As the following touches many topics, please reply suitably modifying the subject line.
I'd like to start a discussion about what applications set to include on a spin targeted at G1G1 purchasers looking for a "conventional" laptop. Daniel Drake's initial experiments make it seem like with care a Gnome desktop is usable, which is a much more polished environment than xfce (which while smaller, is much more of a hacker's system), if one is careful on app selection. Having said that, if someone wants to do an xfce spin too, that is not a bad thing to have in one's hip pocket.
For the basic spin, we'll have very limited flash, and should not presume the use of swap (so RAM matters too).
Here's some things that I think are a given (note that others are very open to discussion)...
Remember: we have a zero-sum game here. Everything we put in, requires we take things out... The question will just be what to take out, and how much work it will require to do any needed repackaging...
Toolkit stack -------------
GTK+/Pango/cairo toolkit for UI applications (for I18N and Sugar compatibility)
ATK, but only as an option (it pulls in some of the more objectionable bonobo dependencies at the moment).
Avoid Mono libraries in basic load (footprint)
Window Manager -------------- Metacity
Definite outs -------------
Open Office (too big basic footprint; users can load if they want/need it) Evolution (Oink, Oink)
Graphics drivers for everyone else's hardware: these add up
Fonts We'll need to sort through a lot of these and nuke a lot of bitmap and other fonts (e.g. type1, etc).
Extra themes
Extra Wallpaper
Some icon sizes, those generally used at 72DPI.
Basic apps and accessories ==========================
Panel Applications Accessories Archive Manager (dependencies?) Calculator Character map Screen shot Text editor Games What games? Can we afford the gnome assortment, or must we repackage for size reasons? Download size is only a bit over 1 meg compressed bz2, so I'm tempted to include them all. Graphics Some camera app for the camera (see below) Some image viewer. (see below) Internet Mail client (see below) Firefox RSS reader (see below) Instant message program (see below) Office Abiword Gnumeric Sound and Video Totem Rythymbox (see below???) Pulseaudio volume control? Sound recorder System tools Disk Management File Browser SE Linux stuff (can we afford SELinux????) System Log System Monitor Terminal Panel->System Preferences Personal About Me File Management Keyboard Shortcuts Preferred Applications (dependencies may kill us). Sessions Look and Feel Appearance Main Menu Screen Saver Windows Internet and Network Network Proxy Hardware Default Printer (see below) Keyboard Mouse Sound Volume Control Systems Authorizations (????) Power Management System Update
Administration Add/Remove Software Date & Time Firewall (?) Language Network Network Device Control Printing (see below) SELinux Management (if we can afford SELinux....) Services Software Sources Update System
Applets Custom app launcer Application Launcer Character Palette Clock (if we don't get screwed by the cities data) Command Line Disk Mounter Drawer? (does anyone use these?????) Force Quit Lock Screen Log out Main Menu Menu Bar Network Monitor Notification Area Run Application Separator Show Desktop Shutdown Sticky notes (Tomboy pulls in Mono, IIRC). Trash Volume control Window List Window Selector
Definite ins ------------ Gnumeric Abiword Firefox (some may question this, but I'm not yet sold on webkit) evince
Meta-packages ------------- I'd love to have a few metapackages to pull in a set of o Sugar!! (unless we squeeze enough to get in the base image, which is my first choice...) o regular games o educational games o graphics - (gimp, inkscape, others) o If we need to strip below where we would like to get olpc-update to be an installation path, a meta-package to pull in the rest of basic functionality. o accessibility
Questions =========
All these need to be vetted for size and dependencies!!!!!
1) mail client.... The logical candidates would include Thunderbird, Claws, Sylpheed, Balsa. Are there others? Sylpheed has poor docs. I'd be quite interested in Thunderbird, but right now, Thunderbird 2 is based on the old gecko engine, and won't make it in time, so would come at a higher cost of both flash and RAM footprint.
Possibilities I know of boil down to Claws and Balsa. Opinions?
2) RSS reader.... Claws has a plug in; Firefox can do it, but dunno how well; others?
3) Printing... Several options: a) none at all unless you yum install it b) default config cups client library only (no cups server); if you are in an IPP environment, you can then find a cups server (Linux or Mac) and use it, or could the last I tried (2.5 years ago) - any volunteers? This is literally like 1 file to configure and test (I had some trouble in the large MIT Media Lab environment when I tried it 2.5 years ago. c) minimal configuration of printer drivers for most popular printers - but who would do this work? Would be generally beneficial, however, to cull a lot of antique prs.inter d) full printing database - probably not feasible at all and would be best left to yum install.hat
4) What themes?
5) What camera application? Need something to demo the camera in the XO. This will likely need testing, as gstreamer/VFL2 seems immature in OLPC's experience....
6) what IM client? And don't suggest xchat ;-) Pidgin?
7) music player Rhythmbox? or something else? There are many to choose from.
8) Our screen is small, and the keyboard inappropriate for people with disabilities under many circumstances. I think we should keep accessibility out of the basic load if we can, to save space. But a meta package to pull in the usual stuff is well worthwhile, as the size and cost of the OLPC has in particular attracted the interest of people with certain classes of disabilities. I still worry about its memory footprint, however.
- Jim