Wanted: Suggestions for the F13 Xfce Spin

[Christoph Wickert]

Some random thoughts about the package selection Spin:

Drop gftp (3,3 mb): we can do the same with Thunar and gigilo.

Drop totem: Should save us ~ 12 mb. Parole seems a good alternative.
0.2.0 was just released and works fine, except there are some problems
with the audio. And we would loose automatic codec installation with
PackageKit.

Replace mousepad with leafpad? Mousepad was forked from leafpad to add
printing. Unfortunately this requires xfconf wich we don't ship (in
favor of system-config-printer) and is very limited. Leafpad now has
full printing support via the gtk-print dialog. A rewrite of mousepad is
planned, but it's not sure if it will be before F13.

What about midori? of course we are not going to drop it, but I don't
think that it can replace firefox until F13, for example it doesn't work
with the java or parole plugin.

Another login manager? We could use to SLiM or LXDM. LXDM has more
features, but is still in early stages of development and there are
still SELinux problems. Downsides:
     1. With SLiM and LXDM we loose automatic unlocking of the default
        keyring, but we are working on this (at least I am in LXDM).
     2. We loose fast user switching. Not sure how popular this is
        though.

Include some plugins for geany?

More development stuff, e.g meld?

More suggestions or feedback, especially on the login manager?

Regards,
Christoph

[Adam Miller]

On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:45 AM, Christoph Wickert
<christoph.wickert(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:
>  Some random thoughts about the package selection Spin:
>
>  Drop gftp (3,3 mb): we can do the same with Thunar and gigilo.
>  
+1 if its not needed, no reason to keep and old app around, anyone who
still wants it can yum install it.

>  Drop totem: Should save us ~ 12 mb. Parole seems a good alternative.
>  0.2.0 was just released and works fine, except there are some problems
>  with the audio. And we would loose automatic codec installation with
>  PackageKit. 
+1 again, I've been using Parole for a while now and it does quite well

>  Replace mousepad with leafpad? Mousepad was forked from leafpad to add
>  printing. Unfortunately this requires xfconf wich we don't ship (in
>  favor of system-config-printer) and is very limited. Leafpad now has
>  full printing support via the gtk-print dialog. A rewrite of mousepad is
>  planned, but it's not sure if it will be before F13.
>  
+1 yet again, I find mousepad to be lacking

>  What about midori? of course we are not going to drop it, but I
> don't
>  think that it can replace firefox until F13, for example it doesn't work
>  with the java or parole plugin. 
I think we should stay the way we are now, keep Firefox the default
but continue to ship Midori so that it can get exposure and hopefully
a bit of feedback.

>  Another login manager? We could use to SLiM or LXDM. LXDM has more
>  features, but is still in early stages of development and there are
>  still SELinux problems. Downsides:
>      1. With SLiM and LXDM we loose automatic unlocking of the default
>         keyring, but we are working on this (at least I am in LXDM).
>      2. We loose fast user switching. Not sure how popular this is
>         though.
>  
I think we should stick with gdm for now until LXDM is more mature and
has support for the keyring stuff because I think it would be a major
regression to have people typing their keyring passwords every login
when they didn't used to have to

>  Include some plugins for geany?
>  
I'm open to suggestion.

>  More development stuff, e.g meld? 
sure! development stuff is always nice :)

<SNIP>

That's just my take on it but I'm still open to other ideas.

-AdamM

-- 
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[Dominic Hopf]

Am Dienstag, den 12.01.2010, 09:31 -0600 schrieb Adam Miller:
>  On Tue, Jan 12, 2010 at 12:45 AM, Christoph Wickert
>  <christoph.wickert(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:
>  > Some random thoughts about the package selection Spin:
>  >
>  > Drop gftp (3,3 mb): we can do the same with Thunar and gigilo.
>  >
>  
>  +1 if its not needed, no reason to keep and old app around, anyone who
>  still wants it can yum install it. 
Ack.

>  > Drop totem: Should save us ~ 12 mb. Parole seems a good
> alternative.
>  > 0.2.0 was just released and works fine, except there are some problems
>  > with the audio. And we would loose automatic codec installation with
>  > PackageKit.
>  
>  +1 again, I've been using Parole for a while now and it does quite well 
Ack.

>  > Replace mousepad with leafpad? Mousepad was forked from leafpad
> to add
>  > printing. Unfortunately this requires xfconf wich we don't ship (in
>  > favor of system-config-printer) and is very limited. Leafpad now has
>  > full printing support via the gtk-print dialog. A rewrite of mousepad is
>  > planned, but it's not sure if it will be before F13.
>  >
>  +1 yet again, I find mousepad to be lacking 
Even if I still have mouspad installed,
I don't use it very often. I'm
using Geany for any textfile I am working on. I wouldn't miss
mousepad. :)

>  > What about midori? of course we are not going to drop it, but I
> don't
>  > think that it can replace firefox until F13, for example it doesn't work
>  > with the java or parole plugin.
>  
>  I think we should stay the way we are now, keep Firefox the default
>  but continue to ship Midori so that it can get exposure and hopefully
>  a bit of feedback. 
I must say I'm using Midori for my daily browsing and I
don't miss
anything. Most sites I'm visiting are using Flash and this just works
fine. It's not that often that I'd visit sites providing Java oder media
content which would need the parole plugin.

I'd ack to the way Adam suggested here, but mainly for another reason:
Midori (or rather libsoup) doesn't support real secure browsing via
HTTPS yet. Of course, you can visit any site which uses HTTPS using
Midori, but there is no identification or anything which shows you if
you are really secure (verified SSL/TLS certificates and so on). In
Firefox you can notice the changing color in the address bar and even
click it to get more detailed information about the certificates. I
think this is essentially for todays browsing (and online banking!) in
2010. This is the reason why I also would like Firefox to be kept, yet.
Maybe not as default, but then with a big hint that Firefox should be
used for online banking and such things instead of Midori.

