Having multiple mixer apps is something one installing multiple DEs should IMHO handle by oneself. DEs are most probably shipped with different apps and specific DE can't guess which app shouldn't be launched at startup if multiple ones are providing xdg autostart .desktop file. One should disable unwanted from autostarting by hand.

Can't say much about the 'real' problem as currently I don't have any machine running LXDE. Would be nice if someone could try to reproduce pnmixer problems with LXDE.

Hi, Jani,

> Having multiple mixer apps is something one installing multiple DEs should IMHO handle by oneself.

It may look opportunistic for me to say that now, but I actually have given some thought to such questions for some time.

A while ago I reported problems between Mate and KDE (and other DEs) -- that's what led me to make the following considerations.

Since Mageia is a community distribution, one has to consider how it is different from its mother (Mandriva). This is just IMHO, but I believe one has to impart a more casual, experimental, jovial and less perfeccionist tone to a community distro, while professional ones need to have a higher sense of fitness for a purpose (for instance, to provide a desktop with third-party support).

Perhaps a community distribution could adopt a lighter approach. One example of that is having different subdistros -- e.g. one for each desktop / toolkit.

That's what Mint does (just an example, I'm not a Mint user).

After thinking about suggesting that (to lighten the load of developers), I realized that it would be somewhat arrogant on my part (because probably someone already thought about that at Mageia) and, also importantly, because this is a valuable perk Mageia and other big distros offer. It's a kind of a competitive advantage.

As a Mageia contributor, maybe I still think there should be a Mageia-KDE, a Mageia-Xfce etc. As a Mageia user I appreciate being able to switch the DE for e.g. testing whether Mate has a faster response on older hardware (it has).

And let's not forget a substantial part of the problem cannot be avoided: once one decides to use Inkscape of Gimp in KDE, there comes together a lot of gnome and gtk libs -- with the potential problems they bring (e.g. lack of a uniform-looking interface).

> DEs are most probably shipped with different apps and specific DE can't guess which app shouldn't be launched at startup if multiple ones are providing xdg autostart .desktop file.

This I think is probably the most important finding we can extract from these problems: DEs do not always work well together.

Though this is something to be expected to a certain level, it's a good opportunity for distributions to try to develop freedesktop.org standards and make apps feel more at home in diverse DEs. Sure a lot of trouble, but the results might be worthwhile -- even making life simpler for the developers of various DEs.

It's even arguable that Mate, being not long ago forked from Gnome 2, is having some growing pains and maybe they get all figured out in the near future.

> One should disable unwanted from autostarting by hand.

Of course, that would work for developers and power users; for ordinary / lay users, though, I don't think it would be possible.

Such people would discard Mageia without even downloading it IMHO. It would be much preferable to restrict DEs to ones which work reasonably well (like KDE and Xfce) -- or pull a Mint one and offer separate environments.

All this, I think, should be considered by Mageia to decide which approach would be more adequate to the way the distribution wants to be seen.

OTOH, one thing to have in mind is that not all distributions have a millionaire to back them...

> ... it's a good opportunity for distributions to try to develop freedesktop.org standards and make apps feel more at home in diverse DEs.

I wonder if that's also the case of bug 15641, actually a feature request for FF to use the DE's own "save print to file" dialog.

This is such a complex issue, though, that IMHO it should tackled not only at distro-level but among the main distros and the freedesktop.org maintainers.

Of immediate consequence, either Mageia adopts some temporary measure or, as Jani proposes, simply leave it to be worked around by users -- possibly with an entry added in Errata...

I'm reevaluating some bugs I filed from two points of view:

a) What is a bug and what is an enhancement:

Bug is something which should work but it's broken. Enhancement (as I see) is something which should work but still wasn't created (so I cannot be considered broken). Since distributions are not supposed to fix original software -- that's why they are called distributions -- an enhancement is better left for the original software author or for an interested third party.

b) The role of Mageia as a community distribution:

Some distributions are commercial and thus better funded; also, they cater to a special niche (e.g. business, "enterprise", "educational" users etc.), so they follow the priorities that such groups have. A community distribution OTOH is more general purpose and features are made available by the coders: issues like funding, resources etc. play a greater role. In order to be effective, community distros need to be more efficient regarding resource consumption.

That considered, I think Jani's pragmatic view is more adequate for Mageia.

It's worth noting that some other major distributions already follow that approach. For example, Ubuntu has a single desktop (Unity) and immediate derivatives also choose one, albeit different, like Xubuntu. Mint also makes available separate versions, like Mint KDE, Mint Mate etc.

In my defense, I still think Mandriva was correct in trying to make a common base work simultaneously with several desktops as a differentiating factor; notwithstanding, that would be a point where savings could have been sought.

Therefore, I guess it's reasonable to close this bug as WONTFIX. Please feel free to undo that if there's a way to solve it.

Status: NEW => RESOLVED
Resolution: (none) => WONTFIX