Let's reconsider some more applications installed by default

[Elad Alfassa]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2015 at 10:07 PM, Michael Catanzaro <mcatanzaro at gnome.org>
wrote:

> From the latest revision of our PRD [1]:
>
> "Fedora Workstation follows the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines. These
> guidelines are mandatory for applications installed by default."
>
> Currently we have applications that clearly do not follow these
> guidelines. Unless we plan to revisit this section of the PRD, we
> should remove them, or set a deadline for them to be improved.
>
> * Devassistant. Needs an app menu, plus a serious sit-down with the
> GNOME designers. We want to make it easy to develop apps for Fedora,
> but not at the cost of leaving a bad quality impression.
>

I really don't see devasistant as helpful, it's harder to figure out what
it is and how to use it than starting a new project manually. I agree it
should either be re-designed or removed.


>
> * Evolution: Needs a major redesign that is not going to happen. Geary
> is not yet a suitable replacement. Options: (1) Not install any email
> client, because most users will use webmail; we can feature Evolution
> in GNOME Software. (2) If we want to keep Evolution installed by
> default, it's time to require the maintainers to add an app menu.
>

I don't see how "adding an app menu" would make Evolution any better.
Following the HIG doesn't mean "implementing every pattern that exists in
the HIG".
As long as an app included by default satisfies the HIG's application
definition, it's okay. Sure, Evolution is not the best when it comes to UX,
and "not shipping an email client" feels really weird for me, as every
major competitor does ship with an email client. It's a basic feature.


>
> * Firefox. I see two options here: (1) replace it with Epiphany (FWIW,
> I think Epiphany has matured enough recently for this to be reasonable,
> but I am biased ;) (2) enable the GNOME extensions, mandate that they
> be updated in tandem with updates to Firefox in Fedora, and patch in an
> application menu. The extensions are good, and Mozilla is a reasonable
> upstream we can work with to get permission for this. The status quo
> should not be an option.
>

I, personally, don't think Epiphany is mature enough to replace Firefox by
default.

Regarding "installing extensions", I assume you mean stuff like HTitle and
the GNOME Theme... well, I'm not sure HTitle will continue to be supported
once firefox moves to its new addon API... as we discussed in the past in
this mailing list, we don't want to be installing any addons by default
unless we can grantee they'll be supported for as long as our release is
supported -  if Firefox updates and breaks one of them, reverting the user
to "normal" Firefox would be a bad experience.

My previous comment about the HIG applies here too.


>
> * setroubleshoot. This app is completely hopeless. SELinux issues are
> sufficiently rare nowadays that we simply do not need this anymore,
> although it would be ideal for ABRT to detect the issues and handle bug
> reports.
>

It might be out of scope for ABRT, since it's about reporting problems, and
setroubleshoot sometimes suggests troubleshooting options... and it's too
bad that setroubleshoot can't automatically fix things (like bad contexts
on files or booleans you need to enable) instead of requiring you to dive
into the terminal.

The problem is I don't think it's wise to enable SELinux by default without
having any UI to let the user know when a violation happens. And we do want
to keep SELinux enabled.


> * Shotwell. Eventually we can replace it with GNOME Photos, but in the
> meantime, users can just install a photo management app if they want
> one. Also, I suspect Shotwell sends your password to Facebook without
> verifying its TLS certificate....
>

I think we can replace it with GNOME Photos today. Is there any reason not
to? Regardless If it sends your password without verifying certificates
then it's a bug that needs to be solved, not a reason to drop it
completely. Have you filed the bug?


>
> * Transmission. Its only significant legal use is to download our
> competitor's products (Linux ISOs), hardly something we need to
> encourage. It's featured in GNOME Software already.
>
>
"Legal" is different from country to country.
Before we consider removing transmission, I think it's wise to figure out
why is it installed by default in the first place - there might have been
some useful rationale behind it.

-- 
-Elad.
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