Discuss application use-cases in Lucid UNE

Registered by Steve Kowalik

It is felt that Ubuntu Netbook Edition provides too many applications by default, so this specification is about discussing the use cases we want to support, and which applications are needed to provide that.

Blueprint information

Status:
Complete
Approver:
Rick Spencer
Priority:
Medium
Drafter:
Didier Roche-Tolomelli
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
Didier Roche-Tolomelli
Definition:
Approved
Series goal:
Accepted for lucid
Implementation:
Implemented
Milestone target:
milestone icon lucid-alpha-3
Started by
Rick Spencer
Completed by
Martin Pitt

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

Another Update - rickspencer3 [2010-02-11]
All in all it seems that users and community members would really prefer that we ship OOo for the editing suite. We discussed a bit in #ubuntu-desktop this morning and decided that we should probably switch back to OOo, which we will do on Monday if we don't hear anything that makes us change our minds again. We'll do a proper app selection session at next UDS.

Decision from feedbacks:
After discussing with rickspencer3: as user feedback has not been good on removing completely an office suite on UNE, we'll try adding abiword and gnumeric which are great lightweight tools for docs and tabular. We will still try to investigate on additional online tools.

Work Items:
Change seeds according to application selection determined below: DONE
gwibber MIR: DONE
fix "search for files" in app menu: DONE
change baobab to not show .desktop file: DONE
change ubuntu-netbook-default-settings to support a /etc/xdg/xdg-une/menus/applications.menu and settings.menu: DONE
change xdg-une/menus/applications.menu and settings.menu to hide dictionary, brasero, print job management, screenshot, log system viewer: DONE

Work items for ubuntu-10.04-beta-1:
- sync gthumb to debian unstable to get last release working with automounting: DONE
- seed f-spot: DONE
- seed tomboy: DONE

-------------------------
Changes:
-> Hide CD/DVD creator -> DONE
-> Hide Disk Usage Analyzer (keep installed for "examine" button in low disk space notification) -> DONE
-> Hide print job management (available from panel applet) -> DONE
-> Hide Take screenshot (PrintScreen key) -> DONE
-> Hide dictionary -> DONE
-> Hide log system viewer -> DONE
-> Drop Tomboy - DONE
-> Drop gnomemines and add gbrainy - DONE
-> No Graphics, but install simple-scan -> DONE
-> Add gwibber -> DONE
-> No brasero -> Hide it
-> Add cheese - DONE
-> Remove PalmOS pilot - DONE
-> keep Firefox, we don't want to support Chromium in main, at least not yet for an LTS

-----
More generally:

remove Search for Files in Applications menu (already in places)

----
feedback:

[coreyburger] Dropping tomboy seems like a mistake. Tomboy is a brilliant little note taking app that can sync with Ubuntu One, exactly the kind of thing that people will be using their netbooks for; quick little notes that are shared into the cloud.
[rickspencer3]I want to presume that users will be typically using web based applications and not using their netbooks as work horses.
[flamingolof] I agree that tomboy has an excellent use case on netbooks, but how about replacing it with gnote. That might get rid of the mono dependencies if nothing else is using it. The main problem here is if gnote syncs with Ubuntu one
[asac] how about dropping OOO and evolution - we will probably do for the armel variant ... ?
[zhengpenghou] if we keep them on x86, then why shall we drop them from arm? the concept of smartbook is almost the same thing as atom based netbook. I'm wondering how come out such a spec.

[djsiegel] Yikes, removing all of OpenOffice seems like a terrible idea. It's true
that people probably aren't creating new documents, spreadsheets, or
presentations, but they certainly are downloading and opening them;
also, netbooks are really popular in universities these days, and
students certainly need to be able to open PowerPoint and Word files.
If removing OOo means MS Office files cannot easily be opened (by double-clicking in Nautilus), this is a big -1
[MarioVukelic] djsiegel, why is it "true that people probably aren't creating new documents ..."??? My wife takes her netbook to university and definitely creates new documents. Can't imagine that this is so unusual. Also, as a just-user I'm with Corey about removing Tomboy. Overall, most of the dropped applications are used by my wife all the time (quite typical UNR/netbook user I would think, non-geek, university student). I wonder where the blueprint's text came from, "It is felt that Ubuntu Netbook Edition provides too many applications by default". Felt by whom?
And one more thing: what about the Ubuntu promise, "Ubuntu core applications are all free and open source"?
[konradmb] I agree with djsiegel at all
[asac] not sure if anyone wants to remove OOO from non-arm builds; anyway, for arm we a few integratoin levels that can be realized based on how much time we have. One of the easier ones is to auto import docs etc. into gdocs if you double click on it using libgdata and then opening the browser with the right url.

[rickspencer3][2010-02-08]
Whoa - lots of requests for feedback and such.

So, first, please note that we made this suggestion on the white board specifically so that we could get feedback from the community and users. So we are absolutely considering that feedback.

Note that I am a heavy heavy netbook user, and I find OOo to not work so well due to be being slow and also not sized well for any of my netbooks. I also thought that perhaps the document editing scenario was not too important to users so then we could kind of treat it as a secondary thing, and not clog up downloading the iso and updates with OOo.

It's clear that folks want local non-web based document editing capabilities. I think we should try gumeric and abiword by default, and then those who want OOo apps can install just the ones they need later. Note that abiword is not currently in Main, but we could probably fix that.

Also, if I accidentally deleted your feedback when trying to respond to your request for feedback, I apologize.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who helped by providing thoughtful comments and feedback regarding the proposal.

[rickspencer3][2010-02-08]
Also, I wonder if we should bring tomboy back. I think the U1 integration makes it more useful, but it does cause mono to come back, which also takes up room.

In terms of removing screen capture, you can still hit "Print Screen" to take a screen shot, but it seems to not support common netbook scenarios, so was just taking up room on the menus. I think you can get to it from the command line using a "-i" switch or something if you want to use the interactive dialog.
[MarioVukelic][2010-02-09]
In response to rickspencer3: AFAICT bringing Tomboy back would not cause mono to come back, because mono was never gone due to gbrainy having been added, which depends on mono. Or maybe I'm missing something (delete me in this case :)

[didrocks][2010-02-11]
FYI, we removed gbrainy last week from the seed because of mono :)

[MarioVukelic][2010-02-11]
I see. 2 days ago the whiteboard still read:
" -> Drop Tomboy - DONE
  -> Drop gnomemines and add gbrainy - DONE" (note: add)
[CoreyBurger][2010-02-12]
If you are bringing OO.o back, then bring back Tomboy. I guess I fundamentally disagree that size is a barrier to people trying UNE anyway.

[didrocks][2010-03-03]
Reseeding tomboy for ubuntu one integration. Consequently, no gain to have gthumb back (mono is already there) as it needs a lot of patching to fit well into . Too risky for an LTS and good to have the same component for importing photo than traditional desktop. Let's discuss that during UDS for lucid+1 and have feedback there.

(?)

Work Items