Applications selection discussion....
by Jim Gettys
As the following touches many topics, please reply suitably modifying
the subject line.
I'd like to start a discussion about what applications set to include on
a spin targeted at G1G1 purchasers looking for a "conventional" laptop.
Daniel Drake's initial experiments make it seem like with care a Gnome
desktop is usable, which is a much more polished environment than xfce
(which while smaller, is much more of a hacker's system), if one is
careful on app selection. Having said that, if someone wants to do an
xfce spin too, that is not a bad thing to have in one's hip pocket.
For the basic spin, we'll have very limited flash, and should not
presume the use of swap (so RAM matters too).
Here's some things that I think are a given (note that others are very
open to discussion)...
Remember: we have a zero-sum game here. Everything we put in, requires
we take things out... The question will just be what to take out, and
how much work it will require to do any needed repackaging...
Toolkit stack
-------------
GTK+/Pango/cairo toolkit for UI applications
(for I18N and Sugar compatibility)
ATK, but only as an option (it pulls in some of the more objectionable
bonobo dependencies at the moment).
Avoid Mono libraries in basic load
(footprint)
Window Manager
--------------
Metacity
Definite outs
-------------
Open Office
(too big basic footprint; users can load if they want/need it)
Evolution
(Oink, Oink)
Graphics drivers for everyone else's hardware: these add up
Fonts
We'll need to sort through a lot of these and nuke a lot
of bitmap and other fonts (e.g. type1, etc).
Extra themes
Extra Wallpaper
Some icon sizes, those generally used at 72DPI.
Basic apps and accessories
==========================
Panel Applications
Accessories
Archive Manager (dependencies?)
Calculator
Character map
Screen shot
Text editor
Games
What games? Can we afford the gnome assortment, or
must we repackage for size reasons? Download size is only a bit
over 1 meg compressed bz2, so I'm tempted to include them all.
Graphics
Some camera app for the camera (see below)
Some image viewer. (see below)
Internet
Mail client (see below)
Firefox
RSS reader (see below)
Instant message program (see below)
Office
Abiword
Gnumeric
Sound and Video
Totem
Rythymbox (see below???)
Pulseaudio volume control?
Sound recorder
System tools
Disk Management
File Browser
SE Linux stuff (can we afford SELinux????)
System Log
System Monitor
Terminal
Panel->System
Preferences
Personal
About Me
File Management
Keyboard Shortcuts
Preferred Applications (dependencies may kill us).
Sessions
Look and Feel
Appearance
Main Menu
Screen Saver
Windows
Internet and Network
Network Proxy
Hardware
Default Printer (see below)
Keyboard
Mouse
Sound
Volume Control
Systems
Authorizations (????)
Power Management
System Update
Administration
Add/Remove Software
Date & Time
Firewall (?)
Language
Network
Network Device Control
Printing (see below)
SELinux Management (if we can afford SELinux....)
Services
Software Sources
Update System
Applets
Custom app launcer
Application Launcer
Character Palette
Clock (if we don't get screwed by the cities data)
Command Line
Disk Mounter
Drawer? (does anyone use these?????)
Force Quit
Lock Screen
Log out
Main Menu
Menu Bar
Network Monitor
Notification Area
Run Application
Separator
Show Desktop
Shutdown
Sticky notes (Tomboy pulls in Mono, IIRC).
Trash
Volume control
Window List
Window Selector
Definite ins
------------
Gnumeric
Abiword
Firefox (some may question this, but I'm not yet sold on webkit)
evince
Meta-packages
-------------
I'd love to have a few metapackages to pull in a set of
o Sugar!! (unless we squeeze enough to get in the base image, which is
my first choice...)
o regular games
o educational games
o graphics - (gimp, inkscape, others)
o If we need to strip below where we would like to get olpc-update to be
an installation path, a meta-package to pull in the rest of basic
functionality.
o accessibility
Questions
=========
All these need to be vetted for size and dependencies!!!!!
