Hi @aday, we have what is called the Fedora supplemental wallpapers which are selected from openly licensed photography, voted on, and refreshed every release. We've gotten a lot of positive acclaim for them from various online Linux desktop publicatoins.

Typically there are 16 wallpapers. We have strict guidelines on what we accept including thematic, composition, and technical requirements which are based on guidelines we collaborated on with Jon McCann a few years ago. (You can see the guidelines here: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/nuancier/contribute/)

You can see the F30 supplementals here:
https://fedoramagazine.org/fedora-30-supplemental-wallpapers/

They are packages as f$VERSION-backgrounds-extras-$desktop. So for example for GNOME for f30, the f30-backgrounds-extras-gnome package provides them.

I'm not sure a separate project would make sense, given this?

I'm not sure a separate project would make sense, given this?

The issue is intended to be about the wallpapers that are installed by default. i'm not sure what you mean by "separate project"...

I'm not sure a separate project would make sense, given this?

The issue is intended to be about the wallpapers that are installed by default. i'm not sure what you mean by "separate project"...

@aday we install by default just the GNOME wallpaper + since 3 releases now the best of the contests we did run. We do this to keep GNOME as much as upstream like it is, when GNOME decides, Fedora is pretty good with their supplemental wallpaper we go with them.... We can talk about such things, some of the things I had already in mind.

@aday by separate project, I mean, for the Fedora Design Team it wouldnt make sense to take on your proposal as stated while at the same time also doing the supplemental wallpapers project -

1. Supplementals have 16 wallpapers
2. We could absolutely entertain the notion of collecting the wallpapers along themes, and I really like the ones you came up with
3. We have been refreshing the selection of supplementals every release for years now
4. I'm not sure about the default tie-in but we can talk about that

Does that make sense? Since we already have the momentum, contributors, nland infrasttucture for refreshing every release, I think it makes sense to try to achieve the goals of your proposal in the project we already have.

I'm excited for the redesign bc I didnt know about it. Indo have a q that perhaps has come up - do you have any thoughts on implementing background channels? It's something Bryan Clark came up with years ago and we never got around to implementing it but it sure would solve a lot of issues. I'm happy to run through it if youre not familiar with the concept. It would save disk space in our images and also enable us to provide a broader selection of wallpapers under different themes.

@aday by separate project, I mean, for the Fedora Design Team it wouldnt make sense to take on your proposal as stated while at the same time also doing the supplemental wallpapers project -
...

Oh I see! Yes that makes sense. fedora-workstation-backgrounds doesn't seem to be actively maintained at the moment; we obviously need a way to ensure that the wallpaper set is regularly updated.

We could absolutely entertain the notion of collecting the wallpapers along themes, and I really like the ones you came up with
...

I really like the idea of having themes. I think it would make the wallpaper set feel more consistent and understandable.

We have been refreshing the selection of supplementals every release for years now
I'm not sure about the default tie-in but we can talk about that

The default tie-in is one of the trickier questions indeed, and I realise that it would be a bigger change. However, I do think that it would be a positive step, as it would enable us to better define a Fedora look, and it would give the default wallpaper deeper roots in the user experience.

One option would be to make the default background a photo that's selected from the wallpaper set. Another option would be to create a set of abstract wallpapers, and select one of those to be the default each release. (I suspect that a set of abstracts would be more difficult to refresh every six months.)

Does that make sense? Since we already have the momentum, contributors, nland infrasttucture for refreshing every release, I think it makes sense to try to achieve the goals of your proposal in the project we already have.

If the supplemental wallpapers can provide us with backgrounds that fit the bill, then it seems like a good option!

One thing we'd need to decide is exactly what we want for the "abstracts" category, and whether the supplemental wallpapers process can provide that.

Also, I wonder how the supplemental wallpapers process would perform at providing photos on particular themes. is there a risk that the quality would drop if the focus was narrowed? We might have to try it and see what submissions we get before we make the final selection. We could also think about cherry-picking from the supplemental wallpapers, rather than using them in their entirety.

I'm excited for the redesign bc I didnt know about it. Indo have a q that perhaps has come up - do you have any thoughts on implementing background channels? It's something Bryan Clark came up with years ago and we never got around to implementing it but it sure would solve a lot of issues. I'm happy to run through it if youre not familiar with the concept. It would save disk space in our images and also enable us to provide a broader selection of wallpapers under different themes.

