Problem discovered after one update and not fixed by the next

[jamjar]

It is a general question about how updates work.

There was a problem caused by or discovered after the 2023-07-10 update to the Stable Branch, or at least many people seemed aware of it by then, as was seen this post:

Firefox and Gajim take 10 seconds to start

Here are the symptoms: Firefox and Gajim take about 10 seconds’ delay to start. Other apps start instantly (less than a second). Firefox and Gajim also used to start instantly. I am running Manjaro in a virtual machine. Firefox and Gajim start instantly in a different VM, which was cloned from the affected VM some time ago and has had an independent use and update history. After starting in the affected VM, Firefox and Gajim work normally (without delay in e.g. loading a new document). How …

My machines were affected by the problem, and I fixed it in most machines.

Today, I applied the 2023-07-10 and the 2023-07-17 updates to a particular machine, and after the updates the machine was found to have the “10 seconds” problem.

I assume therefore that the 2023-07-10 update gave the problem to the machine and that the 2023-07-17 update did not give it the fix.

I would have thought known problems are responded to with a fix in the next update.

Question: Is that generally true only it might take more time (than “by the next update”)? Or are there problems you are supposed to fix on your own because the inclusion of the fix in the update is impractical (perhaps because it did not affect many machines)? Was this “10 second” problem one of those? Thanks.

[cscs]

Theres nothing for the updates to fix.
Unscrupulous users installed the wrong portal for their desktops … only then can the bug rear its head.
As far as I know the bug itself has not been fixed upstream.
So long as someone has the gnome portal installed on a non-gnome desktop … they will have to manually remove and/or replace it. This would have been true in any case … its just that much more apparent because of a bug affecting portal-gnome on non-gnome desktops (that should not have it installed anyways).
What has been ‘fixed’ is that the ISOs now contain the proper portal for each edition … so while the mistake could still be made … it would be harder for the user to do so.

[philm]

the issue is more the alphabetical order of the packages and how the package manager installs them. So non Gnome desktop environments should remove the package xdg-desktop-portal-gnome . It is mentioned many times. Very slow startup on some apps after update [SOLVED] most programs slow to start / Newbie Corner / Arch Linux Forums

[jamjar]

@cscs

Unscrupulous users

Yes, I am one. Thanks for the explanation.

[cscs]

@philm

the issue is more the alphabetical order of the packages

I’ve certainly explained it as such, and probably the first to do so here.

xdg-desktop-portal needs a backend. gnome is first in the list alphanumerically … if users dont pay attention (or maybe are just using pamac) then they can easily get the gnome one.

But, at least in the case of pacman, its hardly an ‘issue’ … the user would be presented with a choice of which package to fill that dependency with.

Whether installing for the purpose of the portal or by dependency it would make sense to use one compatible with your desktop … the package names are conveniently intuitive in that context.

Though … as already mentioned… for new manjaro users it is less of an issue because, for example, the KDE ISO now comes with xdg-desktop-portal-kde so there would be at least one extra step involved in installing the wrong one.

[philm]

This issue will still be there with the current install medias. Most users might have XFCE and report the issue still. There are no new install medias on our download page, only review ISOs on github: Releases · manjaro/release-review · GitHub

[cscs]

…

I didnt explicitly mention xfce because it was an example for something I had already stated more generally.
The case of the new media … XFCE specifically … is it would have xdg-desktop-portal-gtk … so it is ‘fixed’ or ‘safe-guarded’ as I already said.

…

manjaro/xfce/Packages-Desktop · master · Profiles & Settings /...

Of course a user still could install the gnome portal … but they would actively have to replace gtk or have removed it in the first place. Like I said . at least an extra step.