Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-18 Thread Neil Graham
On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 13:54 +0200, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> Work on getting a top-notch polished $desktop on it, and continued
> mantainership behind it, and it'll definitely be an option. It's
> reasonably easy to get desktops "going", but good polish making it
> suitable for end users takes a ton of detailed, subtle work.

+1 that +1.

I've been working on a ROX setup. It's quite a good fit since it follows
the application-directory model so doesn't need to muck with the
underlying OS or have extras installed as an even scattering of files
throughout the fileSystem.

It's been working a while but there's a heap of work to do to make it
nice.  I'll advocate people using it if and when it's good enough that
people go 'Hey! Can I run that too'

Things to make it nice for XO usage

4 paged desktops using the Square, Dot, DotDotDot and
DotDotDotDotDotDotDotDotDot buttons.
Contents of desktops divided by interaction style. 
(the division is not forced, but guided)
A) computer -> brain  (web browser/ book reader/ videos/
 help documentation for (B) )
B) brain <-> computer (word processor/ Paint/ Coding/  
C) Stuff I have(Apps to run, File views) 
D) quick utilities  (things that the user interacts with on a short-term
basis,  calculator, network view,  clock, battery monitor etc.)  

The frame button has been appropriated to toggle the active window
into(and from) fullscreen-undecorated.  This works a treat when you want
to get down to work.  

I'm playing with screenlets as system that can aid Desktop (D),
My daughter likes the fact that she has a clock with her
name on it that she can move around. Screenlets have the potential
to be quite kid friendly.

Performance wise they are ok on an XO-1, because most don't do
a lot of hard work.  Hard to day when it comes to memory. Python
is already floating around.

A lot of this stuff becomes a lot easier with an XO-1.5, but as I
expressed when it was first announced,  I'm concerned that it has the
potential to reduce support for the XO-1.  This seems to have happened
with the announced software plan.  I'd be OK with this if there was a
firm line drawn to say that the 1.5 spec was fixed, and a long term
solution,  there are not yet too many XO-1s out there that they could
in-time upgrade.  As it stands, it is quite easy to envisage in 5 years
time there being little support for the XO-1.

...but why support the 1.5 if XO-2 does the same thing again?  Upgrading
the base spec every few years leads to the depreciation of the system as
support for the older spec declines.  Ultimately that means you are
asking(whether you realise it or not) for people to buy a new system
every few years.  
 
Incidentally,  Does anyone have a cost breakdown of the XO-1.5,
Cheaper, the same, more expensive? I assume someone knows this.  Is it
something us mere mortals are allowed to know?


[well that was a post of two halves]



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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-18 Thread Neil Graham
On Sun, 2009-05-17 at 13:54 +0200, Martin Langhoff wrote:

> Work on getting a top-notch polished $desktop on it, and continued
> mantainership behind it, and it'll definitely be an option. It's
> reasonably easy to get desktops "going", but good polish making it
> suitable for end users takes a ton of detailed, subtle work.

+1 that +1.

I've been working on a ROX setup. It's quite a good fit since it follows
the application-directory model so doesn't need to muck with the
underlying OS or have extras installed as an even scattering of files
throughout the fileSystem.

It's been working a while but there's a heap of work to do to make it
nice.  I'll advocate people using it if and when it's good enough that
people go 'Hey! Can I run that too'

Things to make it nice for XO usage

4 paged desktops using the Square, Dot, DotDotDot and
DotDotDotDotDotDotDotDotDot buttons.
Contents of desktops divided by interaction style. 
(the division is not forced, but guided)
A) computer -> brain  (web browser/ book reader/ videos/
 help documentation for (B) )
B) brain <-> computer (word processor/ Paint/ Coding/  
C) Stuff I have(Apps to run, File views) 
D) quick utilities  (things that the user interacts with on a short-term
basis,  calculator, network view,  clock, battery monitor etc.)  

The frame button has been appropriated to toggle the active window
into(and from) fullscreen-undecorated.  This works a treat when you want
to get down to work.  

I'm playing with screenlets as system that can aid Desktop (D),
My daughter likes the fact that she has a clock with her
name on it that she can move around. Screenlets have the potential
to be quite kid friendly.

Performance wise they are ok on an XO-1, because most don't do
a lot of hard work.  Hard to day when it comes to memory. Python
is already floating around.