Sounds interesting! I'd definitely like to know more about it. I wanted something like that for the wallpaper setting design, although we've ended up doing something relatively simple due to limited developer availability.

@aday

Oh I see! Yes that makes sense. fedora-workstation-backgrounds doesn't seem to be actively maintained at the moment;

It is, ryanlerch is the maintainer, see https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/fedora-workstation-backgrounds

The default tie-in is one of the trickier questions indeed, and I realise that it would be a bigger change. However, I do think that it would be a positive step, as it would enable us to better define a Fedora look, and it would give the default wallpaper deeper roots in the user experience.

I would really prefer to start out the first iteration in F31 if we can or F32, and introduce the themes concept. I think if we can do that for a release or two then we can talk about tying the default wallpaper in, but I would need more rationale / convincing that it makes sense to do that. Right now the two processes are not in sync, and the timing / schedule we have for the default wallpaper does not map out in a way that it would be possible for the two things to be tied together - we would know far too late in the schedule how the default wallpaper was going to be to have any time to gather supplementals that related to it.

One thing we'd need to decide is exactly what we want for the "abstracts" category, and whether the supplemental wallpapers process can provide that.

If you can come up with some pinboards / moodboards / whatever examples of what you're thinking about in each category, that will certainly help.

Also, I wonder how the supplemental wallpapers process would perform at providing photos on particular themes. is there a risk that the quality would drop if the focus was narrowed? We might have to try it and see what submissions we get before we make the final selection. We could also think about cherry-picking from the supplemental wallpapers, rather than using them in their entirety.

@gnokii probably can speak to this better than I can, but I think if we're clear with the guidelines up front and then during the voting process make sure the guidelines are clear for those voting too, I think it could work out.

My main concern is the modifications that would be required to support themes in the infrastructure we're using (an app called Nuancier - https://apps.fedoraproject.org/nuancier/ ) - we would have to figure out if it would be possible to have a feature to integrate overarching themes into it. If we wanted to go ahead with this for F31 we would have to likely document around Nuancier and not have themes baked in until we had resources to make the needed mods.

Sounds interesting! I'd definitely like to know more about it. I wanted something like that for the wallpaper setting design, although we've ended up doing something relatively simple due to limited developer availability.

Here's his blog posts describing the idea (the first post seems unrelated but the others are):

http://web.archive.org/web/20120505011722/clarkbw.net/blog/category/background-channels/

Unfortunately the design specification itself is gone, it might be recoverable if people.gnome.org has archives but I'm not sure if it does:

https://people.gnome.org/~clarkbw/designs/background-channels/

This just refers to the above as far as I can tell:

https://wiki.gnome.org/Attic/BackgroundChannels

@aday ok av is awesome and was able to recover clarkbw's design spec for them, here you go:
https://people.gnome.org/~duffy/background-channels/background%20channels.html

fedora-workstation-backgrounds doesn't seem to be actively maintained at the moment;

It is, ryanlerch is the maintainer, see https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/fedora-workstation-backgrounds

What I mean is, it hasn't been updated in a while - it looks like the last changes were 2 years ago.

I would really prefer to start out the first iteration in F31 if we can or F32, and introduce the themes concept. I think if we can do that for a release or two then we can talk about tying the default wallpaper in,

I'd be fine to defer the default wallpaper question for now, and concentrate on:

• increasing the number of wallpapers
• organising them according to sets
• ensuring that they are updated regularly

but I would need more rationale / convincing that it makes sense to do that.

Having the default wallpaper belong to a set seems like an obvious win - it would help to define a look for Fedora, elaborate and strengthen the brand, and provide more sense to the default wallpaper by giving it context.

But there are other questions that need answering, the first and most important being: what we want from the default wallpaper? (And that's a whole other discussion.)

Right now the two processes are not in sync, and the timing / schedule we have for the default wallpaper does not map out in a way that it would be possible for the two things to be tied together - we would know far too late in the schedule how the default wallpaper was going to be to have any time to gather supplementals that related to it.

This could be dependent on how we organise things: for example, we could keep the set of abstracts relatively static and not include them in the supplemental competition, and make the fedora wallpaper one of those.

Alternatively, if we decided to use a landscape photo for the default wallpaper, we could simply pick the best image in that category as the default.

