fedora-comps

#1093 Desktop environment groups hidden to the user (dnf)
Opened by mcrha. Modified

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It seems all (or most) desktop environments are hidden for the user in the dnf5 group listoutput due to <uservisible>false</uservisible>. I can understand you want to hide some groups, but these desktop environments, including the GNOME one, I do not get the reason. I went down to Fedora 20 and did not find a commit explaining it. I think it would not be a problem to enable them, thus the users can easily find the groups and eventually switch between them, no?

The reason was that we would rather people install the environment groups. Before DNF5, these were listed in dnf group list along with regular groups. DNF5 changed this experience and now you need to use dnf environment list to see them, which confuses people.

Aha, I'm one of those confused. I did not hear of the "environment" before, I always used dnf group install MATE, but that failed (https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf5/issues/2082) and they led me here. It was a challenge to find out how to install MATE (beside GNOME), I figured that from a bit older https://fedoramagazine.org/installing-another-desktop/ found by Google.

If I understood it properly, the environment tries to replace the existing one, which is not what I want here.

Environment and Category groups always existed, but prior to DNF 5, they were not presented or acted upon separately. With DNF 5, they are now accessed through separate subcommands.

For what it's worth, with dnf5-5.2.12.0-1.fc43.x86_64:

# dnf environment install mate
Unknown argument "install" for command "environment". Add "--help" for more information
about the arguments.
# dnf environment --help
Usage:
  dnf5 [GLOBAL OPTIONS] environment <COMMAND> ...
Query Commands:                 
  list                          List comps environments
  info                          Print details about comps environments

aka either the environment command is not like the group command, where one can do something with the groups, or I'm missing how it's supposed to work. I expected it works the same as the group command.

# dnf group --help
Usage:
  dnf5 [GLOBAL OPTIONS] group <COMMAND> ...
Query Commands:                 
  list                          List comps groups
  info                          List comps groups
Software Management Commands:   
  install                       Install comp groups, including their packages
  remove                        Remove comp groups, including their packages
  upgrade                       Upgrade comp groups, including their packages
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