A lot of this stuff becomes a lot easier with an XO-1.5, but as I
expressed when it was first announced,  I'm concerned that it has the
potential to reduce support for the XO-1.  This seems to have happened
with the announced software plan.  I'd be OK with this if there was a
firm line drawn to say that the 1.5 spec was fixed, and a long term
solution,  there are not yet too many XO-1s out there that they could
in-time upgrade.  As it stands, it is quite easy to envisage in 5 years
time there being little support for the XO-1.

...but why support the 1.5 if XO-2 does the same thing again?  Upgrading
the base spec every few years leads to the depreciation of the system as
support for the older spec declines.  Ultimately that means you are
asking(whether you realise it or not) for people to buy a new system
every few years.  
 
Incidentally,  Does anyone have a cost breakdown of the XO-1.5,
Cheaper, the same, more expensive? I assume someone knows this.  Is it
something us mere mortals are allowed to know?


[well that was a post of two halves]


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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-17 Thread K. K. Subramaniam
On Saturday 16 May 2009 10:48:18 pm Mitch Bradley wrote:
> The reason why people haven't seen a public discussion about the
> F11/Gnome thing is because the decision was made internally within OLPC
> (the hardware organization - not Sugar Labs).  OLPC has to ship
> something on the hardware that we deliver to our volume customers.  By
> far our largest volume comes from the large scale deployments in some
> South American countries, so those customers influence us far more than
> anybody else, and especially more than the diffuse "community
Thanks for the clarification. The choice for pre-load for S-A market makes good 
sense. I suppose once we get enough machines out and the form factor spreads 
to more countries, more options will emerge.

Subbu

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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-17 Thread Martin Langhoff
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:18 PM, Mitch Bradley  wrote:

> Within OLPC, there are proponents/enthusiasts for other distros and
> window managers (your humble correspondent being one).  So it's not like
> it was a Fedora/Gnome juggernaut.  But the people within OLPC who are
> doing the actual work - and whose butts are on the line for delivering
> the result on schedule - decided that the F11/Gnome approach had the
> highest probability of getting us from where we are now


+1. This also means that people advocating XFCE and KDE have the door wide
open to switch from advocating to building a highly polished spin for 1.5
integrating their desktop of choice.

Right now, the shortage of hands to do things is a major factor. If Fedora
generally works on 1.5, Gnome will Just Work with no (or minimal) additional
effort or QA from us.

Work on getting a top-notch polished $desktop on it, and continued
mantainership behind it, and it'll definitely be an option. It's reasonably
easy to get desktops "going", but good polish making it suitable for end
users takes a ton of detailed, subtle work.

cheers,


m
-- 
martin.langh...@gmail.com
mar...@laptop.org -- School Server Architect
- ask interesting questions
- don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
- http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Mitch Bradley
The reason why people haven't seen a public discussion about the 
F11/Gnome thing is because the decision was made internally within OLPC 
(the hardware organization - not Sugar Labs).  OLPC has to ship 
*something* on the hardware that we deliver to our volume customers.  By 
far our largest volume comes from the large scale deployments in some 
South American countries, so those customers influence us far more than 
anybody else, and especially more than the diffuse "community".

We have committed to deliver new hardware on an aggressive schedule.  We 
have chosen to focus our internal software resources on one specific 
distro/environment, for pragmatic reasons.  That does not preclude the 
community from porting/promoting/supporting other distros/environments, 
but OLPCs ability and willingness to support such efforts in the early 
stages will be very limited, as we barely have enough resources to do 
the one thing on the schedule that our customers expect/demand.

Within OLPC, there are proponents/enthusiasts for other distros and 
window managers (your humble correspondent being one).  So it's not like 
it was a Fedora/Gnome juggernaut.  But the people within OLPC who are 
doing the actual work - and whose butts are on the line for delivering 
the result on schedule - decided that the F11/Gnome approach had the 
highest probability of getting us from where we are now (which is on a 
Fedora build using Fedora methodologies with strong relationships to 
some important helpers in the Fedora community) to where we need to be 
(a featureful distro that has the the right package versions to work 
with Sugar 0.84, running on new hardware) in the time we have available 
(a few months) with the developer resources that we are sure we can 
count on.

The decision was made, by a specific group of people within the OLPC 
organization, about how they would spend _their_ time in order to 
accomplish a defined customer-related goal on a defined schedule.  The 
decision was made with knowledge and consideration of alternatives.  It 
was not a community/public decision since it is not the 
community/public's time that is being committed.

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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Bobby Powers
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 7:45 AM, Christoph Wickert
 wrote:
> I'm afraid with Gnome installed by default there won't be much space
> left to install anything else.