One thing we'd need to decide is exactly what we want for the "abstracts" category, and whether the supplemental wallpapers process can provide that.

If you can come up with some pinboards / moodboards / whatever examples of what you're thinking about in each category, that will certainly help.

I can do that, although I don't think that I should be the only one to be involved. :)

My main concern is the modifications that would be required to support themes in the infrastructure we're using

If we don't get the infrastructure in place in time, perhaps we could do a more manual selection process to select the wallpaper set, but still draw from the supplemental wallpapers...

What I mean is, it hasn't been updated in a while - it looks like the last changes were 2 years ago.

Oh you're right, I wonder if that's the right package or if we renamed it. Do you know @gnokii?

I'd be fine to defer the default wallpaper question for now, and concentrate on:

increasing the number of wallpapers
organising them according to sets
ensuring that they are updated regularly

That seems fine. By increased number what kind of total are you looking at? We do have some space constraints if we ship things by default don't we?

But there are other questions that need answering, the first and most important being: what we want from the default wallpaper? (And that's a whole other discussion.)

Absolutely not interested in having that discussion right now.

This could be dependent on how we organise things: for example, we could keep the set of abstracts relatively static and not include them in the supplemental competition, and make the fedora wallpaper one of those.
Alternatively, if we decided to use a landscape photo for the default wallpaper, we could simply pick the best image in that category as the default.

I'm not interested in revisiting the default wallpaper process at this time.

One thing we'd need to decide is exactly what we want for the "abstracts" category, and whether the supplemental wallpapers process can provide that.
If you can come up with some pinboards / moodboards / whatever examples of what you're thinking about in each category, that will certainly help.

I can do that, although I don't think that I should be the only one to be involved. :)

I am sure we can find folks to jump in and help but it's got to get started somehow.

If we don't get the infrastructure in place in time, perhaps we could do a more manual selection process to select the wallpaper set, but still draw from the supplemental wallpapers...

We have the infrastructure to collect the wallpapers, so we can do manual sorting into the theme categories on top of that is what I was proposing.

ok,

the process is defined by its platform Nuancier. What I can do right now is running a contest for GNOME but I cant sort them into categories, this feature is on my wishlist but Nuancier is a side show for our infrastructure team and @pingou can not invest the much time into it. I do search since a long time for someone driving the development further, as there are many things it needs.
But the problematic for a contest for GNOME will be, that for voting you must have an FAS cla+ so without changes on Nuancier there is nothing we can do right now.

For putting our supplementals as default in GNOME, well I wish that since a long time but we stood away as the GNOME developer will make us then always trouble as we replacing a package of their project.

So without changes on Nuancier there is nothing we could do right now.

But the problematic for a contest for GNOME will be, that for voting you must have an FAS cla+ so without changes on Nuancier there is nothing we can do right now.

I'm a bit confused why you're talking about GNOME here...! We're discussing the wallpapers that are installed in Fedora workstation by default.

For putting our supplementals as default in GNOME, well I wish that since a long time but we stood away as the GNOME developer will make us then always trouble as we replacing a package of their project.

Fedora already replaces GNOME's backgrounds, as far as I'm aware - it installs the default GNOME background, but none of the optional ones that are provided by GNOME are included - we replace them with fedora-workstation-backgrounds.

...

That seems fine. By increased number what kind of total are you looking at? We do have some space constraints if we ship things by default don't we?

I've asked about this on IRC a couple of times and didn't get a reply. I'll do some more asking though.

Personally I think that a moderate increase would be OK to start with: currently we include 17 backgrounds; perhaps we could try and increase it to 24 (3 sets of 8 images).

FWIW, here was the original ticket from the workstation group that covered the introduction of fedora-workstation-backgrounds.

https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/12

And the discussion on the design-devel list on choosing the current 15 default wallpapers:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/QCW4I44K4BT7UDDJ6O5QOQ2QPSA6JHMR/

The general idea of this package was to not regularly update / change the images for each release in this package, but to have a static set that replaced the GNOME static set that was basically the same up until that point. So the fact that it has not been updated since it was introduced is actually by design. in other discussions around this change was that when people upgrade, they have picked a default wallpaper from the set, and if that package then changes between releases, they end up with no background. This is why the package names for supplemental wallpapers have release numbers in them too, so people can't "lose" a background.

