaptic_(software) , https://en.opensuse.org/YaST_Software_Management , https://delightlylinux.wordpress.com/2016/12/23/software-a-better-software-manager-for-linux-mint/ .

 

I have read https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_Armbian-Config/ and it doesn't appear to be full fledged software management.

 

IIRC, earlier than Armbian-5.59 versions used to have software management in the main menu.

 

Am I missing something obvious ?

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2 hours ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

By software management I mean a GUI application allowing to browse available package, read their descriptions and install or remove the packages.


We used to provide Ubuntu software center in the past but since it was broken on arm or arm64 there was no use to deal with it.

You can try if it is fixed:
https://delightlylinux.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/how-to-install-the-ubuntu-software-center-in-linux-mint-17

 

In case it bothers you that there is no software management and you want to see it, start maintaining: https://github.com/armbian/config

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37 minutes ago, Igor said:


We used to provide Ubuntu software center in the past but since it was broken on arm or arm64 there was no use to deal with it.

You can try if it is fixed:
https://delightlylinux.wordpress.com/2014/06/10/how-to-install-the-ubuntu-software-center-in-linux-mint-17

 

In case it bothers you that there is no software management and you want to see it, start maintaining: https://github.com/armbian/config

Can you at least provide Synaptic ? If I understand correctly, it's a genuine Debian application, AFAIR it's been around for more than a decade. If I understand correctly, it's zero coding (in terms of a programming language) effort. I.e. the package should be installed by default and there should be an entry in the main menu to invoke it.

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20 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

If I understand correctly, it's zero coding (in terms of a programming language) effort. I.e. the package should be installed by default and there should be an entry in the main menu to invoke it.


Fork: https://github.com/armbian/build and make changes. Then build Stretch and Bionic image, test if there are any problems, calculate image size diff and make a PR.

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1 minute ago, Igor said:


Fork: https://github.com/armbian/build and make changes. Then build Stretch and Bionic image, test if there are any problems, calculate image size diff and make a PR.

Why should one build the whole system in order to check just one package (Synaptic) which deals with packages ? Synaptic, if I understand correctly, is just a gtk2 wrapper around apt* stuff, so it can't break the whole system. gtk2 is integral part of the (desktop) system anyway.

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8 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

Why should one build the whole system in order to check just one package (Synaptic) which deals with packages ?


Because we have enough of problems without this.


- if there are lots of dependencies needed. No go.
- if it works on arm and doesn't on arm64. No go.
- if it works on Bionic but breaks on Stretch. No go.

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16 minutes ago, Igor said:


Because we have enough of problems without this.


- if there are lots of dependencies needed. No go.
- if it works on arm and doesn't on arm64. No go.
- if it works on Bionic but breaks on Stretch. No go.

Again, Synaptic can NOT break the system. Because it's invoked by user - not automatically. So providing it will NOT break things. Anyway, all GPL software comes with no warranty.

 

Besides that, here is a thread about Synaptic: "orange pi one synaptic package manager search very slow" -

The described problem is not a bug, it's a feature. It wouldn't be a problem on a hard drive.

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And from  https://wiki.debian.org/Synaptic : "Synaptic is installed by default in Debian if you choose the desktop task.". Exactly because of the "by default" I consider absence of Synaptic, even if it's just absence in the main menu, to be a bug. Because Armbian is an Ubuntu variant while Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian.

 

Synaptic is not something that implements fringe functionality, it implements very basic functionality.

 

On dependencies:  https://ubuntu.pkgs.org/16.04/ubuntu-universe-amd64/synaptic_0.83_amd64.deb.html  ,  https://ubuntu.pkgs.org/18.04/ubuntu-universe-amd64/synaptic_0.84.3ubuntu1_amd64.deb.html  .

Edited by Sergei Steshenko
typos
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28 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

Anyway, all GPL software comes with no warranty.


It's not about that. If something breaks, people start to complain to us even Canonical/Rockchip/* engineers fu**** up, most brave dare sending text and email. They don't understand that.
 