The DebXO Gnome install size is ~ 1.5 GB, which would leave 2.5 GB or
~ 60% free disk space. (Remember this whole discussion is about the XO
1.5)

bp
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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Walter Bender
I'll ask Adam, the OLPC employee who is at the meeting. He may know.

-walter

On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Christoph Wickert
 wrote:
> Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 08:48 -0400 schrieb Walter Bender:
>> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Christoph Wickert
>>  wrote:
>> > Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 12:58 +0100 schrieb Peter Robinson:
>> >> >> >> We have some good news:  OLPC has decided to base its software 
>> >> >> >> release
>> >> >> >> for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11.  Unlike previous releases, 
>> >> >> >> we
>> >> >> >> plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but 
>> >> >> >> giving
>> >> >> >> users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.
>> >> >> >
>> >> >> > If you say "OLPC has decided" I wonder who exactly made this decision
>> >> >> > and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to 
>> >> >> > the
>> >> >> > relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever?
>> >> >>
>> >> >> I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is
>> >> >> being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France.
>>
>> FWIW, this decision was made through an OLPC-driven process. Those of
>> us attending Sugar Camp read about it and while some of us have
>> participated in discussions on IRC and mailing lists, it is not being
>> discussed/decided here.
>
> So where then? What mailing lists? What OLPC-driven process? This all
> sounds mysterious to me.
>
>> BTW, it is great to have occasional face-to-face meetings. It is a
>> high-bandwidth medium of exchange. But our decisions are made in
>> public forums.
>
> Great, but I still don't know where these forums are and how I can
> follow the process of decision-making.
>
>> -walter
>
> Regards,
> Christoph
>
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http://www.sugarlabs.org
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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Christoph Wickert
Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 08:48 -0400 schrieb Walter Bender:
> On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Christoph Wickert
>  wrote:
> > Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 12:58 +0100 schrieb Peter Robinson:
> >> >> >> We have some good news:  OLPC has decided to base its software 
> >> >> >> release
> >> >> >> for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11.  Unlike previous releases, we
> >> >> >> plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but 
> >> >> >> giving
> >> >> >> users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > If you say "OLPC has decided" I wonder who exactly made this decision
> >> >> > and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the
> >> >> > relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever?
> >> >>
> >> >> I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is
> >> >> being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France.
> 
> FWIW, this decision was made through an OLPC-driven process. Those of
> us attending Sugar Camp read about it and while some of us have
> participated in discussions on IRC and mailing lists, it is not being
> discussed/decided here.

So where then? What mailing lists? What OLPC-driven process? This all
sounds mysterious to me.

> BTW, it is great to have occasional face-to-face meetings. It is a
> high-bandwidth medium of exchange. But our decisions are made in
> public forums.

Great, but I still don't know where these forums are and how I can
follow the process of decision-making.

> -walter

Regards,
Christoph

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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Walter Bender
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 8:08 AM, Christoph Wickert
 wrote:
> Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 12:58 +0100 schrieb Peter Robinson:
>> >> >> We have some good news:  OLPC has decided to base its software release
>> >> >> for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11.  Unlike previous releases, we
>> >> >> plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving
>> >> >> users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.
>> >> >
>> >> > If you say "OLPC has decided" I wonder who exactly made this decision
>> >> > and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the
>> >> > relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever?
>> >>
>> >> I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is
>> >> being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France.

FWIW, this decision was made through an OLPC-driven process. Those of
us attending Sugar Camp read about it and while some of us have
participated in discussions on IRC and mailing lists, it is not being
discussed/decided here.

BTW, it is great to have occasional face-to-face meetings. It is a
high-bandwidth medium of exchange. But our decisions are made in
public forums.

