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Maniphest T10513

HWE again!
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Description

It's HWE time again!

Should we migrate existing systems?

Pro:

  • all systems are the same
    • bug reports are somewhat more consistent as they are all on the same kernel and xorg
  • users that reinstall at a later time do not get different hardware support than before

Con:

  • users that installed beforehand may have their hardware support regressed

Todo:

  • mangle livecd-rootfs so our profile again installs HWE packages (look for ubuntu's changes for refernce, as well as historic changes in 16.04)
  • migrate livecd-rootfs chnages to release editions
  • figure out if we should migrate existing systems
  • migrate existing systems if found useful (this may actually replace the livecd-rootfs change, as a change to existing systems would probably have to be done via a dependency adjustment that then also applies to the ISO builds)
sitter created this task.Feb 22 2019, 10:04 AM
sitter updated the task description. (Show Details)
sitter moved this task from Discussing to Ready To Do on the Neon board.Mar 4 2019, 4:30 PM
sitter moved this task from Ready To Do to Doing on the Neon board.

livecd changes simmering in unstable... going to wait for a week before proceeding.

the only opinion I heared on upgrading existing installs was yes, so *shrug* guess I'll go with that?

sitter updated the task description. (Show Details)Mar 4 2019, 4:31 PM
sitter added subscribers: jriddell, bshah.Mar 21 2019, 1:36 PM

Something is broken with the archives which prevents ISOs building on account of not finding neon-live. I am not clear why, @jriddell did change some stuff though and at a glance that seems at fault since the thing that didn't change (user edition) did build fine the other day. So that blocks ISO rebuilds for stable (and also breaks unstable now).

Anyway, user ISO rebuilt and confirmed to use HWE kernel now. So the livecd changes seem to work nicely.

That leaves us with a decision on upgrading existing installations. @bshah was leaning to do an upgrade, so am I, @jriddell was more leaning to do what ubuntu does but IIRC also appreciated the point behind upgrading. What might be worth pursuing is a notification system so users can decide? There is a 'hook' system used by ubuntu (was implemented in kubuntu-notification-helper but never supported in neon because next to nothing uses it even) we could recycle, or invent something akin to it. Basically the user would get a notification "yo, do you wanna upgrade to new kernel? here's the risks:..." and then get to decide what to do. It's a bit meh from a UX POV though, IMO.

jriddell added a comment.Sep 10 2019, 8:46 PM

At akademy 2019 we decided to just switch to HWE in future for all users

sitter added a comment.Sep 12 2019, 9:43 AM

Also apply to 18.04. Needs investigation on how to actually pull in the upgrade. Possibly -desktop should recommend the HWE packages, but this may not be enough. So, check what is the least invasive but reliably upgrading approach here.

sitter closed this task as Resolved.Jan 15 2020, 1:49 PM
sitter claimed this task.

Revisit for 20.04 I guess. Not much worth putting effort into this now.