Hello everyone, I hope you are all enjoying your Saturday.
I’m about to share something that I thought I’d never have to share and this feels so painful to me, and I hope you will all be aware of what is happening.
As noted, we (or I) need to have permissions to upload to the official Ubuntu repositories… which we cannot and there are many complicated reasons why which I won’t go into (otherwise it’d turn into a fire argument and corruption, so I’m trying to keep it simple here).
Yesterday, I discovered that apparently, our goal is to not have any PPA’s. We should have as close to zero as possible packages in there.
In English-PPA is a personal package archive. It’s where all our packages (software tools, etc) are stored and where you can download it. All copies of Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix will have this automatically attached to apt (the package manager).
So what are we supposed to do? We need to move our packages into the Ubuntu repositories, by using the MOTU’s or the “Masters of the Universe”-those who can upload to official Ubuntu repositories.
And there are all only downsides to this. Most of them are only related to me, but they will have an impact, under my personal decision on you, the user.
This brings us to the point of this article-how Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix will be developed and what it will mean for you.
To summarize it short-All development of Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix, after August 13th (a week after 20.04.1 Point Release) will be primarily focused on one thing-flavor status.
But now here’s the part I need YOU to be aware of.
We work on developing packages that are not Ubuntu Cinnamon related specific-but more Cinnamon as a whole related specific. For example, folder-color-nemo or the cinnamon-layout tool.
However-getting these packages into Ubuntu, through a hellishly complicated process, isn’t worth it. We can develop new packages, but the way they would work is unless they are distro specific they have or should be public to Debian (assuming you know it’s a good open-source package, like a mate-tweak fork for cinnamon, e.g. cinnamon-tweak (check GitHub) )
And how do I get to Debian? Yeah, that’s where the troubles begin to unfold so I’m going to stop there.
So, as said earlier on August 13th, as we try to aim towards flavor status, all third-party packages (cinnamon-tweak, cinnamon-folder-color/nemo-folder-color) will NO LONGER BE MAINTAINED UNTIL WE HAVE FLAVOR STATUS. After August 13th the extra third-party packages will be deleted from the PPA and if the code is on the Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix GitHub the code will be archived. Ensure you have the .deb file saved somewhere.
So, please-we already have some cool new stuff in 20.04.1-which were for 20.10 but we are kind of out of ideas and now we are in this dilemma, do not expect us to have any new software/feature additions in Ubuntu Cinnamon Remix. The only changes we can do are to our packages/the way we package it, or trying to get in touch with the MOTU’s by sponsoring patches and bugfixes to Cinnamon.
This is very depressing to say, especially for me. I didn’t think I’d come to this point but things have changed and considering we are, it’s an uncomfortable position.
For those who understand, those who don’t understand, those who took the time to read, and those who use UCR, you clearly understand and that’s what matters. I’m sorry about this. I know that this post could cause more troubles as we go into flavor status. I know to some this may look unprofessional, but you need know this before anything happens.
For the best of updates, please check our social media platforms and enable Notifications/obtain the role and you’ll be notified of any updates/changes. The section is on our “Contact Us” page of the website.
Thank you very much everyone, and have a great weekend.
-Josh Peisach (lead dev)