Nixpkgs: NixOS 20.03 highlights

[worldofpeace]

Describe the goal
Let's fill up the highlights section in the release notes.

Here's how you can help

• Mention the highlight in this thread
• PR to the highlights section
• If docbook is inconvenient just comment it here, I can translate it

Contributing to the manual
Building the manual:

nix-build nixos/release.nix -A manualHTML.x86_64-linux

Open ./result/share/doc/nixos/release-notes.html

https://nixos.org/nixos/manual/index.html#sec-writing-documentation

Closing

So much can happen to NixOS in 6 months, let's highlight what we feel is important.

:fire: worldofpeace

[worldofpeace]

Guess this counts in helping me out a bit https://discourse.nixos.org/t/january-2020-in-nixos/5771 :wink:

[worldofpeace]

In detail we need to talk about https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/72828

[worldofpeace]

expands on ^ https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/79335

[jonringer]

proper azure-cli support #71797 (this was backported to 19.09 #74014)

[jonringer]

better dotnet development experience: #73262

[rnhmjoj]

I'm not sure if worthy of mentioning but here's some stuff I care about:

• New module for dnscrypt-proxy: #78543
• New option to make dhcpcd not take forever to start: #78745
• Better rxvt-unicode plugins support: #77347
• Console colors working properly: #71473
• services.xserver.extraLayouts working in Gnome 3: #76591
• linux_latest 5.5, linux 5.4, mesa 19.3.3, wine 5.0!
• linux-libre appears to be working now

[vcunat]

I think linux_latest moves even on stable branches (though apparently not as often).

[worldofpeace]

Need to add GNOME 3.34 stuff and Pantheon 5.1.
This was really nice to have their redesigned greeter working completely in NixOS https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/68729.

[mkg20001]

cinnamon being wip, maybe?

[aanderse]

I should probably write something about the httpd changes, but I'm not sure I'm going to get around to it...

[mweinelt]

Some networkmanager bump during this cycle enabled WPA3-PSK (SAE) support.

[prusnak]

81368 OpenSSH 8.2p1 with FIDO support allowing usage of private keys backed by hardware tokens

[vcunat]

Well, backport of that was proposed but not done yet (and seems not really decided to me).

[prusnak]

@vcunat as discussed in #80196: the backport to 20.03 will be done in https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/81368

[tokudan]

Linux kernel is updated to branch 5.4 by default (from 4.19). Users of Intel GPUs may prefer to explicitly set branch to 4.19 to avoid some regressions.

What are these regressions? If there are known issues it would be useful to have links or a short explanation if that is about e.g. power saving or crashes.

[vcunat]

@tokudan: they were discussed on the PR https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/78713 EDIT: or did you mean to have that directly here or in the release notes?

[tokudan]

@vcunat I'd suggest to add something like this to the release notes:

Linux kernel is updated to branch 5.4 by default (from 4.19). Users of Intel GPUs may prefer to explicitly set branch to 4.19 to avoid regressions for some hardware variants, including random freezes and power management issues. See https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/78713 for more details.

[worldofpeace]

@tokudan I believe @grahamc and I thought to add a tracking issue for all the regressions that had a nice spread of references.

[tokudan]

@worldofpeace I like that, but at least a rough information about the type of issues should be in the release notes, I believe, so users don't have to dig up the tracking issue, then follow that to the real issue and read through possible 50+ comments just to figure out how bad these issues are.

[worldofpeace]

@worldofpeace I like that, but at least a rough information about the type of issues should be in the release notes, I believe, so users don't have to dig up the tracking issue, then follow that to the real issue and read through possible 50+ comments just to figure out how bad these issues are.

I agree with

Linux kernel is updated to branch 5.4 by default (from 4.19). Users of Intel GPUs may prefer to explicitly set branch to 4.19 to avoid regressions for some hardware variants, including random freezes and power management issues. See #78713 for more details.

completely, but let's not make it #78713, but instead a highly informational issue that also tracks the problems getting fixed.

[tokudan]

I'd suggest adding a notice regarding the Nextcloud-upgrade path (https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/82056), which requires a two-step upgrade process (first to nextcloud 17, then to the current nextcloud 18).

[Ma27]

The Nextcloud issue is fixed in #82353 (not merged yet).
Btw would be cool to get some feedback on my Hydra bump in case we want to have it in 20.03: #82176

[Ma27]

For the record, #82353 is merged and backported, so the upgrade-path for Nextcloud is fixed now :)

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/go-no-go-meeting-nixos-20-03-markhor/6495/19

[davidak]

not a blocker

I have done a review of the release notes. It would be nice if someone could improve this 3 small annoyances before the release announcement. https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/82777

[nixos-discourse]

This issue has been mentioned on NixOS Discourse. There might be relevant details there:

https://discourse.nixos.org/t/go-no-go-meeting-nixos-20-03-markhor/6495/23