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Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

lwn.net

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Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#51

Post by contrarian1234 »

Gigachad wrote: post #33
chrismorgan wrote: post #21

This LWN article makes the matter supremely confusing. The linked mailing list post is way better and clearer and it would be good to get this submission changed to it: https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/20230601183054.12057.45907@m... Key excerpts: > … the LibreOffice RPMS have recently been orphaned … > … will contribute some fixes upstream to ensure LibreOffice works better as a Flatpak, which we expect to be the way…

This is probably how things will be moving. It doesn't make sense for every single distro to maintain customized versions of user level applications now that we have one package that works everywhere.

You're talking about AppImages right?

I've tried several times to understand how Flatpak works and how to integrate a CMake build with Flatpak.. and I'm honestly befuddled. Granted a quick Google search does show the situation has improved a bit in the past year.

I imagine if you're trying to package a Zig or Clojure application it's going to be a lot of figuring things out on your own

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#52

Post by Laaas »

contrarian1234 wrote: post #51
Gigachad wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably how things will be moving. It doesn't make sense for every single distro to maintain customized versions of user level applications now that we have one package that works everywhere.

You're talking about AppImages right? I've tried several times to understand how Flatpak works and how to integrate a CMake build with Flatpak.. and I'm honestly befuddled. Granted a quick Google search does show the situation has improved a bit in the past year. I imagine if you're trying to package a Zig or Clojure application it's going to be a lot of figuring things out on your own

Flatpak is quite simple under the hood, it's just a wrapper around bubblewrap [0]. I'm not sure what you mean with integrating it with a CMake build.

[0]: https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#53

Post by chrismorgan »

tlamponi wrote: post #31
chrismorgan wrote: post #21

This LWN article makes the matter supremely confusing. The linked mailing list post is way better and clearer and it would be good to get this submission changed to it: https://lwn.net/ml/fedora-devel/20230601183054.12057.45907@m... Key excerpts: > … the LibreOffice RPMS have recently been orphaned … > … will contribute some fixes upstream to ensure LibreOffice works better as a Flatpak, which we expect to be the way…

Well your excerpts aren't really clearing up all confusion IMO, but even the original message is somewhat confusing too: >> … will contribute some fixes upstream to ensure LibreOffice works better as a Flatpak, which we expect to be the way that most people consume LibreOffice in the long term. Here you left out the part that they'll do that only until older RHEL releases, that still have LibreOffice support are EOL:…

I think you may be misinterpreting it. They’re saying “we’re not maintaining LibreOffice RPMs beyond the current supported versions of RHEL, because we think Flatpak is the way forward, but we recognise that there are currently problems with it, so we will put some effort into fixing those, so that us no longer offering RPMs isn’t disastrous”.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#54

Post by ezst »

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #30

Flatpak will be the recommended way to get / install LibreOffice on RHEL and Fedora. In https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fe... it states: "the engineers doing that work will contribute some fixes upstream to ensure LibreOffice works better as a Flatpak, which we expect to be the way that most people consume LibreOffice in the long term." Install instructions are already written: https://acces…

I've been wanting to use LO's flatpacks on my fedora for a while, but I recently gave up and resorted to using the distros' RPMs even though they often lack behind. Global menu, Hi-DPI and kf5 VCL theming just don't work from the official flatpak on my latest KDE+wayland. It seems that several issues are compounded across several stacks (flatpak, dbus, wayland, …) and I don't think there's actually any workaround that works for me.

I really hope they get to the bottom of that before dropping the distro's RPMs.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#55

Post by ekianjo »

psychphysic wrote: post #10
hannob wrote: post #5

When IBM bought Red Hat this was the kind of thing I worried might happen: That Red Hat might stop supporting the Linux Desktop. I have no idea how their announcement makes any sense. They want to improve workstation experience by... not offering an office application any more? Like, what do you even mean by workstation?

They are pivoting the work they do for workstations away from applications to HDR etc. That 'for' doesn't mean they are pivoting to Workstations. Guess it's a bit ambiguous, but anyways so libre office won't be a package on RHEL that's no big issue so long as the RPM and flatpak work fine.

HDR sounds like a nice excuse rather than a genuine reason...

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#56

Post by bonzini »

criddell wrote: post #34
thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #30

Flatpak will be the recommended way to get / install LibreOffice on RHEL and Fedora. In https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fe... it states: "the engineers doing that work will contribute some fixes upstream to ensure LibreOffice works better as a Flatpak, which we expect to be the way that most people consume LibreOffice in the long term." Install instructions are already written: https://acces…

I think this is a small step in the right direction. IMHO, Flatpak (and similar schemes) with strict sandboxing should be the only distribution method for user applications. If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. If you want to give that application access to everything your user has access to, that’s fine, but it s…

> I think this is a small step in the right direction

Yeah, I am obviously biased because I am a Red Hat employee but the truth is the Flatpak model makes a lot of sense for large desktop applications (LibreOffice, OBS, etc.) that anyway do Windows releases and therefore have to track vulnerabilities in their dependencies and release updates.

It may take a while to get used to it, but Red Hat has done a lot of infrastructure work to make this sandboxing possible (in RPM ostree, Flatpak, GTK+/GLib, PipeWire and many more places) and it's not a bad thing if they decide that the work is mature enough for them to reap the benefits.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#57

Post by ekianjo »

FeistySkink wrote: post #4

The Flatpak (Flathub) version works just fine and it is what I switched to using on Fedora for a while now, so I don't see an issue here. I'd rather the core OS would get more improvements.

Flathub is a single point of failure and flatpaks can also have security issues that go unfixed. Its not some kind of miracle from God or something

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#58

Post by matheusmoreira »

rajamaka wrote: post #45
redprince wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I install LibreOffice, I want to be asked for permission before it tries to access my microphone or location or other sensitive resources. This isn't some untrusted unauditable binary blob from a possibly shady manufacturer. Everything it will or will not do is right there for everyone to see in the published source code from which it is compiled and packaged. Furthermore nothing is fundamentally stopping anyone…

I always find this take so weird. Do you audit every single line of code from OSS you use?

I don't read every line of code but yeah. I think I spend more time reading code for curiosity's sake than actually using many programs. I absolutely read build system scripts, I won't run make until I know what's gonna happen.

I also enjoy stracing random programs in order to figure out the exact set of system calls they're making, in which order and with which parameters.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#59

Post by qbasic_forever »

ekianjo wrote: post #49
Gigachad wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably how things will be moving. It doesn't make sense for every single distro to maintain customized versions of user level applications now that we have one package that works everywhere.

Works everywhere is a stretch. Flatpaked applications have multiple issues

Bespoke RPMs that have to be patched and modified for distros by a small group of maintainers have issues too.

Re: Red Hat dropping support for LibreOffice

#60

Post by pjmlp »

redprince wrote: post #48
rajamaka wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find this take so weird. Do you audit every single line of code from OSS you use?

> Do you audit every single line of code from OSS you use? I audit some of it sometimes. I trust that other do the same. Many hands make light work.

Anyone that is mildly evolved with SecDevOps knows how much of theory that happens to be in practice.
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