Bug 8594 - Desktop lists in tl-setup and profile chooser are arbitrarily sorted
Summary: Desktop lists in tl-setup and profile chooser are arbitrarily sorted
Status: CLOSED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: ThinLinc
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Other (show other bugs)
Version: trunk
Hardware: PC Unknown
: P2 Normal
Target Milestone: 4.19.0
Assignee: Hannes
URL:
Keywords: prosaic, tobfa_tester
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-05-26 11:35 CEST by Tobias
Modified: 2025-06-04 14:49 CEST (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:
Acceptance Criteria:
MUST * The user must be shown a complete list of desktops found SHOULD COULD * The list shown could, if applicable, show the desktops with an existing but misconfigured profile at the top.

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Description Tobias cendio 2025-05-26 11:35:52 CEST 
In the case of no identified executable ThinLinc profiles, a list of X11 desktop environments installed on the system are displayed as additional information for the user to work with -- introduced in bug 8590 and bug 8587 for the profile chooser and tl-setup, respectively.

This list is truncated at just a few desktops however, so as not to elongate the pages too much, and it's hinted that there are additional desktops not included in the list.

It shouldn't be on our end to sort this list, primarily since we cannot hope to make proper sorting decisions here. Thus it is in a sense arbitrary what few desktops are included in the list.

The user might get the impression that these are the most compatible desktops chosen by ThinLinc. Moreover, if only session files in say /etc/X11/sessions/ happen to be shown, the user might not be aware of session files in /usr/share/xsessions/, and choose a less desirable path forward.
Comment 1 Tobias cendio 2025-05-26 11:37:21 CEST 
A scrollable paragraph in the likes of the EULA tl-setup page could perhaps be a fitting solution, at least for the graphical case.
Comment 4 Hannes cendio 2025-06-02 13:59:43 CEST 
> MUST
> * The user must be shown a complete list of desktops found
Yes, the output no longer only shows the first five and is instead presented in a scrollable list.
> SHOULD

> COULD
> * The list shown could, if applicable, show the desktops 
>   with an existing but misconfigured profile at the top.
This was addressed in bug 8596
Comment 7 Tobias cendio 2025-06-04 14:08:48 CEST 
Tested this bug using server build #4089 on Fedora42.

Tested the scrolled list for tl-setup in both GUI and text modes, and for the profiler chooser. In the tl-setup text mode, the list appears simply as a single text column.

For all scenarios handled, the scrolled list properly appears when it is expected, and not shown in scenarios when it shouldn’t be there.

The scenarios tested were:
    • No desktops at all
    • Only Wayland
    • No matching profiles
    • Matching profiles, but unavailable

Different list content was tested:
    • No desktops
    • Few desktops
    • Many desktops
    • Ridiculously many desktops
    • Very long desktop names
    • Nonascii desktop names

The scrollable list appears to be working working as intended.
Comment 8 Tobias cendio 2025-06-04 14:10:48 CEST 
> MUST
> * The user must be shown a complete list of desktops found
✅ The complete list is shown.
> COULD
> * The list shown could, if applicable, show the desktops with an existing but misconfigured profile at the top.
❌ Handled in bug 8596
Comment 9 Tobias cendio 2025-06-04 14:15:44 CEST 
(In reply to Tobias from comment #8)

Feels like there's a criterion missing ensuring that the GUI pages don't grow too much. This problem with arbitrary sorting stems from the fact that we had to arbitrarily select a few elements from the lists and only print those -- for the sake of not having potentially very long pages.

However, this problem was of course fixed with the scrollable list, so all good on in that respect.
Comment 10 Tobias cendio 2025-06-04 14:49:05 CEST 
Acceptance criteria are fulfilled and things are working as intended -- closing.
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