-walter

-- 
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Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Christoph Wickert
Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 12:58 +0100 schrieb Peter Robinson:
> >> >> We have some good news:  OLPC has decided to base its software release
> >> >> for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11.  Unlike previous releases, we
> >> >> plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving
> >> >> users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.
> >> >
> >> > If you say "OLPC has decided" I wonder who exactly made this decision
> >> > and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the
> >> > relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever?
> >>
> >> I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is
> >> being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France.
> >
> > I have to admit that face to face conversations are often more
> > productive than mailing lists, but the downside is that decisions are
> > harder to comprehend.
> >
> >> The
> >> good thing about it being based on Fedora 11 it will be easy to
> >> install XFCE/KDE or what ever each specific deployment wish to use
> >> with a simple yum command.
> >
> > I'm afraid with Gnome installed by default there won't be much space
> > left to install anything else.
> >
> >> I suspect the reason for the choice of
> >> gnome is due to the massive cross over of sub systems between gnome
> >> and sugar. Many of the underlying systems used in sugar are also
> >> components of gnome. Some of these include
> >> empathy/gstreamer/evince/abiword/totem etc which will reduce the
> >> duplication of duplicate packages required to support both UIs and
> >> hence the amount of engineering required by smaller OLPC/sugar teams.
> >
> > Same goes for Xfce. gstreamer for example is not a Gnome thing. It
> > started that way but the gstreamer devs always point out that it's a
> > generic framework. Abiword or gnumeric are not really Gnome ether, they
> > only use some Gnome libs but don't need a Gnome desktop. So if this
> > really was the line of thought, IMHO it's a little weak.
> 
> I wasn't part of the discussions, nor am I interested in a flame war
> about the pros and cons of the various desktop environments.

So am I. Sorry if me previous mail sounded like that. I don't want flame
wars, but we should be able to discuss advantages and downsides of
different desktops to the purpose.

>  I'm also
> well aware that gstreamer is a generic framework. I have no idea what
> media framework XFCE uses, I know KDE doesn't use gstreamer which in
> the KDE case would require having 2 multimedia frameworks installed.

Xfce uses gstreamer, so duplication wouldn't be a problem.

> Same goes for a word processing package etc etc. My point wasn't
> whether any of the packages were GNOME or not my point was that both
> Sugar and GNOME share a number of underlying components such as
> gstreamer/glib/gtk etc which means its easier to support the two
> platforms by not needing the time to ship/QA/deal with bugs going
> forward multiple underlying frameworks and libraries.

Same goes for Xfce, same stack: glibc, gtk, gstreamer etc.

$ rpm -qa --requires \*sugar\* | sort | uniq | grep gnome
gnome-python2-gnomevfs  
gnome-python2-libwnck  
gnome-python2-rsvg  
$

As you can see Sugar itself does not have much underlying gnome
components, but Gnome would pull all that stuff in.

>  But again I make
> the point I'm not part of the discussions of the choice, but was
> merely making an observation as to what might have been one of the
> factors of making the choice.

No problem Peter, thanks a lot for your answers. Maybe someone else can
share some details with us?

> Peter

Kind regards,
Christoph

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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Peter Robinson
>> >> We have some good news:  OLPC has decided to base its software release
>> >> for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11.  Unlike previous releases, we
>> >> plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving
>> >> users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.
>> >
>> > If you say "OLPC has decided" I wonder who exactly made this decision
>> > and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the
>> > relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever?
>>
>> I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is
>> being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France.
>
> I have to admit that face to face conversations are often more
> productive than mailing lists, but the downside is that decisions are
> harder to comprehend.
>
>> The
>> good thing about it being based on Fedora 11 it will be easy to
>> install XFCE/KDE or what ever each specific deployment wish to use
>> with a simple yum command.
>
> I'm afraid with Gnome installed by default there won't be much space
> left to install anything else.
>
>> I suspect the reason for the choice of
>> gnome is due to the massive cross over of sub systems between gnome
>> and sugar. Many of the underlying systems used in sugar are also
>> components of gnome. Some of these include
>> empathy/gstreamer/evince/abiword/totem etc which will reduce the
>> duplication of duplicate packages required to support both UIs and
>> hence the amount of engineering required by smaller OLPC/sugar teams.
>
> Same goes for Xfce. gstreamer for example is not a Gnome thing. It
> started that way but the gstreamer devs always point out that it's a
> generic framework. Abiword or gnumeric are not really Gnome ether, they
> only use some Gnome libs but don't need a Gnome desktop. So if this
> really was the line of thought, IMHO it's a little weak.

I wasn't part of the discussions, nor am I interested in a flame war
about the pros and cons of the various desktop environments. I'm also
well aware that gstreamer is a generic framework. I have no idea what
media framework XFCE uses, I know KDE doesn't use gstreamer which in
the KDE case would require having 2 multimedia frameworks installed.
Same goes for a word processing package etc etc. My point wasn't
whether any of the packages were GNOME or not my point was that both
Sugar and GNOME share a number of underlying components such as
gstreamer/glib/gtk etc which means its easier to support the two
platforms by not needing the time to ship/QA/deal with bugs going
forward multiple underlying frameworks and libraries. But again I make
the point I'm not part of the discussions of the choice, but was
merely making an observation as to what might have been one of the
factors of making the choice.

