Talk:Development/Ideas/Mandriva 2008/GNOME/Default Apps
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[edit] General
Can we please ensure that KDE libraries do not get installed by default? Currently, scannerdrake tries to install kooka, which pulls in a whole bunch of other crap, even if xsane is already installed. Installing kmobiletools by default is a similarly bad idea. There are lots of gnome apps that do the same thing -- gnome-phone-manager, gnome-bluetooth, gnokii, etc. There's also multisync. (Austin)
- By default, on Mandriva One GNOME CD, there is no KDE librairy, so it shouldn't be a problem. If scannerdrake installs kooka, I suggest you fill a bug on it. I don't know where kmobiletools came from, it wasn't on my list. I'll fix that. fcrozat 14:53, 25 July 2007 (CEST)
- [root@groundstate Desktop]# scannerdrake
- rsync://carroll.cac.psu.edu/mandrakelinux/devel/cooker/i586/media/main/release/libkdecore4-3.5.7-19mdv2008.0.i586.rpm
- Similarly, using drakconnect to configure a dialup connection tries to install kppp or whatever.
[edit] Office
Efax-gtk is a nice light fax app that doesn't require a backend service like hylafax. Installing qfaxreader would also be a nice accompaniment, as I don't think evince can read multipage TIFFs yet can it? (Austin)
- Are you using fax applications in Linux? With which kind of hardware do you use this? Personally I think fax applications should only be installed when a fax has been detected, or simply not be installed at all by default as I have the feeling only a very small minority of users has a modem/fax which works in Linux. - Frederik Himpe 20:11, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
Gscan2pdf is a great scanning app that is a lot simpler to use than xsane. (Austin)
I don't see any reason to install both openoffice and gnumeric/abiword. What can the latter do that the former can't? (Except maybe handle Wordperfect documents a bit better.) Choose one or the other. (Austin)
[edit] Internet
Personally I think nvu should be removed as important application in the category Internet-WebEditors. It has not been udpated for years (I do not doubt that it's vulnerable to several security holes in Gecko which were fixed in Firefox), and I think it has often been "overhyped": real web designers say me that NVU is absolutely not a contender to Dreamweaver, and most "non-tech" users will rather use some ready-made blog application or Content Management System for creating web sites. One could add Bluefish (not at all comparible to NVU by the way) in this category, although I think it should not be installed by default. - Frederik Himpe 19:15, 19 July 2007 (CEST)
Consider adding amsn in addition to pidgin. Amsn supports many features pidgin does not (direct file transfer, animations, saving smiles), and it has a more familiar interface for non-techies. MSN is by far the most popular IM protocol in Canada, and I would guess it's the second most common in the US. (Austin)
Gftp has never been a reliable FTP client. Would it be possible to install FireFTP Firefox plugin by default? It's rock solid and works very very well. (Austin)
- Indeed, gftp is not stable enough, and the project seems to be hibernated since long, or even dead. I think we should retest if Nautilus has stable FTP support nowadays. If that's the case, we don't need to look further. If not, we should also seriously consider FileZilla 3. - Frederik Himpe 20:11, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
- I tried Nautilus myself as an FTP browser, and it's simply unusable for that. It is extremely slow, and when opening a large directory (like cooker's i586/media/main/release directory), memory and cpu usage will skyrocket, even bringing your box to its knees (http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=465131) - Frederik Himpe 20:38, 9 August 2007 (CEST)
Unlike openoffice/gnome-office redundancy, installing Thuderbird alongside Evolution and Epiphany alongside Firefox makes sense to me. Email and Web browsing are probably the two most used apps on a desktop system. Evoultion has a lot of bloat for someone using it solely for email, and Epiphany is a bit more esoteric and Firefox, but both should theoretically be part of any default GNOME installation. (Austin)
- Personally I always found Thunderbird more sluggish and heavily feeling when using IMAP then Evolution. Although Evolution at least in the past was extremely bandwidth inefficient for IMAP compared to other IMAP clients (this caused me problems I think a year ago because Belgian ISPs force prehistoric down and upload quota). I should retest to see if this has improved, I'm currently using Evolution only in my internal network, where bandwidth is no issue. - Frederik Himpe 20:11, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
I suggest including grdesktop for connecting to Windows boxen. (Austin)
- I think currently the preferred Gnome application is a Mandriva drak* application which supports not only rdesktop, but also vnc. But IIRC I never found out how to send Ctrl-Alt-Del with it, which works fine with grdesktop. - Frederik Himpe 20:11, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
- I didn't even know it existed. Would a new user think to go to System Configuration rather than Applications to run a remote desktop client?
Deluge should be included by default for Bittorrent files. (Austin)
- I used Deluge in the past, and it worked fine. But we should probably also consider Transmission: sometimes I'm wondering if its interface is not more Gnome-ish. Has anybody some real experiences with Transmission? - Frederik Himpe 20:11, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
[edit] Education
For Education-Languages I propose stardict (http://stardict.sourceforge.net/), available in Contribs now. - Frederik Himpe 19:15, 19 July 2007 (CEST)
For Education-Other I propose GCompris (http://gcompris.net/) - Frederik Himpe 19:15, 19 July 2007 (CEST)
[edit] Sciences
There should be a periodic table app and a calculator app installed by default. There are several available. Pick one. (Austin)
[edit] Multimedia
I think Video Player should be renamed back to Totem. We call almost every other app by its real name (i.e. we do not call Firefox by "Web Browser"). It's also confusing to have "Video Player" as the default audio file player. (Austin)
Personally, I find Banshee much more capable and much more intuitive than Rhythmbox, but that may be subjective. If there were to be a vote however, I'd choose Banshee. (Austin)
- Personally I prefer Rhythmbox now because it seems a little bit less heavy, has about all the same functionality as Banshee now, and actually I never found out how I can easily play all tracks of one album in Banshee (you can search for the album name, but if there's a song with the same name, that will also be played (I guess I'm just stupid...) - Frederik Himpe 20:11, 23 July 2007 (CEST)
- You're right. On second inspection, Rhythmbox has come a long way since it early days, and is lighter on the system than Banshee. In my recent tests, it is also more stable than Banshee, although I've seen Rhythmbox segfault if alsa device is in use. It is a better default than Banshee though, which crashes all the time.
Pitivi can't really do much - all it can do is paste clips together - no editing. And it only exports in esoteric formats. Kino can do pretty much everything one needs. I see no reason to include Pitivi. BTW, it freezes/crashes constantly for me. (Austin)
Now that ALSA has become pretty much the default sound engine, can we include gnome-alsa-mixer in default installs? It has many controls that the default gnome mixer lacks which can be very important for setting up the sound card. (Austin)
[edit] System
Is Serpentine actually needed by default if we also have Brasero? Brasero seems to have full audio CD burning functionality - does Serpentine have anything Brasero doesn't? Adam Williamson
- We should not install Brasero by default. I have tested it, and while it's a very promising application, it is not mature enough. See http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=32116 - Frederik Himpe 21:44, 11 August 2007 (CEST)
I think we should seriously reconsider default installation of Beagle. The current version of Beagle has a very serious problem which may cause it to loop endlessly indexing stuff if you have too many subdirectories in your homedir (http://thomas.apestaart.org/log/?p=482). It seems a fix is in the works (http://joeshaw.org/2007/08/06/481), but will only be ready for 0.3.0. I'm afraid this will be too late for 2008.0. Can we enable a program with such serious flaws by default? It seems even Ubuntu has chosen Tracker instead of Beagle as their default desktop search application (http://jamiemcc.livejournal.com/9089.html). - Frederik Himpe 23:53, 6 August 2007 (CEST)
