Fedora 40 Cleared To Ship AMD ROCm 6, Packages May Reintroduce KDE X11 Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora 40 Cleared To Ship AMD ROCm 6, Packages May Reintroduce KDE X11 Support

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) on Monday approved some last-minute features ahead of the Fedora Linux 40 release quickly coming up in February...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Fedora-40-Approves-ROCm6-KDEX11

[slagiewka]

This is ridiculous. The push for X11 reintroduction has made the KDE SIG members really annoyed, to say the least.

If Fedora KDE stops being a great KDE flagship, that it indubitably is, I will point to this moment as the beginning.

[gbcox]

This is ridiculous. The push for X11 reintroduction has made the KDE SIG members really annoyed, to say the least.

If Fedora KDE stops being a great KDE flagship, that it indubitably is, I will point to this moment as the beginning.

This is not a “reintroduction” or “reversal” of the decision to go Plasma Wayland. The default for upgrades will be Wayland. If you want X11 you have to seek it out and install it. If you install F40 from scratch, Plasma X11 support will not be installed. If you upgrade from F39 to F40, Plasma X11 support will be removed.

I would have personally preferred COPR be used for this, but the concern from some members of FESco was that there wasn’t sufficient reason to keep someone from placing a package in the production repository if they so desired and were going to support it. In practice, this probably won’t make that big of a difference for Wayland migration.

The actual verbiage is:

• KDE packages which reintroduce support for X11 are
  allowed in the main Fedora repositories, however they may not be
  included by default on any release-blocking deliverable (ISO, image,
  etc.). The KDE SIG should provide a notice before major changes, but
  is not responsible for ensuring that these packages adapt. Upgrades
  from F38 and F39 will be automatically migrated to Wayland.
• For additional clarification: this means that all users performing upgrades MUST be migrated to the Wayland session. They then MAY opt-in to the X11 session by installing a package for that purpose.

[mrg666]

This is not a “reintroduction” or “reversal” of the decision to go Plasma Wayland. The default for upgrades will be Wayland. If you want X11 you have to seek it out and install it.

I would have personally preferred COPR be used for this, but the concern from some members of FESco was that there wasn’t sufficient reason to keep someone from placing a package in the production repository if they so desired and were going to support it.

The actual verbiage is:

• KDE packages which reintroduce support for X11 are
  allowed in the main Fedora repositories, however they may not be
  included by default on any release-blocking deliverable (ISO, image,
  etc.). The KDE SIG should provide a notice before major changes, but
  is not responsible for ensuring that these packages adapt. Upgrades
  from F38 and F39 will be automatically migrated to Wayland.
• For additional clarification: this means that all users performing upgrades MUST be migrated to the Wayland session. They then MAY opt-in to the X11 session by installing a package for that purpose.

I am glad common sense prevailed. I doubt many people go and seek X11 but it should be there for those who want it. Plus, it is effortless to include X11 for now. In the near future when KDE and other DEs implement new features or fixes, they will start neglecting X11 eventually since some of those implementations will not be feasible in X11 as X11 is a dead platform. Then, there will be a technical reason to drop X11 once for all.

[ahrs]

I am glad common sense prevailed.

It makes perfect sense to me too. If there's an able and willing maintainer then it makes sense to me that it's allowed in the main repositories, as long as it's that maintainer that's responsible for it and not the KDE SIG (which has already decided on going all-in on Wayland). From the careful wording here it seems to me that that's the case.

[Britoid]

This is not a “reintroduction” or “reversal” of the decision to go Plasma Wayland. The default for upgrades will be Wayland. If you want X11 you have to seek it out and install it. If you install F40 from scratch, Plasma X11 support will not be installed. If you upgrade from F39 to F40, Plasma X11 support will be removed.

I would have personally preferred COPR be used for this, but the concern from some members of FESco was that there wasn’t sufficient reason to keep someone from placing a package in the production repository if they so desired and were going to support it.

The actual verbiage is:

• KDE packages which reintroduce support for X11 are
  allowed in the main Fedora repositories, however they may not be
  included by default on any release-blocking deliverable (ISO, image,
  etc.). The KDE SIG should provide a notice before major changes, but
  is not responsible for ensuring that these packages adapt. Upgrades
  from F38 and F39 will be automatically migrated to Wayland.
• For additional clarification: this means that all users performing upgrades MUST be migrated to the Wayland session. They then MAY opt-in to the X11 session by installing a package for that purpose.

The pagure post for this is a shit show

https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/3165

This doesn't look like what I'd expect from a grown up distribution.

[varikonniemi]

Their wayland stance here is what i thought it to have been from the beginning. Why were they originally trying to prevent x11 support in their repositories?

[gbcox]

Their wayland stance here is what i thought it to have been from the beginning. Why were they originally trying to prevent x11 support in their repositories?

It’s explained in the proposal: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/KDE_Plasma_6

[Mathias]

I wonder how that pytorch package works. Does it come with CUDA acceleration (default) or CPU only? Or can I even install it with Rocm? I wasted hours getting pytorch-Rocm working on Fedora with my Navi1 card and it still doesn't work... Would be awesome if DNF could solve that for me. But given that pytorch only supports ROCm 5.7 and F40 will package 6.0, I won't hold my breath.

[spicfoo]

I wonder how that pytorch package works. Does it come with CUDA acceleration (default) or CPU only? Or can I even install it with Rocm? I wasted hours getting pytorch-Rocm working on Fedora with my Navi1 card and it still doesn't work... Would be awesome if DNF could solve that for me. But given that pytorch only supports ROCm 5.7 and F40 will package 6.0, I won't hold my breath.

PyTorch is a beast. This change is called "first iteration" and looks like they are getting started with more acceleration features being enabled over multiple iterations. I saw job postings advertised for full time staff to work on it.