28 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

Besides that, here is a thread about Synaptic: "orange pi one synaptic package manager search very slow"


That's why I am skeptical. Research this topic, prepare and convince more skeptical than me:

 

4 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

Synaptic, even it it's just absence in the main menu, to be a bug.


Not important and not critical. Those wait more than a year to be fixed.

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5 hours ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

Though the system mostly works, in the main desktop menu (the one that opens clicking on left upper corner of the screen) I see no menu entry that can be interpreted as software management. 

You can install Synaptic in Armbian. Just don't use the search function. It's been broken for a long time.
sudo apt install synaptic
It is useful to browse thru the available applications. But using the terminal is a lot more efficient to install software.
So you don't need it on a Linux system.

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1 minute ago, NicoD said:

 

You can install Synaptic in Armbian. Just don't use the search function. It's been broken for a long time.
sudo apt install synaptic
It is useful to browse thru the available applications. But using the terminal is a lot more efficient to install software.
So you don't need it on a Linux system.

"So you don't need it on a Linux system." - I do. Even though I've been using UNIX since 1991 and Linux since 1997.

 

Among the distros I used are Mandrake -> Mandriva, RedHat, OpenSuse, LinuxMint. All four have different command line tools to deal with packages, even though the first three are RPM based.

 

I do not want to spend time on learning command line tools that differ between various flavors of Linux.

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1 hour ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

Anyway, all GPL software comes with no warranty.

GPL guarantees the source code, which allows *you* to modify Armbian.  If you want Synaptic as default, fork and modify source.  Source code is available by clicking the downloads > source links on the menu.  Have fun.

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4 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

The real issue is unwillingness of Armbian developers to have the package installed by default and have a main menu entry for it.


What could this tell? That we are ignorant? Lazy? Bored?

 

1 hour ago, Igor said:

Not important and not critical. Those wait more than a year to be fixed.


Our project resources are extremely underpowered and staff is under tremendous pressure. Reaching breaking points ... We are just a few, while user count is getting into insane numbers. We need to scale it down ... or we will soon need to tell people to fuck off on a daily base :( This is a non-commercial project and support costs are already sky high. We can't pay for them, you don't want to.

 

Once again, from my perspective. If you want this to be solved (for you and few others) before 2019/2020 you have to do it (i did explain you how) or hire someone to do it instead of you. We simply don't jump around and wait on people's wishes. Sometimes yes, but mostly not. Project is too large.
 

1 hour ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

I've been using UNIX since 1991 and Linux since 1997


Many people, including me, are from that era. Debian was chosen to cover most people, but we can't and don't want to please them all.

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7 minutes ago, Igor said:


What could this tell? That we are ignorant? Lazy? Bored?

 

 

This tells that you, the developers, by removing the main menu entry for software management (I remember something like "software boutique" in a pretty recent Armbian release: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/06/ubuntu-mate-new-software-boutique  ) worsened end user experience. I have no idea about your motives. But the result, in terms of Linux popularity and end user experiences reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_(comic_strip)#.22We_have_met_the_enemy_and_he_is_us..22  .

 

Synaptic is bearable from my originally not Debian user point of view, so IMO it should ALWAYS be included. I.e. simple software management operations can be done using Synaptic by simply navigating its menus which are pretty self-explanatory.

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13 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

worsened end user experience.

 

I can understand your reasoning but am not sure about that. We just removed something what wasn't working properly. Software boutique is broken under arm or arm64. I don't recall where exactly. And slow on most of small boards. If you want to know, https://www.armbian.com/search Removing half broken app is always better than leaving it inside. User can always try to install it on his own and if it doesn't work he doesn't blame us but himself. If it is there and don't work they usually put a pressure on us. I would certainly recall if there were more  complaints than before.

It was my idea to have some kind of software install system on the desktop, but we would need to fix them, use our own version ... we can't afford that.

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10 minutes ago, Igor said:

 

I can understand your reasoning but am not sure about that. We just removed something what wasn't working properly. Software boutique is broken under arm or arm64. I don't recall where exactly. And slow on most of small boards. If you want to know, https://www.armbian.com/search Removing half broken app is always better than leaving it inside. User can always try to install it on his own and if it doesn't work he doesn't blame us but himself. If it is there and don't work they usually put a pressure on us. I would certainly recall if there were more  complaints than before.