1) mail client.... The logical candidates would include Thunderbird,
Claws, Sylpheed, Balsa. Are there others? Sylpheed has poor docs. I'd
be quite interested in Thunderbird, but right now, Thunderbird 2 is
based on the old gecko engine, and won't make it in time, so would come
at a higher cost of both flash and RAM footprint.
Possibilities I know of boil down to Claws and Balsa. Opinions?
2) RSS reader.... Claws has a plug in; Firefox can do it, but dunno how
well; others?
3) Printing... Several options:
a) none at all unless you yum install it
b) default config cups client library only (no cups server); if you
are in an IPP environment, you can then find a cups server (Linux or
Mac) and use it, or could the last I tried (2.5 years ago) - any
volunteers? This is literally like 1 file to configure and test (I had
some trouble in the large MIT Media Lab environment when I tried it 2.5
years ago.
c) minimal configuration of printer drivers for most popular printers
- but who would do this work? Would be generally beneficial, however,
to cull a lot of antique prs.inter
d) full printing database - probably not feasible at all and would
be best left to yum install.hat
4) What themes?
5) What camera application? Need something to demo the camera in the
XO. This will likely need testing, as gstreamer/VFL2 seems immature in
OLPC's experience....
6) what IM client? And don't suggest xchat ;-) Pidgin?
7) music player Rhythmbox? or something else? There are many to choose
from.
8) Our screen is small, and the keyboard inappropriate for people with
disabilities under many circumstances. I think we should keep
accessibility out of the basic load if we can, to save space. But a
meta package to pull in the usual stuff is well worthwhile, as the size
and cost of the OLPC has in particular attracted the interest of people
with certain classes of disabilities. I still worry about its memory
footprint, however.
- Jim
--
Jim Gettys <jg(a)laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child
15 years, 8 months
Sugar on Fedora 10 Alpha - how to I run it?
by Jerry Williams
I noticed that there is a sugar-desktop group on Fedora 10 Alpha.
How do I run it?
I tried running sugar-shell and it kind of works, but not like it is suppose
to.
Any help would be appreciated,
Jerry Williams
15 years, 8 months
Fedora/OLPC meeting summary: Friday, August 29th
by Greg DeKoenigsberg
A summary of what's been going on in the world of Fedora and OLPC. :)
1. Fedora on OLPC. The goal: to get a version of Fedora booting on OLPC
hardware. Looks like we've got a version booting, and now we're looking
to clean it up a bit before we make it more generally available. Issues
and owners:
a. Using localized spins to cut down on space. (sdziallas)
b. Troubleshooting performance issues -- running from USB is painfully
slow. (katzj)
2. Sugar in Fedora. The goal: to get Sugar packaged as a top-notch
desktop environment for Fedora. Issues and owners:
a. Bundlebuilder changes to make packaging activities easier. (marcopg)
b. Figuring out the pyxpcom/xulrunner issues to get the browse activity
working with native Fedora packages. (katzj/caillon)
c. Continuing to package Sugar activities, which will be much easier when
marcopg is done with bundlebuilder changes.
(See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/WishList#Activities
for list of important activities.)
d. There's a large increase of python memory usage f7->f9, which is
hard on Sugar performance-wise, still investigating. (marcopg/tomeu)
That's it. We'll meet again this coming Friday to go over progress, and
since some of us will be at FUDCon Brno, maybe we will share some of the
work that's going on there.
--g
15 years, 8 months
Sugar 0.82.1 is in rawhide
by Marco Pesenti Gritti
Hello,
I built Glucose 0.82.1 in joyride during the weekend.
It includes the bundlebuilder changes we discussed. I can build the
Journal with the following spec:
http://dev.laptop.org/~marco/sugar-journal.spec
Does it look good? If so I can build also the Journal and we can
update the guidelines and start packaging activities.
Cheers,
Marco
15 years, 8 months