>  > Another login manager? We could use to SLiM or LXDM. LXDM has
> more
>  > features, but is still in early stages of development and there are
>  > still SELinux problems. Downsides:
>  >     1. With SLiM and LXDM we loose automatic unlocking of the default
>  >        keyring, but we are working on this (at least I am in LXDM).
>  >     2. We loose fast user switching. Not sure how popular this is
>  >        though.
>  >
>  
>  I think we should stick with gdm for now until LXDM is more mature and
>  has support for the keyring stuff because I think it would be a major
>  regression to have people typing their keyring passwords every login
>  when they didn't used to have to 
Ack.

>  > Include some plugins for geany?
>  I'm open to suggestion. 
I actually am maintaining the plugins package, so I
won't say anything
to this. ;)

>  > More development stuff, e.g meld?
>  sure! development stuff is always nice :) 
I'd really appreciate meld and I
would also welcome other development
tools (unless they don't compete to Geany, of course ;) )
>  
>  <SNIP>
>  
>  That's just my take on it but I'm still open to other ideas. 
Dito. :)

Regards,
Dominic

-- 
Dominic Hopf <dmaphy(a)googlemail.com&gt;

http://dominichopf.de/

Key Fingerprint:
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[Kevin Fenzi]

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:45:32 +0100
Christoph Wickert <christoph.wickert(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:

>  Some random thoughts about the package selection Spin:
>  
>  Drop gftp (3,3 mb): we can do the same with Thunar and gigilo. 
Yeah, thats fine with me. 

>  Drop totem: Should save us ~ 12 mb. Parole seems a good alternative.
>  0.2.0 was just released and works fine, except there are some problems
>  with the audio. And we would loose automatic codec installation with
>  PackageKit. 
I have been using Parole here too and it seems to work fine. 
Is there any chance upstream might add the auto codec install
feature? ;) 

I guess I would be ok with moving to parole by default. Users can
always install totem later if they really want to. 

>  Replace mousepad with leafpad? Mousepad was forked from leafpad to
> add
>  printing. Unfortunately this requires xfconf wich we don't ship (in
>  favor of system-config-printer) and is very limited. Leafpad now has
>  full printing support via the gtk-print dialog. A rewrite of mousepad
>  is planned, but it's not sure if it will be before F13. 
+a lot. 
mousepad is pretty useless. I would be happy to move to leafpad. 
(Or some other editor if there is a better one thats light and easy for
simple text editing). 

>  What about midori? of course we are not going to drop it, but I
> don't
>  think that it can replace firefox until F13, for example it doesn't
>  work with the java or parole plugin. 
Right. I think we should keep shipping them both. 

>  Another login manager? We could use to SLiM or LXDM. LXDM has more
>  features, but is still in early stages of development and there are
>  still SELinux problems. Downsides:
>       1. With SLiM and LXDM we loose automatic unlocking of the default
>          keyring, but we are working on this (at least I am in LXDM).
>       2. We loose fast user switching. Not sure how popular this is
>          though. 
3. We loose the 'seemless switch from plymouth to X'
4. We loose the ability to choose a lang at login time? 
(I am pretty sure slim doesn't do this, not sure about lxdm). 

I would really like to switch, but I don't think slim/lxdm are really
mature enough. I think we should probibly stick with gdm for another
cycle. 

>  Include some plugins for geany? 
Sure, which ones?

>  More development stuff, e.g meld?
>  
>  More suggestions or feedback, especially on the login manager? 
See above. ;) 

kevin

[Summer Matthias]

On Tue, 12 Jan 2010 07:45:32 +0100
Christoph Wickert <christoph.wickert(a)googlemail.com&gt; wrote:


>  Another login manager? We could use to SLiM or LXDM. LXDM has more
>  features, but is still in early stages of development and there are
>  still SELinux problems. Downsides:
>       1. With SLiM and LXDM we loose automatic unlocking of the default
>          keyring, but we are working on this (at least I am in LXDM). 
I'm using Slim on all systems as a replacement for gdm. No
problems at all.

Workaround for keyring - use a empty keyring-password.

>  More suggestions or feedback, especially on the login manager?
>   
Maybe gvim and mc

Matthias

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Samstag, den 16.01.2010, 00:39 +0000 schrieb Nathan Thomas:
 
>   I'd rather ship with VLC (which works fine), having a working
> DVD
>  player is pretty important to many end users. 
We cannot ship vlc, it's not in Fedora but in RPMFusion because it
contains patent encumbered codecs.

>  Midori rocks, but firefox is an app that newcomers to Linux would
>  recognise, and the first one they would look for when they need help! 
Yeah, I fully agree to you and others: Ship midori, but don't replace FF
until it is on a par with FF.

>  I like the idea if we lose some gnome dependencies - I won't miss
> fast
>  user switching! It would have to be stable though. 
We wouldn't rally gain much, only gnome-session can be abandoned. We
need to look into packaging the GNOME bits more modular.

>  It seems to me that the first thing any developer will do after an
>  install is go to the repos with a their own list of preferred tools to
>  install, regardless of what is installed by default. 
Might be true, but meld IMO is a really good candidate, pretty usefull,
not only for developers.

>  > More suggestions or feedback, especially on the login manager?
>  I thought the default package list for Fedora 12 was pretty damn good. 
Thanks! ;)

>  I can't remember whether ristretto was installed by default, if
> not
>  then imho that should be included in F13. 
It was, and F13 will come with ristretto 0.1.0 which will be *much*
better than the current version.

Regards,
Christoph