It was my idea to have some kind of software install system on the desktop, but we would need to fix them, use our own version ... we can't afford that.

That's why I'm saying to install well tested stuff (in this case Synaptic) instead.

 

For some reason you decided to remove stuff instead of replacing it with simpler functionality stuff.

 

Another issue, which probably deserves a separate thread, is Armbian development methodology. Long story short, I think the developers should concentrate on fundamental stuff like per SoC/board HW issues. And limit themselves to absolutely minimally working from the point of view functionality desktop.

 

I also think developers should encourage users to attach hard drive wherever/whenever possible and to built not included into Armbian distro apps from sources. In the Debian world it's relatively simple.

 

This approach will result in much smaller Armbian builds, and thus shorter turnaround time. The latter will allow better testing.

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46 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

I think you don't understand the difference between "unable" and "unwilling".

So you're unwilling to learn something, but Armbian should be willing to maintain something? You see the irony? Every stuff which gets added needs to be maintained. Questions will came up: why *random feature* doesn't work as expected. XY is broken please fix.. adding synaptic would probably be a 2-liner - maintaining the 2 liner over time is what makes stuff complicated. If you're not willing to learn a few debian specific commands on console.. just don't use debian/ubuntu on ARM, this may work well for X86/AMD64 where bunch of people have their pay-checks from keeping stuff working but not (yet) in ARM-world.

 

10 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

Synaptic is bearable from my originally not Debian user point of view, so IMO it should ALWAYS be included

and other have different opinions on this. Prove them that they're wrong and it works as expected and it may find its way into Armbian. But complaining with no willingness to even test things is somehow...

 

20 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

I have no idea about your motives. But the result, in terms of Linux popularity...

Seriously? Pouplarity comes from things which work as expected, if a package doesn't work as expected or is slow as hell on low-end boards it's IMO more harmful. But well, we might have different opinions here.

FYI:

so if this would still be default behavior (no idea, cause desktop on Armbian is not my use-case), synaptic shouldn't be default.

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4 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

Another issue, which probably deserves a separate thread, is Armbian development methodology. Long story short, I think the developers should concentrate on fundamental stuff like per SoC/board HW issues. And limit themselves to absolutely minimally working from the point of view functionality desktop.

and by not including synaptic we perfectly fit here your expectations... :lol: SoC/board HW issues.. well a shitty hardware can't be fixed with software.. Do you even tried to understand what armbian does? There you go: https://github.com/armbian/build/tree/master/patch/kernel

quite a lot of 'fixing SoC issues' before they reach mainline...

9 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

I also think developers should encourage users to attach hard drive wherever/whenever possible and to built not included into Armbian distro apps from sources. In the Debian world it's relatively simple.

what's the point here? I don't get it.

 

10 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

This approach will result in much smaller Armbian builds, and thus shorter turnaround time. The latter will allow better testing.

 

much smaller than  ~1gb? Armbian is bootloader+kernel+rootfs (with a few tweaks to keep it usable). If you're only interested in kernel/u-boot:

https://apt.armbian.com/pool/main/l/

What should then be stripped off from 'Armbian' the whole rootfs? Sounds like it would open just more issues to maintain..

 

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11 hours ago, chwe said:

So you're unwilling to learn something, but Armbian should be willing to maintain something? You see the irony?

 

Yes, I see the irony, but apparently not the way you see it.

 

Armbian means Debian for ARM processors, and as posted above, Debian includes Synaptic by default.

 

So the irony I see is that one one hand Armbian claims it is a Debian, but doesn't do what Debian does regarding Synaptic.

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11 hours ago, chwe said:

so if this would still be default behavior (no idea, cause desktop on Armbian is not my use-case), synaptic shouldn't be default.

