[Cooker] Re: rpmsrate discussion [2]: default Gnome desktop

[Emmanuel Andry]

Le samedi 03 mars 2007 Ã 19:28 +0100, Frederik Himpe a Ãcrit :
> Some time ago, I gave my opinion about the choice of applications installed by 
> default in a standard KDE install in Mandriva. In this second part, I'm 
> presenting my opinion about the default Gnome installation, in the hope of 
> starting a constructive discussion to improve the default Gnome desktop.
> 
> 1. Graphical viewers: The default Gnome installation, contains three different 
> picture viewers: eog, gthumb and f-spot.
> 
> F-Spot has a rather unique feature set amongst these three (creation of an 
> organised photo collection), and should remain in the default Gnome install 
> IMO.
> 
> eog and gthumb  are used for similar purposes on the other hand: viewing 
> individual pictures, and viewing directories of pictures. The first use case, 
> actually is fullfilled also by F-Spot, the second is not (F-Spot requires you 
> to import all pictures). So we still need either eog or gthumb.
> 
> In favour of Eog is the fact that it's Gnome's default picture viewer. On the 
> other hand, for viewing a directory of pictures, gthumb is much handier: it 
> shows all thumbnails in a nice large overview, and when you double click on a 
> thumbnail, the picture is shown full screen. Eog tries to show both the 
> selected picture and the collection at the same time, but this makes that you 
> have to scroll much more in the collection view. So personally I would vote 
> for gthumb as default, although I could perfectly understand if eog was 
> chosen. But please don't install both of them, as that's too much 
> duplication.
> 
> 2. Digicam importers: we have four programs which can import pictures from a 
> digital camera: f-spot, flphoto, gthumb and gtkam. flphoto is ugly compared 
> to native GTK-programs and does not have any added functionality to the other 
> programs (at the same time it can be moved to contribs and upgraded to 
> version 1.3). GTKam is also a simple importer without unique features, so no 
> reason to install it by default.
> 
> My proposal for point 1 and 2: install F-Spot and Gthumb by default, do not 
> install eog, flphoto and gtkam by default anymore. (PS: I verified after I 
> have written these two points: this is also what Ubuntu is doing by default).
> 
> 3. Web browsers: We have Epiphany and Firefox in the default install. I think 
> Mandriva is besides Debian the only big distro installing these two by 
> default. These two browsers use the same engine, and Epiphany does not have 
> unique features which do not exist in Firefox. Furthermore Firefox is much 
> more known. So personally I do not see any reason to install both, it just 
> clutters the Web Browser menus. (Even when installing both, is it really 
> necessary to create a seperate menu item for Epiphany's bookmark manager? I 
> have never seen somebody starting his bookmark manager to start browsing the 
> web...)
> 
> 4. CD Player applications: We currently have three applications which permit 
> you to listen to music CDs: gnome-cd, rhythmbox and sound-juicer. Is 
> gnome-cd-player really still necessary? Rhtymbox could be launched 
> automatically for audio CDs. At least Ubuntu does not install gnome-cd by 
> default anymore, just rhythmbox and sound-juicer.
> This would mean we would have to split gnome-media package: not a bad idea 
> IMHO: it would also permit us to not install vumeter anymore, as that 
> application seems also rather useless. 
> 
> 5. gftp: This package is installed by default, but upstream development seems 
> to have come to a halt, and it does not work very stable. Personally I 
> experienced often random crashes when using it in the past, and now there is 
> this blocker bug: http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=29073
> Unfortunately, I don't know of a good GTK-alternative at the moment. Maybe we 
> don't need a graphical FTP-application in default install?
> 
> 6. We're installing blogtk by default now. This application has not been 
> updated for two years, and I think it's target public is too limited to 
> install it by default. This is only useful to people having a supported blog, 
> and even then I don't think a lot of people really bother using a seperate 
> program instead of just using the web based administration panel of their 
> blog.
> 
> 7. cdrdao-gcdmaster: It is a burning application for audio CDs. It seems an 
> application with an extensive feature set for rather specialized work. Would 
> not a more simple application like brasero or serpentine be more appropriate?
> 

1. +1
2. +1
3. +1
4. +1
5. Why not filezilla ? Not gtk based, but made his proof
6. no advice
7. brasero is very easy to use and stable


-- 
Regards,

Emmanuel Andry
Mandriva Contributor