[SHIFT2] Default App Discussion

[threesixtyflip]

Hey guys and girls, apologies for the delay in any new posts coming through, work has been taking over my life atm :(

Right, now we have a few parts down, I suppose the next part to tackle is the default apps that we are going to include.

This should be, web browser, email client, IM, office, media player etc.

This thread is for proposals and discussion of what apps to use.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

Web browser: How about a browser ballot screen? Many people here on Neowin complain that Microsoft gets a bad rap for bundling a browser, why not provide a choice of several?

Email/IM: Aren't Evolution and Empathy parts of the Gnome set? Perhaps it would be wise to use those. That said, I'm an XFCE user so I could be wrong.

Office: LibreOffice

Media Player: VLC?

Others to consider:

• An option to install WINE during the install. Have an option during install for "Install Windows compatibility software" or something.
  
• Pulseaudio. Opinions are mixed on whether or not PulseAudio is any good, but I quite like it for its ease of use, also include the graphic equalizer plugin.
  
• Xfburn, or another CD burner software. This would probably be a detectable trait during install, so if a burner wasn't found, it could be omitted from the install process.
  

I wouldn't add much else, lest we start to make it a bloated distro.

[threesixtyflip]

Web browser: How about a browser ballot screen? Many people here on Neowin complain that Microsoft gets a bad rap for bundling a browser, why not provide a choice of several?

Email/IM: Aren't Evolution and Empathy parts of the Gnome set? Perhaps it would be wise to use those. That said, I'm an XFCE user so I could be wrong.

Office: LibreOffice

Media Player: VLC?

Others to consider:

• An option to install WINE during the install. Have an option during install for "Install Windows compatibility software" or something.
  
• Pulseaudio. Opinions are mixed on whether or not PulseAudio is any good, but I quite like it for its ease of use, also include the graphic equalizer plugin.
  
• Xfburn, or another CD burner software. This would probably be a detectable trait during install, so if a burner wasn't found, it could be omitted from the install process.
  

I wouldn't add much else, lest we start to make it a bloated distro.

Thanks for the suggestions, lets go through the points here:

• I do like the idea of a ballot screen, would put more choice to the user, which is always good (most of the time :p)
  
• Regarding Evolution and Empathy, it probably looks like those would be the ones to use, seeing as Thunderbird has been dropped now.
  
• I agree with LibreOffice, is there anything else even near good enough?
  
• VLC I love, so its in ;)
  
• As for the Wine suggestion, one of the goals is to get Mono and Wine working out of the box, so thats got ya covered there!
  
• Pulseaudio, I believe that will be a case for a team vote on that one. I personally don't know enough to make a decision so if anyone could shed some light would be brilliant.
  
• Having some sort of CD burning would be a good idea also.
  

Keeping down bloat is going to be one of the hard tasks, but it can be done.

[n_K]

Still waiting for the last part of my server to arrive before I can reconfigure everything to run from the new internet, when that happens I'll get onto a GUI :D

But yes I like the idea of ballot screens.

Pidgin gets my IM vote though, well, pidgin/finch.

[threesixtyflip]

Still waiting for the last part of my server to arrive before I can reconfigure everything to run from the new internet, when that happens I'll get onto a GUI :D

But yes I like the idea of ballot screens.

Pidgin gets my IM vote though, well, pidgin/finch.

Thanks for the update, ahh forgot about Pidgin!

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

How is Pidgin's integration with Gnome?

Couple more thoughts:

• NetworkManager would be good to include, a nice network GUI would be good and NetworkManager's applet satisfies IMO.
  
• Laptop tools for CPU scaling and that kind of thing (again, possibly automatically added through detection during install).
  

Are there any IRC chat logs available? My lack of internet access means I'm missing out on project progress!

[threesixtyflip]

There were some at the beginning, but I myself havent been on lately for work reasons :(

How long have you not got internet access for?

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

There were some at the beginning, but I myself havent been on lately for work reasons :(

How long have you not got internet access for?

Hopefully Orange are planning to have me up and running by Tuesday, and I'll hopefully be able to help out a lot more. I'm not moaning about a lack of chat logs, just thought I could catch up on any discussions if there were. Was someone not writing a bot to do it?

[threesixtyflip]

Hopefully Orange are planning to have me up and running by Tuesday, and I'll hopefully be able to help out a lot more. I'm not moaning about a lack of chat logs, just thought I could catch up on any discussions if there were. Was someone not writing a bot to do it?

Ahh thats good news :)

I dont know what was happening regarding the bot for that. I didnt know if we are even allowed to do that tbh.

[Noir Angel]

Personally i'd vote for chrome but I agree, a ballot would be a good idea. Most seem to just slap Firefox with their Linux distributions and I personally cannot stand Firefox. And preferably current versions of Chromium, not versions that are about 4 versions old like in the Ubuntu repositories.

[threesixtyflip]

Personally i'd vote for chrome but I agree, a ballot would be a good idea. Most seem to just slap Firefox with their Linux distributions and I personally cannot stand Firefox. And preferably current versions of Chromium, not versions that are about 4 versions old like in the Ubuntu repositories.