That said, the default set probably could do with a refresh with a more solid direction (previously this set was chosen by the design team from previous supplemental wallpapers). However, once changed, that set should remain pretty static going forward (we might have to also introduce another new package to stop user's wallpapers disappearing too)

Finally, since the last change for the default wallpapers went through the workstation WG, we perhaps should involve that group too before proceeding with a plan.

I suggest @ryanlerch @duffy @aday we have a meeting about this, that might get a faster result.

I have same opinion as @ryanlerch has, we can not do anything on this without the Workstation WG, but I prefer to go to them with a clear plan what we want to do and why otherwise we might get nothn.

Just to note too, the 'upstream' source for this package is kept here:

https://pagure.io/fedora-design/fedora-workstation-backgrounds

FWIW, here was the original ticket from the workstation group that covered the introduction of fedora-workstation-backgrounds.
https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/12
And the discussion on the design-devel list on choosing the current 15 default wallpapers:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/design-team@lists.fedoraproject.org/thread/QCW4I44K4BT7UDDJ6O5QOQ2QPSA6JHMR/

Thanks, that's useful!

The general idea of this package was to not regularly update / change the images for each release in this package, but to have a static set that replaced the GNOME static set that was basically the same up until that point. So the fact that it has not been updated since it was introduced is actually by design. in other discussions around this change was that when people upgrade, they have picked a default wallpaper from the set, and if that package then changes between releases, they end up with no background.

Good point about not losing people's wallpaper.

The impetus for updating the set is to maintain a level of interest and not appear stale. It also gives us the opportunity to follow visual design trends, so the workstation looks up to date. In that respect, it's not necessary to update every 6 months.

We could decide to update the wallpapers every year rather than every 6 months, but that would still leave the problem of people losing their wallpaper, and might raise the likelihood of us forgetting to do the update according to schedule. :smile:

Regarding the issue of people losing their wallpaper: I wonder if a technical solution can be found. I've certainly seen this on other platforms: they will keep your current wallpaper even as the set you picked it from is swapped out.

Regarding the issue of people losing their wallpaper: I wonder if a technical solution can be found.

Upstream issue for this: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/547

By increased number what kind of total are you looking at? We do have some space constraints if we ship things by default don't we?

I've asked for guidance here: https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/93

@ryanlerch do you know which pkg supplementals are in?

@aday background channels was meant to be the technical solution

@duffy its $release(name)-backgrounds-extra-$desktopenvironment and we package since begin on the backgrounds each release again, so you can install older ones all the time. But sooner or later we need a better solution, more and more packages

Regarding the issue of people losing their wallpaper: I wonder if a technical solution can be found. I've certainly seen this on other platforms: they will keep your current wallpaper even as the set you picked it from is swapped out.

The current "solution" albeit a workaround is what the supplemental wallpapers do: have a seperate package for each major update of the images (i.e. them changing in some way). This means when someone upgrades, and the new version of the images gets pulled in, as well as keeping the old package. However, this might not work for this case, as i doubt each major refresh of the images will replace all of the images, so a user will end up with duplicates.

@ryanlerch do you know which pkg supplementals are in?

They are in these sub-packages of the f-backgrounds packages:
https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/f29-backgrounds-extras-base

Note too that when we were looking at what supplementals to add to the fedora-workstation-backgrounds package, i created this page to easily view all the supplementals up until that point:

https://docs.pagure.org/fedora-supplemental-wallpapers-index/

@aday background channels was meant to be the technical solution

I know background channels were discussed somewhere, but i can't seem to find the thread. Was this something where wallpapers were not delivered by packages, but some other means? (my memory is a bit hazy on this one... sorry!)

@aday background channels was meant to be the technical solution

I know background channels were discussed somewhere, but i can't seem to find the thread. Was this something where wallpapers were not delivered by packages, but some other means? (my memory is a bit hazy on this one... sorry!)

If we're going to discuss technical solutions to this issue, it's probably best done upstream where the design and development is happening. Feel free to chime in on the issue I opened!

@ryanlerch yeh exactly, the wallpapers would be delivered by a service, kind of like podcasts use RSS, the spec link is up in the comments here, but for convenience: https://people.gnome.org/~duffy/background-channels/background%20channels.html

marking this blocked on needing a meeting to discuss

Design team is working on a new supplemental wallpaper project, so I'm closing this.