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Re: When does a derivative become a derivative? Whonix integration into Debian?



On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 1:06 PM, adrelanos wrote:

> Yes. Could Derivatives Guidelines be changed to reflect that?

I've rewritten the bugs section to be more clear and separate the
various issues out into separate paragraphs. I tried to make it
reflect the essence of the previous version but remove the
discouragement you felt.

> Well, Whonix is packaged already. Just not sure you like the way it's
> packaged. Would it be accepted for a blend?

I haven't looked at how it is packaged yet. All the blends packaging
obviously needs to be policy compliant; not modifying conffiles of
other packages and so on.

> only missing pieces are a meta package called "whonix-gateway" and one
> "whonix-workstation" which simply pulls our other meta/files/postinst.d
> packages. That way, one could enter "sudo apt-get install
> whonix-gateway" and could transform a standard Debian install into a
> Whonix-Gateway.

That sounds like what other blends do right now, probably with
different tools to what you are using though.

> Could you comment in meanwhile on our debian/control file? [1]
> (Why do we depend on package x? Comments are here. [2])

Some of the stuff being depended on is priority essential/required and
therefore is always installed.

update-notifier-common is scheduled to be removed:

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/update-notifier-common

I'm not sure about using specific GTK+ engines, that doesn't seem related.

I would suggest relying on the existing metapackages for KDE/GNOME
desktops rather than creating new ones, unless there are some privacy
implications?

I'd likewise suggest not recommending any default applications unless
they specifically help with privacy.

I wonder if there are any apps that aren't compatible with the Whonix
setup that should be conflicted with.

I believe general language stuff in Debian is handled by the installer.

I believe that for accessibility stuff the accessibility team aim to
just get the needed changes into the respective desktops by default.

> Would probably be better if Whonix was split into many smaller packages.

Agreed.

> Things like sdwdate [3] (which is an NTP alternative) would be better in
> separate packages and maybe even be useful for general Debian users.

I wonder if tlsdate would be an appropriate alternative to sdwdate?
Are there any advantages of sdwdate?

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/tlsdate

If you still want it in Debian, then take a look at our intro to
getting things in:

http://mentors.debian.net/intro-maintainers

> We're also dropping a few scripts in /etc/profile.d [4], since I am not
> aware of any other way to implement that functionality. Is that against
> debian/blends policy? If this isn't the right place, what would be the
> correct place to ask about such policy questions?

If the default browser isn't x-www-browser somewhere, that is probably a bug.

Power saving thing sounds like a workaround something else that should
do that by default.

Not sure about the other things, haven't had time to look at them but
I think the FreeDesktop autostart stuff might be more appropriate.

In general debian-devel/debian-mentors are useful places to ask policy
questions.

> That shouldn't be an issue for a Whonix pure blend. (not pre-installing
> OpenSSH)

There are other files that are per-machine too. dbus/systemd
machine-id files come to mind. Debian hasn't really done much work in
this area so it is a bit of an unknown.

-- 
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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