Why ? According to

"Anyway the problem went away, Synaptic works fine now, perfectly usable.  Maybe some change got made that upgrades put into effect.  Maybe going through /etc/apt and killing any mention of compress in it, I basically used an arm64 Buster version as a reference.  The improvement wasn't immediate.  I also deleted the files in /var/cache/apt (not the archives) and let them get recreated.  Highly unlikely but I was also fiddling with some m4 macros trying to get something ancient (maybe Synaptic) to build.  A search in Synaptic now takes about 8 seconds.".

 

I.e. the application is working.

 

I still do not know whether pacing Armbian onto a hard drive would solve the problem. I.e. probably normal hard drive + swap partition on it would improve things even with compression.

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go to armbian.com

Quote

Minimal and elegant XFCE based desktop.

 

docs.armbian.com

Quote

Lightweight Debian or Ubuntu based distribution specialized for ARM developing boards.

 

25 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

"Anyway the problem went away, Synaptic works fine now, perfectly usable.  Maybe some change got made that upgrades put into effect.  Maybe going through /etc/apt and killing any mention of compress in it, I basically used an arm64 Buster version as a reference.

so you see it, you had to tweak it until it fulfills your needs, so this tweaks had to be applied during build. And that's where Igor pointed you correctly. Apply it, test it and prepare a PR cause we lack in resources to do all those tweaks. Keep in mind, Armbian provides images for a bunch of boards, so a default package should work for more or less all of the provided boards, not only for a few. For graphic related stuff this is obviously not possible cause stuff like HW accelerated decoding isn't available for all SoCs, mali related stuff as well. And quote once again your previous post:

12 hours ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

I think the developers should concentrate on fundamental stuff like per SoC/board HW issues. And limit themselves to absolutely minimally working from the point of view functionality desktop.

As you saw on your own, you had to tweak even the 'simpler' synaptic to get it usable.. Most of the devs were focused in the past on headless scenarios, there are only a few users/devs interested in desktop (e.g. look through @NicoD s YouTube channel, he seems to be a big fan in desktop usage in ARM boards), therefore development in desktop tweaks are slower. We would be more than happy if there are some new passionated desktop developers, fact is they're not there. Except @JMCC and a few others which do great work do bring up HW acceleration for a few boards/SoCs.

 

29 minutes ago, Sergei Steshenko said:

 

I still do not know whether pacing Armbian onto a hard drive would solve the problem. I.e. probably normal hard drive + swap partition on it would improve things even with compression.

why should a hard drive improve performance? Normally HDDs perform badly on 4k 16k random read/write which is important for a lot of OS tasks (we have great tutorials/research stuff on this topic). Good A1 rated SD cards should outperform any HDD there. Further, the goal must be to provide an Image which works good with the default equipment a board has. This is either SD-Card or eMMC. For sure, we could tell every end-user that he should buy an SSD with a reliable USB-Sata bridge, but that's not Armbian. We provide images for SBCs not for super tuned SBCs. For swap, well swap is disabled by default in the newer builds, search for ZRAM to get some insights here.

 

Sometimes this means a package gets dropped rather than fixed cause the resources for fixing it are not there. People can then try to fix this package and we happily accept PRs which brings up their enhancements for every user back. But we don't have the resources to fix all user requests on your own. The 'team' is simply to small for that. You can call this 'not user friendly' or 'not beginners friendly'... I would call it pragmatic, better provide a stack of packages which work more or less without issues than providing a bunch of unmaintained, broken packages. Will 'stock' Armbian perform best for every use-case? For sure not, but I think we provide Images which try to catch the majority of use-cases well balanced. You get regular kernel updates and sometimes features are in Armbian before they reach mainline or boards get support which never would reach mainline. Together with a bunch of support over forum and all of this for free. Neither the forum nor the images are bloated with crappy adds to make some extra bucks.

 

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@Sergei Steshenko IMO, anyone with enough Debian knowledge to use Synaptic, has also enough knowledge to type 'sudo apt install synaptic' after installing Armbian. I think the issue is not whether install it by default or not, but whether it works or not. If you got a fix for it, as @chwe said, please make a PR, it will be very welcome.

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