No support for Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial

I was the previous maintainer of the project and it was about four years ago. Since then "no one has cared". My personal opinion is that the whole project is quite outdated and I am surprised some screenlets still work and that some people use them.

To be constructive, you may try if 14.04 (or later) Screenlets package works on 16.04, if you install it by force. If it kind of works, maybe we can create a new package, but if it needs too much work, I won't be able to help. When I started maintaining the project and did some rewrites and bug fixes etc and created a PPA for individual Screenlets, I presumed some people will join the development. But it seems that it wasn't that important or interesting project, so I got tired and found other things to take care of.

If someone wants to take up the development, I can consult as much as it is needed though.

If I had to guess, I would say that screenlets was removed because of some dependencies on Python 2. (Ubuntu is trying to move away Python 2 and toward Python 3.)

It looks like the screenlets package existed in Ubuntu 16.04 for a bit was remove sometime before the launch: http://www.ubuntuupdates.org/package/core/xenial/universe/base/screenlets

I tried to install the package of screenlets for Wily Werewolf from these locations:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/wily/screenlets
http://packages.ubuntu.com/wily/screenlets-pack-basic

I got the following errors:
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of screenlets:
 screenlets depends on python-support (>= 0.90.0); however:
  Package python-support is not installed.
 screenlets depends on python-gnome2; however:
  Package python-gnome2 is not installed.
 screenlets depends on python-wnck | python-gnome2-desktop; however:
  Package python-wnck is not installed.
  Package python-gnome2-desktop is not installed.
 screenlets depends on python-beautifulsoup; however:
  Package python-beautifulsoup is not installed.

dpkg: error processing package screenlets (--install):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of screenlets-pack-basic:
 screenlets-pack-basic depends on screenlets; however:
  Package screenlets is not configured yet.
 screenlets-pack-basic depends on python-support (>= 0.90.0); however:
  Package python-support is not installed.

Additionally I found this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/screenlets/+bug/1566635
Is this related?

16.04 x 32

wouldn't it be better to create snap packages for future?
http://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/06/01/apps-to-snaps/
http://snapcraft.io/

@tsvitaliy, please be a bit more precise about taking the responsibility to fix Screenlets for Xenial!

Please consider merging my changes, to fix this bug.

Thank you for your effort, Hrotkó!

Could you also explain what changes did you make and what errors you needed to fix to make Screenlets work on Ubuntu 16.04? Maybe you could also describe how much time did you take to test the changes with different installations, for example different desktops and maybe older Ubuntu releases?

It would help me to merge the fixes.

By the way, ideally you shouldn't submit different types of fixes (changes to individual screenlets, translations etc) in one merge request, because it makes it much harder to follow them afterwards.

These are the details of my changes:

screenlets
----------
- remove non-existent dependencies
- update old dependency versions
- check individual screenlet's required dependencies at startup, instead after load
- weather plugin's weather.com api url fix

indiv-screenlets
----------------
- change from python-gtkmozembed to python-webkit
- import required dependencies with try-catch, to be able to alert the user for missing dependencies
- some screenlets uses the weather api directly, not through the plugin, so I fixed the urls there also

The following screenlets are not working:
- EMHI
- evolutionContacts
- funnyordie
- LinuxEstoriaStat
- LinuxSerbiaStat
- mainmenu
- places(?)

I tested with ubuntu 16.04 only.

With xfce and mate, there is no particular problem.

With LXCE, the TuxScreenlet not working, without error.

With unity, the screenlets daemon app indicator is not visible.

In case anyone is concerned about the screenlets daemon app indicator not being visible and not aware of this solution, "Indicator Systemtray Unity" can be installed. Indicator Systemtray Unity is an AppIndicator which adds a system tray to the Unity panel to show hidden icons like the one for Screenlets.

webupd8 has details about Indicator Systemtray Unity. The link to it is: http://www.webupd8.org/2015/05/on-demand-system-tray-for-ubuntu.html

A new 0.1.7 version has been uploaded to the ppa.
Please test it, and give some feedback.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:screenlets/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install screenlets indiv-screenlets

On my Linux Mint 18.1 "indiv-screenlets" was not found, after adding the screenlets/ppa (which resolved to "deb[-src] http://ppa.launchpad.net/screenlets/ppa/ubuntu xenial main" in my packet sources ppa dialog.
Instead I installed "screenlets-pack-all" which seemed to have worked.

But most screenlets are installed into:
/usr/share/screenlets/screenlets-pack-all

instead of:
/usr/share/screenlets/screenlets_pack_all

The launchers point on the latter path though.

> The launchers point on the latter path though.

The fix has been just uploaded to the ppa.

Works perfect now! Thx again!

Sorry for kind of misusing the comment feature here, but I just want to emphasize my thankfulness for your work!

Now that I can use many of the screenlets again every day, I encounter what huge wealth of functionalities they bring to the system.

Thank you for making them work again!