Peter
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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Christoph Wickert
Am Samstag, den 16.05.2009, 12:05 +0100 schrieb Peter Robinson:
> >> We have some good news:  OLPC has decided to base its software release
> >> for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11.  Unlike previous releases, we
> >> plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving
> >> users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.
> >
> > If you say "OLPC has decided" I wonder who exactly made this decision
> > and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the
> > relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever?
> 
> I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is
> being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France. 

I have to admit that face to face conversations are often more
productive than mailing lists, but the downside is that decisions are
harder to comprehend.

> The
> good thing about it being based on Fedora 11 it will be easy to
> install XFCE/KDE or what ever each specific deployment wish to use
> with a simple yum command. 

I'm afraid with Gnome installed by default there won't be much space
left to install anything else.

> I suspect the reason for the choice of
> gnome is due to the massive cross over of sub systems between gnome
> and sugar. Many of the underlying systems used in sugar are also
> components of gnome. Some of these include
> empathy/gstreamer/evince/abiword/totem etc which will reduce the
> duplication of duplicate packages required to support both UIs and
> hence the amount of engineering required by smaller OLPC/sugar teams.

Same goes for Xfce. gstreamer for example is not a Gnome thing. It
started that way but the gstreamer devs always point out that it's a
generic framework. Abiword or gnumeric are not really Gnome ether, they
only use some Gnome libs but don't need a Gnome desktop. So if this
really was the line of thought, IMHO it's a little weak.

> Peter

Regards,
Christoph

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Re: Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Peter Robinson
>> We have some good news:  OLPC has decided to base its software release
>> for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11.  Unlike previous releases, we
>> plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving
>> users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.
>
> If you say "OLPC has decided" I wonder who exactly made this decision
> and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the
> relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever?

I suspect (and the same goes for the post about KDE) that it was/is
being discussed at the SugarCamp currently taking place in France. The
good thing about it being based on Fedora 11 it will be easy to
install XFCE/KDE or what ever each specific deployment wish to use
with a simple yum command. I suspect the reason for the choice of
gnome is due to the massive cross over of sub systems between gnome
and sugar. Many of the underlying systems used in sugar are also
components of gnome. Some of these include
empathy/gstreamer/evince/abiword/totem etc which will reduce the
duplication of duplicate packages required to support both UIs and
hence the amount of engineering required by smaller OLPC/sugar teams.

Peter
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Why not Xfce? (was: Re: The XO-1.5 software plan.)

2009-05-16 Thread Christoph Wickert
Am Freitag, den 15.05.2009, 16:17 -0400 schrieb Chris Ball:
> We have some good news:  OLPC has decided to base its software release
> for the new XO-1.5 laptop on Fedora 11.  Unlike previous releases, we
> plan to use a full Fedora desktop build, booting into Sugar but giving
> users the option to switch into a standard GNOME install instead.

If you say "OLPC has decided" I wonder who exactly made this decision
and when/if it was discussed in public. Can you please point us to the
relevant mails, meeting minutes, irc logs or whatever?

After Subbu threw his head into the ring for KDE I'd like to do the same
for Xfce.
  * First of all both Gnome and KDE are horribly slow on the XO,
Xfce on the other hand is much more lightweight and therefore
runs much better.
  * Xfce already runs on the XO and it's well documented in the OLPC
wiki.
  * Xfce uses much less disk space. For example, with Fedora's
base-x group installed the normal Xfce groupinstall will only
take ~22 MB while Gnome is ~ 180MB.
  * Xfce has a kiosk mode to lock down certain desktop settings.
This might become very useful.
  * Xfce has far less strings to translate than other desktop
environments. Also they use transifex for translations, which
enables many people participate in localization. Transifex also
has a cli, so people in countries  with slow internet connection
don't need to run the full blown web interface.
  * Xfce uses gtk2, so it fits well with Sugar and killer apps like
Firefox, OOo or Gimp.
  * Xfce 4.6 has a nice release schedule. I have to admit they are
not always on time, but it's predictable and won't cause us so
much work so we can focus on other things
  * Xfce has a short dependency chain, so the sugar users don't need
to carry a big stack of libs they don't use anyway.

Ok, I'll stop here. I'm sure I missed some arguments and I'm also aware
of the fact that Xfce may have downsides compared to Gnome or KDE, but I
think it's at least worth giving it a try. I'd like to invite all of you
to try Xfce 4.6.1 in Fedora 11.

Kind regards,
Christoph

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