Bug 2385306

Summary:	Workstation and KDE lives use GTK UI
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Adam Williamson <awilliam>
Component:	anaconda	Assignee:	anaconda-maint
Status:	CLOSED RAWHIDE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	high	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	43	CC:	anaconda-maint, kkoukiou, ngompa13, samjain, w
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:	openqa
Fixed In Version:	anaconda-43.33-1.fc43	Doc Type:	---
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2025-08-01 07:24:39 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:
Bug Blocks:	2324223

Description Adam Williamson 2025-07-31 01:18:07 UTC

Since anaconda-43.32-1.fc43 , Workstation and KDE live images incorrectly use GTK UI instead of web UI. This is because changes were made to the anaconda package's behavior and deps, but not accounted for in the Kiwi descriptions.

Package anaconda-gui contains the GTK UI. anaconda-webui contains the web UI.

Prior to 43.32, anaconda would run webUI if it was installed, and fall back to GTK UI if it wasn't (and tui if GTK UI wasn't installed, I guess). In 43.32, that's flipped: anaconda runs GTK UI if it's installed, falls back to webUI if GTK UI isn't there and web UI is. I don't know why this was flipped.

In https://github.com/rhinstaller/anaconda/pull/6530 , the anaconda-live package was changed to depend on anaconda-webui instead of anaconda-gui. The intent of this was that all live images should use web UI by default. However, it doesn't work.

The package called just 'anaconda' depends on 'anaconda-gui'. For two reasons, 'anaconda' is currently included in all live images. The Kiwi descriptions list it directly in the LiveInstall profile, and also, 'kdump-anaconda-addon' depended on 'anaconda' (and is itself pulled into lives via the 'anaconda-install-env-deps' package).

Because of the behavior blip, we run GTK UI if anaconda-gui is installed, so unlike what was intended, all lives have GTK UI.

I've sent a kdump-anaconda-addon build that changes the dep to anaconda-core, and I'll send a Kiwi PR to not install the 'anaconda' package. I'm filing this bug for tracking purposes.

Comment 1 Adam Williamson 2025-07-31 15:49:59 UTC

So Workstation was fixed (i.e. it's back on web UI), but I found two other problems in today's compose:

* All livemedia-creator built lives are still on GTK UI because the kickstarts still have 'anaconda', sent https://pagure.io/fedora-kickstarts/pull-request/1085 for that
* KDE is still on GTK UI because it includes initial-setup-gui and that pulls in anaconda-gui

I'm really wondering why the fallback behavior was inverted, at this point. It's requiring us to go through a lot of churn and I don't understand what the point was.

Comment 2 Katerina Koukiou 2025-08-01 07:24:39 UTC

I reverted the problematic change in PR #6539 [1] - apologies for the disruption, and let me explain the rationale behind the original decision.

With recent changes, all live ISOs should now default to the Web UI, and the anaconda-live package explicitly requires anaconda-webui. However, Web UI is not ready yet to be adoped by Fedora remixes, as we don't currently support branding. For those remixes to continue using the GTK UI, they would either need to fully override our spec file [2] or (more simply) remove anaconda-webui and add back anaconda-gui.

My intention with the behavioral inversion was to make this easier for remix maintainers - allowing them to use the GTK UI simply by ensuring anaconda-gui is present.

That said, it was a mistake. I didn't realize anaconda-gui was still being pulled in indirectly by other packages.

[1] https://github.com/rhinstaller/anaconda/pull/6539
[2] https://github.com/ublue-os/bazzite/blob/main/spec_files/anaconda/anaconda.spec