Bug#1083283: gnome-core: Switch from gnome-terminal to ptyxis

[Jeremy Bícha]

Package: gnome-core
Version: 1:47+1
Control: block -1 by 1083281

I would like to see Ptyxis be the default terminal for GNOME for Debian Trixie.

Compared to GNOME Console, Ptyxis has many more configurable options.

Compared to GNOME Terminal, Ptyxis is closer aligned with GNOME design
principles. Ptyxis uses GTK4 (although GNOME Terminal will eventually
too). Ptyxis also has integrated support for several container
systems. This support is hidden unless it detects that containers are
installed.

The GNOME Developers are taking a different approach with Ptyxis than
they did with GNOME Console. GNOME switched their default terminal to
Console but most major distros did not follow. With Ptyxis, distros
are switching first. I expect once sufficient distros have adopted
Ptyxis, GNOME Core will change to reflect the new consensus. So far,
Fedora and CentOS 10 (still in development) have switched.

Note that Ptyxis includes a build option to change the branding from
Ptyxis to Terminal which we will enable when we switch.

Because we don't have an upgrade script that can swap defaults, we
can't keep an alternate dependency on gnome-terminal to allow people
to keep the old default without installing the new app. (This is
similar to what we did when we switched from gedit to
gnome-text-editor). I believe Ptyxis offers sufficient feature
compatibility with Terminal that it won't cause too much interruption
to our users.

However, we don't yet have a way to migrate preferences from Terminal.
We could add a dh-user-session-migration to try to copy select
gsettings values but I'm not sure if the benefit/risk ratio is good
enough.

I am aware of one blocking issue I would like to see solved before we
make this switch and have added the block.

Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha