Re: Add Gnote as a note-taking application
On Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:28:38 -0200 A. C. Censi acce...@gmail.com wrote: And about Gnome dependencies? ACC As far as I can tell it really on depends on the GTKMM C++ libs. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Proposal: Remove NetworkManager for WICD, perhaps after Lucid?
On Sat, 9 Jan 2010 17:04:10 +0100 Vincent mailingli...@vinnl.nl wrote: On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 11:58 PM, J. Anthony Limon j...@flippo.net wrote: On Fri, 8 Jan 2010 23:53:59 +0100 Steve Dodier sidnio...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/8 J. Anthony Limon j...@flippo.net Network Manager is a tricky topic so I'll try to make this as unbiased as possible. WICD offers a solid replacement to NetworkManager while keeping almost all the features. The only thing I can think of that would keep someone from switching outright is that Network Manager has built-in VPN support. After a poll of some sort we could then decide if we also needed to ship a VPN client by default. Also, since the next release is LTS it might make sense to wait to make the switch as going from NetworkManager to WICD is as easy as apt-get --purge autremove networkmanager - J Despite the fact that I'm myself using wicd in one of my computers, there is a slight difference between wicd and networkmanager that we may not forget: the quality of the GUI. I've rarely seen an app with a GUI as unwelcoming and badly designed as wicd, even though it has a great backend. I think nm does the job in 99% of the cases, so switching to something that is harder to learn and use is not, in my opinion, a good idea at all for an end-user distribution. While I will agree it's not as pretty as some apps, it's entirely user friendly. As soon as you open it, it greets you with a list of available networks and button that says CONNECT. Also, 2.0 should have a new GUI, which if we're going to let NM remain in Lucid should provide perfect timing. Cody's question is of course extremely important, but I also have another remark: user interface consistency is also important. Most, if not all, of Xubuntu's applications try to follow GNOME's Human Interface Guidelines, which mostly not only results in a user friendly but also consistent UI. AFAIK wicd (currently) does not do this. - J I've never really seen the GNOME HIG as being very relevant, but I guess that's me. Most of the apps I've got installed would probably make them puke (Claws, Chrome, etc) but I use them for the fact they work better, not have a prettier GUI. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Proposal: Remove NetworkManager for WICD, perhaps after Lucid?
On Fri, 8 Jan 2010 23:53:59 +0100 Steve Dodier sidnio...@gmail.com wrote: 2010/1/8 J. Anthony Limon j...@flippo.net Network Manager is a tricky topic so I'll try to make this as unbiased as possible. WICD offers a solid replacement to NetworkManager while keeping almost all the features. The only thing I can think of that would keep someone from switching outright is that Network Manager has built-in VPN support. After a poll of some sort we could then decide if we also needed to ship a VPN client by default. Also, since the next release is LTS it might make sense to wait to make the switch as going from NetworkManager to WICD is as easy as apt-get --purge autremove networkmanager - J Despite the fact that I'm myself using wicd in one of my computers, there is a slight difference between wicd and networkmanager that we may not forget: the quality of the GUI. I've rarely seen an app with a GUI as unwelcoming and badly designed as wicd, even though it has a great backend. I think nm does the job in 99% of the cases, so switching to something that is harder to learn and use is not, in my opinion, a good idea at all for an end-user distribution. While I will agree it's not as pretty as some apps, it's entirely user friendly. As soon as you open it, it greets you with a list of available networks and button that says CONNECT. Also, 2.0 should have a new GUI, which if we're going to let NM remain in Lucid should provide perfect timing. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team meeting (response needed)
Jim Campbell wrote: Hi All, We have 5 responses to the meeting page thus far. http://www.doodle.com/6stt9n2q7t9467q5 Lionel, would this Sunday (the last time available) work for you? This Sunday, January 10, is looking to be our best option, but please respond if you haven't yet indicated your availability. Thanks! Jim I accidentally didn't clean _any_ but yeah, anytime on the weekend will probably be fine with me.. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Whaaw Media Player
Charlie Kravetz wrote: On Sat, 2 Jan 2010 16:37:03 +0200 Jarno Suni jarno.ilari.s...@gmail.com wrote: In my experience, in practice most people need restricted codecs including Adobe Flash plugin to provide a complete operating system experience, so users have to install something anyway. Besides different media players have different strengths in my limited experience: VLC can handle different playback speeds even with audio* and can be controlled nicely by lirc i.e. by remote control (although it does not survive from suspend to RAM maybe due to the fact that I have to restart lirc then). Xine is the best DVD player (I mean it can play some DVDs that e.g. VLC can not, totem can not play DVDs from iso files: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/122635.) Kaffeine is the best player for digital television. Totem has the best mozilla plugin although it is not perfect, so sometimes you have to use the mediaplayerconnectivity add-on and another media player; in some cases even that trick does not work, but that could be also web service's fault. As for random access of video streams, Flash player is usually the only working solution, if it can be used with the network service in question, though it needs a powerful CPU at least in full screen mode. Flash player can't survive suspend to RAM... *) alsaplayer can handle different playback speeds even better, but it is only an audio player and besides can't play mp4a. In summary, media player experience in Ubuntu is still far from complete. I don't think anyone claims it is complete, but giving a user the best experience we can is important. At least when we give them Totem Movie Player, it is a starting point. Most normal users are not going to install all possible players to see which one works best for them. They do, however, want something. Totem requires the least work for the limited Xubuntu development team, since it is used in Ubuntu also. Well to be fair, Totem is no more complete than really any other media player which uses gstreamer. Totem's completeness is almost ENTIRELY dependent on gstreamer, same as Whaaw or Parole, so I think it's a bit unfair to say Totem is any better than either one. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Whaaw Media Player
Hi team, I had never heard of this app before the other night, most likely due to it not being the repositories, but it seems to be an excellent fit for the XFce/Xubuntu desktop as a replacement for Totem. It's simple, light and uses gstreamer without any GNOME ties. Any comments? - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Whaaw Media Player
J. Anthony Limon wrote: Hi team, I had never heard of this app before the other night, most likely due to it not being the repositories, but it seems to be an excellent fit for the XFce/Xubuntu desktop as a replacement for Totem. It's simple, light and uses gstreamer without any GNOME ties. Any comments? - J I realized I forgot to supply a URL for the app, sorry guys. http://home.gna.org/whaawmp/ - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Whaaw Media Player
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: J. Anthony Limon wrote: J. Anthony Limon wrote: Hi team, I had never heard of this app before the other night, most likely due to it not being the repositories, but it seems to be an excellent fit for the XFce/Xubuntu desktop as a replacement for Totem. It's simple, light and uses gstreamer without any GNOME ties. Any comments? The fact that it's not in the repositories probably means it's not going to be default at least in Lucid. I realized I forgot to supply a URL for the app, sorry guys. http://home.gna.org/whaawmp/ - J It looks nice and easy to use, though. Then again, there is Parole (http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/applications/parole), which is also a new project, and might also be considered to use in Lucid+1. -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode Oh yeah, I wouldn't even recommend it being default in Lucid. Just curious as to what others thought of it in general, maybe expose it to others who may be interested in the project. Parole does seem interesting, I'll have to look into it more. On a pretty non-important note, I severely dislike their icon/logo.. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Whaaw Media Player
Jarno Suni wrote: Why include a media player? Xubuntu or its website could provide a list of media players and an easy method to install whatever user prefers. A guide to make customized images would be nice, too. But to what end? Xubuntu is a complete operating system experience complete with tools for most day to day tasks out of the box. If it were to ship with just a core system + xfce it wouldn't be much in line with the rest of the Ubuntu based systems. With that said.. I've removed half the default apps and have switched to alternatives in almost every care, but apt-get --purge autoremove foo does a good job so I hardly notice.. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: New Xubuntu website (splitted from/was: Xubuntu team direction)
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: J. Anthony Limon wrote: Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. To make Lucid be as good and stable as possible, I think we also should have a developer meeting soonish. If we can get the governance things sorted before or while the meeting, GREAT! Cheers, Well I'm more than willing to help out in any way I can. In fact, I've recently developed and deployed a Wordpress based website for a client to familiarize myself with the Wordpress system in case you needed any help. - J Hey J, I was asking about the governance side, but yes, we also need help with actually doing things! ;) If you really want to be useful, make yourself familiar with the WordPress loop. We are probably not going to touch the PHP code a lot, so the layout and theme is the biggest thing to worry about. If you have any ideas or even a layout proposal, please feel free to step up and tell us about it! Any design made by anybody would undergo changes, so don't be afraid even if your work is not perfect/totally finished. It is better to work together from the earlier stage and not try to modify a complete theme. I do have some design ideas, I'm also looking at the various options avaliable to us from the wordpress plugin collection that could benefit us as well as the users. We obviously wouldn't want to add anything that would be a security concern, or really add any headaches to maintenence. ;) - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: New Xubuntu website (splitted from/was: Xubuntu team direction)
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: J. Anthony Limon wrote: Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. To make Lucid be as good and stable as possible, I think we also should have a developer meeting soonish. If we can get the governance things sorted before or while the meeting, GREAT! Cheers, Well I'm more than willing to help out in any way I can. In fact, I've recently developed and deployed a Wordpress based website for a client to familiarize myself with the Wordpress system in case you needed any help. - J Hey J, I was asking about the governance side, but yes, we also need help with actually doing things! ;) If you really want to be useful, make yourself familiar with the WordPress loop. We are probably not going to touch the PHP code a lot, so the layout and theme is the biggest thing to worry about. If you have any ideas or even a layout proposal, please feel free to step up and tell us about it! Any design made by anybody would undergo changes, so don't be afraid even if your work is not perfect/totally finished. It is better to work together from the earlier stage and not try to modify a complete theme. -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode Sorry about the double reply, Thunderbird had some SMTP issues with my multiple SMTP settings. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: New Xubuntu website (splitted from/was: Xubuntu team direction)
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: J. Anthony Limon wrote: Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. To make Lucid be as good and stable as possible, I think we also should have a developer meeting soonish. If we can get the governance things sorted before or while the meeting, GREAT! Cheers, Well I'm more than willing to help out in any way I can. In fact, I've recently developed and deployed a Wordpress based website for a client to familiarize myself with the Wordpress system in case you needed any help. - J Hey J, I was asking about the governance side, but yes, we also need help with actually doing things! ;) If you really want to be useful, make yourself familiar with the WordPress loop. We are probably not going to touch the PHP code a lot, so the layout and theme is the biggest thing to worry about. If you have any ideas or even a layout proposal, please feel free to step up and tell us about it! Any design made by anybody would undergo changes, so don't be afraid even if your work is not perfect/totally finished. It is better to work together from the earlier stage and not try to modify a complete theme. -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode I do have some design ideas, I'm also looking at the various options avaliable to us from the wordpress plugin collection that could benefit us as well as the users. We obviously wouldn't want to add anything that would be a security concern, or really add any headaches to maintenence. ;) - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Now, where did this discussion go? People seemed to like the council-type approach; what's next? Anybody has obejctions? Should we first propose this to the Community Council (or some place else) or just take the new governance into use? Cody, can you be our link to the other councils or whatever, as you seem to know them best? What's the situation with the technical team leadership? Cody, Lionel? What's the situation with Michael? Can we remove Joszef's name from the leaders list - he's still not appeared from the mist. To make Lucid be as good and stable as possible, I think we also should have a developer meeting soonish. If we can get the governance things sorted before or while the meeting, GREAT! Cheers, Well I'm more than willing to help out in any way I can. In fact, I've recently developed and deployed a Wordpress based website for a client to familiarize myself with the Wordpress system in case you needed any help. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Marketing for Xubuntu Lucid
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: I'm trying to redesign the website for Lucid also. What are we going to do for the developer blog idea? The most common solution is the planet software. http://www.planetplanet.org/ But that kind of requires each developer to have their own blog and then have it feed.. I guess we could set up a shared Wordpress give each developer a login and if they have a personal blog to add it via planet? That's a thinker.. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: J. Anthony Limon wrote: Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Lionel Le Folgoc wrote: Hi there, On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:20:07PM -0600, Jim Campbell wrote: It seems like most people are open to a council-type approach in terms of governance (if that's the right word). It also seems like we would still need someone who can manage the seeds alongside Lionel, and perhaps do some development, too. I'm not sure what all is involved in what Cody has done, to be honest, but we will need to find a person or (perhaps more likely) a couple people who can contribute in a technical manner similar to how has been able to contribute. I wouldn't expect anyone to perform those kind of duties right away, but . . . eventually . . . they could grow into those kind of responsibilities. I know what I'm proposing above isn't terribly formal, but I'm on visiting the neighbouring city of Milwaukee this weekend, and wanted to provide some input on this matter for now. :) I'm all in favor of a council-type approach, thanks for thinking about this. ;) No problem about the people proposed either (although Micheal hasn't contributed at all to Xubuntu for more than six months, nor spoken on our ml or irc chan, so I'm not sure he's still interested). I understand Michael has a lot to do, so I'm not blaming him for this. Maybe someone should contact him if he doesn't reply soonish. I can do that. Cody and Lionel, what do you think about the technical team leader(s)? Also Cody, do you think several leaders per team would make sense? Cody and Lionel, what areas do you think you could use the most support? Is it in bug triage? Is it in development, packaging and patching? Is it in managing the seeds? There may be Xubuntu users or MOTU folks who we could recruit based on a specific need. I know that recruiting new contributors is difficult (particularly skilled ones) but identifying particular areas where we need the most development help would at least give us a chance. The biggest issue isn't packaging imho. Now, most of our packages are synced as-is from Debian, and for the remaining ones, the delta with Debian is well identified (xubuntu-specific changes such as notify-osd support, etc.). Yet, some help would be appreciated on the StableReleaseUpdates (SRU) front, as currently we fix ~0 bug after a release, and users have to live with some annoying bugs during six months. An important problem for karmic was testing (especially gnome components - xfce interactions) and reporting bugs about that. It's rather difficult to have the desktop team change something in their packages, and when we detect that a few days before/after the release, it's impossible. =] Charlie might probably need some help on bug triaging also… (I only focused on 'technical' stuff, but people may need help on documentation and artwork too ;) At least for Lucid, no big help with artwork is needed as we'll mostly polish the Albatross theme with the Shimmer team. I could use some help on renewing the website though, if somebody is interested. Documentation absolutely needs lots of help and love. Cheers, Lionel -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode What language and/or CMS is xubuntu.com? - J Currently Drupal, but the with redesign we are migrating to WordPress. -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode Is there a repo set up for the website's files or am I being too hopeful? - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Lionel Le Folgoc wrote: Hi there, On Mon, Dec 07, 2009 at 01:20:07PM -0600, Jim Campbell wrote: It seems like most people are open to a council-type approach in terms of governance (if that's the right word). It also seems like we would still need someone who can manage the seeds alongside Lionel, and perhaps do some development, too. I'm not sure what all is involved in what Cody has done, to be honest, but we will need to find a person or (perhaps more likely) a couple people who can contribute in a technical manner similar to how has been able to contribute. I wouldn't expect anyone to perform those kind of duties right away, but . . . eventually . . . they could grow into those kind of responsibilities. I know what I'm proposing above isn't terribly formal, but I'm on visiting the neighbouring city of Milwaukee this weekend, and wanted to provide some input on this matter for now. :) I'm all in favor of a council-type approach, thanks for thinking about this. ;) No problem about the people proposed either (although Micheal hasn't contributed at all to Xubuntu for more than six months, nor spoken on our ml or irc chan, so I'm not sure he's still interested). I understand Michael has a lot to do, so I'm not blaming him for this. Maybe someone should contact him if he doesn't reply soonish. I can do that. Cody and Lionel, what do you think about the technical team leader(s)? Also Cody, do you think several leaders per team would make sense? Cody and Lionel, what areas do you think you could use the most support? Is it in bug triage? Is it in development, packaging and patching? Is it in managing the seeds? There may be Xubuntu users or MOTU folks who we could recruit based on a specific need. I know that recruiting new contributors is difficult (particularly skilled ones) but identifying particular areas where we need the most development help would at least give us a chance. The biggest issue isn't packaging imho. Now, most of our packages are synced as-is from Debian, and for the remaining ones, the delta with Debian is well identified (xubuntu-specific changes such as notify-osd support, etc.). Yet, some help would be appreciated on the StableReleaseUpdates (SRU) front, as currently we fix ~0 bug after a release, and users have to live with some annoying bugs during six months. An important problem for karmic was testing (especially gnome components - xfce interactions) and reporting bugs about that. It's rather difficult to have the desktop team change something in their packages, and when we detect that a few days before/after the release, it's impossible. =] Charlie might probably need some help on bug triaging also… (I only focused on 'technical' stuff, but people may need help on documentation and artwork too ;) At least for Lucid, no big help with artwork is needed as we'll mostly polish the Albatross theme with the Shimmer team. I could use some help on renewing the website though, if somebody is interested. Documentation absolutely needs lots of help and love. Cheers, Lionel -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode What language and/or CMS is xubuntu.com? - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Idea for Lucid (and beyond..)
Vincent wrote: On Sat, Dec 5, 2009 at 6:10 PM, Lionel Le Folgoc mrpo...@ubuntu.com mailto:mrpo...@ubuntu.com wrote: Hi there, (I stripped some parts to reduce the size of the mail ;) On Sat, Dec 05, 2009 at 03:41:03PM +0200, Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Charlie Kravetz wrote: On Sat, 5 Dec 2009 09:05:45 +0100 Steve Dodier sidnio...@gmail.com mailto:sidnio...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Both Synaptic and gnome-app-install are being replaced by the Software Centre (not sure if it's the exact name). This new app brings a few dependencies but it's likely that removing gnome-app-install and synaptic will make enough room on the CD for it. As long as it doesn't pull mono and gnome* I'm all for giving the new app a try. Maybe we could ask the desktop team what they think will be ready for Lucid in the software centre, and whether they think they'll be able to replace synaptic in this release. There is enough room on the livecd anyway. I think that we *have to* switch to software-center for lucid, because gnome-app-install has already been demoted from main to universe in karmic (which means that Canonical folks don't want to support it anymore, and since they were the only ones touching it…). Let me chime in here: I *did* use gnome-app-install. And it was kind of my fault for not reporting the missing icons - I did see it, and notice it, but didn't really consciously do so. So I didn't report the bug. Has anybody reported it now? Anyway, I also told people to use that, because I found it to be more useful for finding normal programs, and less scary (normal names, icons, descriptions etc.). I do hope the Software Center will include support for showing all packages in a sane way, but I suppose we can only await that. Lionel's argument in favour of removing gnome-app-install is valid, though, but I'm afraid to see what the effects will be of Canonical not really taking Xubuntu into account. As for asking the devs what they think will be ready for Lucid: that's all documented at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareCenter#Roadmap Unless there is a graphical way to view ALL packages in the repository the same way that Synaptics does, it does *NOT* deprecate Synaptics and should not be considered such. Until it does it is only a deprecation of gnome-app-install.. 2) gnome-system-monitor [snip] For now, I don't think the Xfce components can deliver the same amount of features and, regretfully, quality. I also like htop, but we can't consider it as the main application for system monitoring, as it's CLI and many people fear command line. Gnome system monitor monitors system load, network load, ram and swap usage, and HDD usage. It may be doing too much for one's needs, but when you want to know if some app is using all of your bandwidth, it's cool to can check in the system monitor without having to go in command line. While xftaskmanager may be more appropriate for your needs, gnome-system-monitor is in my opinion better for end users. We have already xfce4-cpugraph-plugin, xfce4-systemload-plugin, xfce4-netload-plugin and xfce4-taskmanager. The fact that gnome devs decided to make a single program (gnome-system-monitor) for that doesn't imply that we should blindly do the same. (Anyway, I've no strong opinion on this, I think htop is the best one. :P) xfce4-taskmanager needs some work to be user-friendly, IMHO. Not a very strong opinion on this either, though I'd keep using GSM I think. Of course, it might just happen that the problems get addressed upstream (for either project - are they even maintained?). As I said in the original message, it is my opinion that GSM is too bloated and consistently has too many performance problems for the nature of the application. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Idea for Lucid (and beyond..)
Steve Dodier wrote: Hi there, 2009/12/5 Pasi Lallinaho o...@knome.fi mailto:o...@knome.fi J. Anthony Limon wrote: Hi team, I just thought I would open the door for some brainstorming in the area of Lucid and beyond! I have some thoughts I'd like to extend everyone's way. 1) gnome-app-install Do we really need it? Who really uses it? How stable is it anyways? I feel gnome-app-install does more harm than good in the XFce desktop. Firstly it does a poor job of representing the total software in the repositories. Secondly, we almost *always* send people to Synaptic or apt-get to install software. Thirdly, I've found it to be HORRIDLY unstable. On my system I've ---purge autoremove'd it. A nice side effect was that my XFce menu looks a lot nicer without that wide entry at the top. :) I agree you on this. I don't really know gnome-app-install since I always use apt-get or Synaptic myself. Maybe we should just seed Synaptic as the default application/repository manager in Lucid? Both Synaptic and gnome-app-install are being replaced by the Software Centre (not sure if it's the exact name). This new app brings a few dependencies but it's likely that removing gnome-app-install and synaptic will make enough room on the CD for it. As long as it doesn't pull mono and gnome* I'm all for giving the new app a try. Maybe we could ask the desktop team what they think will be ready for Lucid in the software centre, and whether they think they'll be able to replace synaptic in this release. 2) gnome-system-monitor I know this app has some serious features that alternatives do not, but is consistently a source of problems and bugs, primarily in the area of super high CPU usage and memory leaks, ironic given the nature of the application. On my system I use a mixture of xfce4-taskmanager and htop, I'm not sure if this would be satisfactory on the majority of people's desktops but I am of the opinion that GSM has to go. For now, I don't think the Xfce components can deliver the same amount of features and, regretfully, quality. I also like htop, but we can't consider it as the main application for system monitoring, as it's CLI and many people fear command line. Gnome system monitor monitors system load, network load, ram and swap usage, and HDD usage. It may be doing too much for one's needs, but when you want to know if some app is using all of your bandwidth, it's cool to can check in the system monitor without having to go in command line. While xftaskmanager may be more appropriate for your needs, gnome-system-monitor is in my opinion better for end users. 3) Totem Is the plan to stick with Totem for Lucid? It's kind of stagnant issue but it's also a difficult one to address with the next release being LTS. Agree. There is loads of *decent* video player alternatives. I've never liked Totem. It sounds it is from the stone-age. I'd really like to see something else already in Lucid. I can name only one player that also uses a decent backend and that is written with a proper GTK+ GUI. It's Parole, and I'm looking forward to it, but considering that it's rather new, we can't expect it to be as integrated in the desktop yet (for instance, does it already manage to find missing codecs for the user?). Whats the point of a player with tons of features like audacity, mplayer or vlc if it crashes miserably when you launch a file or if the GUI is difficult to use because of some particular skin, or very debatable keyboard shortcut choices? I'm all for keeping Totem for the LTS, and testing Parole from the very beginning of Lucid+1's release cycle (ie. before alpha 1, and until beta 1 at least, so we can report bugs to Ali and see what's missing from the Xubuntu point of view). 4) GDM This seems to be an issue entirely out of anyone's hands unless they want to try making one using xfce libs. This is about all I can think of right now, but I do know I am missing a couple things which I will bring up at another time. I feel this is a good start to a brainstorming. Also, nobody has any intentions of adopting Pulse Audio into the Xubuntu system, right? ;) My personal experience is that PA is only bringing in problems, but if we can get those sorted out, I can live with it. I hear PA can do wonderful things once it works. We probably want to ship Exaile as our default media player for Lucid also, but I want to finger at the really bad quality of media players in general in Karmic. Most of them do not work for me
Re: Idea for Lucid (and beyond..)
Lionel Le Folgoc wrote: Hi there, (I stripped some parts to reduce the size of the mail ;) On Sat, Dec 05, 2009 at 03:41:03PM +0200, Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Charlie Kravetz wrote: On Sat, 5 Dec 2009 09:05:45 +0100 Steve Dodier sidnio...@gmail.com wrote: [snip] Both Synaptic and gnome-app-install are being replaced by the Software Centre (not sure if it's the exact name). This new app brings a few dependencies but it's likely that removing gnome-app-install and synaptic will make enough room on the CD for it. As long as it doesn't pull mono and gnome* I'm all for giving the new app a try. Maybe we could ask the desktop team what they think will be ready for Lucid in the software centre, and whether they think they'll be able to replace synaptic in this release. There is enough room on the livecd anyway. I think that we *have to* switch to software-center for lucid, because gnome-app-install has already been demoted from main to universe in karmic (which means that Canonical folks don't want to support it anymore, and since they were the only ones touching it…). 2) gnome-system-monitor [snip] For now, I don't think the Xfce components can deliver the same amount of features and, regretfully, quality. I also like htop, but we can't consider it as the main application for system monitoring, as it's CLI and many people fear command line. Gnome system monitor monitors system load, network load, ram and swap usage, and HDD usage. It may be doing too much for one's needs, but when you want to know if some app is using all of your bandwidth, it's cool to can check in the system monitor without having to go in command line. While xftaskmanager may be more appropriate for your needs, gnome-system-monitor is in my opinion better for end users. We have already xfce4-cpugraph-plugin, xfce4-systemload-plugin, xfce4-netload-plugin and xfce4-taskmanager. The fact that gnome devs decided to make a single program (gnome-system-monitor) for that doesn't imply that we should blindly do the same. (Anyway, I've no strong opinion on this, I think htop is the best one. :P) 3) Totem [snip] I can name only one player that also uses a decent backend and that is written with a proper GTK+ GUI. It's Parole, and I'm looking forward to it, but considering that it's rather new, we can't expect it to be as integrated in the desktop yet (for instance, does it already manage to find missing codecs for the user?). Whats the point of a player with tons of features like audacity, mplayer or vlc if it crashes miserably when you launch a file or if the GUI is difficult to use because of some particular skin, or very debatable keyboard shortcut choices? I'm all for keeping Totem for the LTS, and testing Parole from the very beginning of Lucid+1's release cycle (ie. before alpha 1, and until beta 1 at least, so we can report bugs to Ali and see what's missing from the Xubuntu point of view). The issue with mplayer, vlc, or any ffmpeg related player, is that they can't be shipped on a live cd (decision of the TB). About the missing codecs, I think any gstreamer-based player will be handled by gnome-codec-install without problem (this is the case for totem currently, so it might work fine for parole as well). [snip] I do NOT want to look for a firefox replacement and the issues it will bring into an LTS release. That belongs in the regular release, perhaps lucid +1. Lucid as an LTS needs to be as solid as we can make it. It is not the release to test what we can in, but rather, the release to fix what we can in. I have to agree with Charlie here. Changing the default browser to something not Firefox in an LTS release would really make our users mad, even if it was working. And at this time, I'm not sure if midori is even working fairly enough. Indeed, there are lots of possible changes: 1/ xfce 4.6 - 4.8 2/ brasero - xfburn 3/ totem - parole 4/ gnome-system-monitor - xfce4-taskmanager, xfce4-*-plugin 5/ gnome-app-install - software-center 6/ gnome-screensaver - xscreensaver 7/ firefox - midori As lucid is a LTS, I think we should focus on the most safe ones: 5/ and 6/. Keeping gnome-screensaver is dangerous (who knows what stupid ideas will gnome developers have for lucid? -- currently in karmic, there's no screen locking without gnome-session); I consider gnome-app-install as unmaintained upstream, so we shouldn't keep it either. Cheers, Lionel Software Center seems OKAY, as long as it's easily removed (hehe) - but it seems to suffer from the same issues as gnome-app-install in that it only shows a small percentage of what is in the repositories. I also think it's a shame that gnome-app-install made it into Xubuntu 9.10 as it ships with a fairly major bug (no icons displayed for the categories). - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com
Re: Idea for Lucid (and beyond..)
Andrew Stormont wrote: Also, nobody has any intentions of adopting Pulse Audio into the Xubuntu system, right? ;) I've always considered that a feature :) Yeah, I have as well.. I've yet to see a situation where Pulse has helped.. I fully support keeping Pulse out of Xubuntu. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Jim Campbell wrote: Hi All, Although I was only there for two of the days, and Cody was sick for one of those two days, Cody and I we were able to meet during UDS, and talk about possible plans for the 10.04 release of Xubuntu. Of course we talked about some of the regular topics (and I'll have a separate email about those), but I wanted to separate out a key component of our plans from any discussions about regular distro-related issues. Specifically, we need to talk about team leadership and team member roles. As you know, after several releases as the project lead for Xubuntu, Cody wants to step down and assume the role of a regular contributor. I spoke briefly with Daniel Holbach while at UDS, and the community council would prefer that we attempt to come to a decision as a group instead of just bringing the matter to the community council. It makes sense, as we should be self-directed rather than dependent on an outside group to come to a decision that we may not like (and that may not work for us). With that, it's really up to us to decide how we handle the transition. Do we want to continue to have a singular project leader? If so, what responsibilities would that entail, and who could that be? If we choose not to go that route, or if no one wishes to assume that role, could a group of people assume particular leadership roles? What could this look like? We need to decide this as a community, so please share your thoughts. What would be best for Xubuntu? What would you like to see? What concerns do you have, and how could those concerns be addressed? What role(s) would you be willing and able to assume? Feel free to share any other questions or thoughts. Thanks very much, Jim Hi, Some changes I've had in mind since the 9.10 release is the possibility of removing gnome-app-install from the default metapackage because it gives a false impression of what is actually available in the apt repositories. Perhaps mine was never configured properly but I also hardly ever used it.. I've since removed it completely. It would also be nice to encourage the developer (or even help with the code) to further xfce4-taskmanager due to the bloated nature of Gnome System Monitor. I'm not trying to sound like an anti-gnome troll or anything, but even the most hardcore GNOME fan can tell you the shortcomings of that app. (Specifically simply starting it usually makes a system hang and it has had serious performance issues for many releases.) (Source: http://abock.org/2008/09/03/stay-classy-gnome) If anything else comes to mind I will bring them up in the future and will keep an eye on developing comments. I look forward to seeing how this thread develops. :) - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Jim Campbell wrote: On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 3:05 PM, J. Anthony Limon j...@flippo.net mailto:j...@flippo.net wrote: Hi, Some changes I've had in mind since the 9.10 release is the possibility of removing gnome-app-install from the default metapackage because it gives a false impression of what is actually available in the apt repositories. Perhaps mine was never configured properly but I also hardly ever used it.. I've since removed it completely. It would also be nice to encourage the developer (or even help with the code) to further xfce4-taskmanager due to the bloated nature of Gnome System Monitor. I'm not trying to sound like an anti-gnome troll or anything, but even the most hardcore GNOME fan can tell you the shortcomings of that app. (Specifically simply starting it usually makes a system hang and it has had serious performance issues for many releases.) (Source: http://abock.org/2008/09/03/stay-classy-gnome) If anything else comes to mind I will bring them up in the future and will keep an eye on developing comments. I look forward to seeing how this thread develops. :) - J Hi J, These are good suggestions for the distro itself, but I really wanted this thread to focus on the team leadership and team direction for the coming release. We'll start a separate thread for specific distro-related improvements and changes once we get the team aspect in order. I'm not as familiar with you and your background, but we could sure use your help if you are interested in contributing during this release. Jim Ah, I see. :) To keep in the spirit of the intended purpose for this thread, I will say that I would like to help in any way I can. (We'll see how far reaching my skills can help!) I've been a Linux user for years but fairly recent to the Debian style system and not too familiar with the debian package creation process, but I've been an XFce user since the early 4.0.x betas. I've just recently come to the Xubuntu distro and subscribed to the mailing list hoping to get an inside ear on the Lucid release process and hopefully help steer it in a good direction. (As well as helping folk when I can!) - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Re: Xubuntu team direction
Pasi Lallinaho wrote: Jim Campbell wrote: Hi All, Although I was only there for two of the days, and Cody was sick for one of those two days, Cody and I we were able to meet during UDS, and talk about possible plans for the 10.04 release of Xubuntu. Of course we talked about some of the regular topics (and I'll have a separate email about those), but I wanted to separate out a key component of our plans from any discussions about regular distro-related issues. Specifically, we need to talk about team leadership and team member roles. As you know, after several releases as the project lead for Xubuntu, Cody wants to step down and assume the role of a regular contributor. I spoke briefly with Daniel Holbach while at UDS, and the community council would prefer that we attempt to come to a decision as a group instead of just bringing the matter to the community council. It makes sense, as we should be self-directed rather than dependent on an outside group to come to a decision that we may not like (and that may not work for us). With that, it's really up to us to decide how we handle the transition. Do we want to continue to have a singular project leader? If so, what responsibilities would that entail, and who could that be? If we choose not to go that route, or if no one wishes to assume that role, could a group of people assume particular leadership roles? What could this look like? We need to decide this as a community, so please share your thoughts. What would be best for Xubuntu? What would you like to see? What concerns do you have, and how could those concerns be addressed? What role(s) would you be willing and able to assume? Feel free to share any other questions or thoughts. Thanks very much, Jim Thanks Jim for bringing this topic up. I appreciate it very much. With all respect to Cody, I think the singular project leader approach didn't work out too great on some of the situations. Too many times I thought there was this one guy who always could veto anything any other leader had done. This was discussed once thoroughly and as Cody said, he thought working with the rest of the team was easier and kind of more pleasant. And I couldn't agree more. There wasn't that much decisions to be done after that, so I don't know if this approach would have worked in the long run after all. Thank you again, Cody. So where am I coming here? Well, I think Xubuntu could benefit from several leadership roles. Maybe these leaders could form some kind of council to discuss some important things and bring a shared conclusion/settlement if the developer community seems to disagree a lot. If there still would be disagreement and the council couldn't come to any conclusion, then I think the leader for the particular team would have the final word. I once left the Amarok project as I wasn't listened to when I spoke on artwork and web – even if I was clearly the guy with most experience on those areas. I've had a fear that the Xubuntu team would slowly slide into this situation and several coordinated and equal powered leaders would definitely take away this fear. Referring to my previous email to the development mailing list [1] I will focus on other things than previously, but I'm willing to continue as the Xubuntu Marketing Lead if nobody has any objections about that. This would probably also mean that I'd be one of the several leaders, representing marketing and, obviously, artwork. Whatever the path is we choose to follow, one thing is for sure: we need more developers. [1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/xubuntu-devel/2009-October/007158.html Cheers, -- Pasi Lallinaho Xubuntu Marketing Lead Web-designer, graphic artist IRC: knome @ freenode I concur completely with Pasi, A council of some sort is (almost) always the best way to handle community projects. It allows more thought and process as well as serves as a sort of fail-safe for when someone cannot perform their duties. As a new member of the community I will continue to find my place within it that best serves the users and further development of the system itself. I have several ideas and criticisms I'd like to bring into 'play' concerning the Lucid development process and I think the council idea would make it easier for smaller voices to be heard and considered. - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
Idea for Lucid (and beyond..)
Hi team, I just thought I would open the door for some brainstorming in the area of Lucid and beyond! I have some thoughts I'd like to extend everyone's way. 1) gnome-app-install Do we really need it? Who really uses it? How stable is it anyways? I feel gnome-app-install does more harm than good in the XFce desktop. Firstly it does a poor job of representing the total software in the repositories. Secondly, we almost *always* send people to Synaptic or apt-get to install software. Thirdly, I've found it to be HORRIDLY unstable. On my system I've ---purge autoremove'd it. A nice side effect was that my XFce menu looks a lot nicer without that wide entry at the top. :) 2) gnome-system-monitor I know this app has some serious features that alternatives do not, but is consistently a source of problems and bugs, primarily in the area of super high CPU usage and memory leaks, ironic given the nature of the application. On my system I use a mixture of xfce4-taskmanager and htop, I'm not sure if this would be satisfactory on the majority of people's desktops but I am of the opinion that GSM has to go. 3) Totem Is the plan to stick with Totem for Lucid? It's kind of stagnant issue but it's also a difficult one to address with the next release being LTS. 4) GDM This seems to be an issue entirely out of anyone's hands unless they want to try making one using xfce libs. This is about all I can think of right now, but I do know I am missing a couple things which I will bring up at another time. I feel this is a good start to a brainstorming. Also, nobody has any intentions of adopting Pulse Audio into the Xubuntu system, right? ;) - J -- xubuntu-devel mailing list xubuntu-devel@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/xubuntu-devel