Well that is one of the good things about arch, its a rolling release, so it shouldn't be outdated very often.

[Matthew_Thepc]

Web browser: How about a browser ballot screen? Many people here on Neowin complain that Microsoft gets a bad rap for bundling a browser, why not provide a choice of several?

great idea :D let's definitely try to do this, but if we can't, Chrome would be the #1 choice for me because it comes bundled with auto-updating Flash. or maybe we could do a custom build of chromium? that would be boss :p

Email/IM: Aren't Evolution and Empathy parts of the Gnome set? Perhaps it would be wise to use those. That said, I'm an XFCE user so I could be wrong.

yeah, I think the are (or, at least they cane with my GNOME :p). They're pretty nice, but for Evolution I'd like to see a way just to read my email and have it never be deleted off of Hotmails servers, and for Empathy I can't seem to get it to connect to the Neowin IRC network O.O. What about Thunderbird for an email client?

Office: LibreOffice

or OpenOffice, I don't have much of a preference...but what about running Office Web Apps in chrome/border-less browser windows? that'd be cool, and pretty easy to do in C#.

Others to consider:

• An option to install WINE during the install. Have an option during install for "Install Windows compatibility software" or something
  

WINE AND MONO. I think it should be an opt-out thing to install WINE and Mono, it would just make app development for Shift2 so much easier. And what about a custom app store?

I wouldn't add much else, lest we start to make it a bloated distro.

agreed, I'd like to start it out with just the basics.

IMO, the most important part is WINE and Mono.

[threesixtyflip]

great idea :D let's definitely try to do this, but if we can't, Chrome would be the #1 choice for me because it comes bundled with auto-updating Flash. or maybe we could do a custom build of chromium? that would be boss :p

Chromium would probably be my choice as well. I don't believe that a ballot screen would be too hard to do, even if we do have to compromise and have a simple app load on first startup.

yeah, I think the are (or, at least they cane with my GNOME :p). They're pretty nice, but for Evolution I'd like to see a way just to read my email and have it never be deleted off of Hotmails servers, and for Empathy I can't seem to get it to connect to the Neowin IRC network O.O. What about Thunderbird for an email client?

Last time I heard Thunderbird support was getting dropped by Mozilla.

or OpenOffice, I don't have much of a preference...but what about running Office Web Apps in chrome/border-less browser windows? that'd be cool, and pretty easy to do in C#.

The only issue I would see with that is that it would require either a Live/Google account and is not always reliable offline. I do like the idea though, could always be an option for some people :)

WINE AND MONO. I think it should be an opt-out thing to install WINE and Mono, it would just make app development for Shift2 so much easier. And what about a custom app store?

Opt-out? No way! Integrated ftw ;)

But no, it would make things so much easier to have some Windows support.

agreed, I'd like to start it out with just the basics.

IMO, the most important part is WINE and Mono.

100% agree!

[ViperAFK]

Chromium would probably be my choice as well. I don't believe that a ballot screen would be too hard to do, even if we do have to compromise and have a simple app load on first startup.

Last time I heard Thunderbird support was getting dropped by Mozilla.

The only issue I would see with that is that it would require either a Live/Google account and is not always reliable offline. I do like the idea though, could always be an option for some people :)

Opt-out? No way! Integrated ftw ;)

But no, it would make things so much easier to have some Windows support.

100% agree!

Thunderbird is still under development, just no paid developers from mozilla.

[firey]

Chromium would probably be my choice as well. I don't believe that a ballot screen would be too hard to do, even if we do have to compromise and have a simple app load on first startup.

This would be super easy.. A Simple app with some pictures of a browser. At which point the user picks the one they want, then a simple apt-get install (or whatever we use) for that browser.

Also, with the WINE/Mono we can write/port some things if need be. Such as custom app store / downloader (as mentioned above). As well it gives us a lot more freedom for this customizability.

[Haggis Veteran]

I am not that good with graphics but i was bored

[ViperAFK]

I'd like to suggest viewnior as the default image viewer, opens significantly faster than eog and has very similar interface and features (also in the arch repos)

VLC sounds sensible for default video player.

Music: Rhythmbox? The new rhythmbox 2.97 release is actually pretty nice. Clementine would be my second suggestion.

Torrents: Transmission

Misc: gnome-tweak-tool, x-chat, system-config-printer-gnome

Instant messaging, gnome's included empathy does the job and integrates very well with gnome-shell, but I have found it lacking in some areas. I generally prefer pidgin, but it doesn't integrate with gnome-shell (there are some extensions for it but I've never used them)

Also I saw you guys voted gnome for the default DE, are you using gnome-shell or gnome-panel for the default interface? If you are using gnome-shell I'd reccomend some sensible high quality extensions in the default install:

Dash to dock: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/307/dash-to-dock/. Gives you a nice intellihiding, customizable dock. integrates very well with the rest of gnome-shell too.

Alternate status menu: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/5/alternative-status-menu/

Message Notifier: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/150/message-notifier/

Places Menu: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/8/places-status-indicator/

Media player indicator: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/55/media-player-indicator/

[Matthew_Thepc]

I am not that good with graphics but i was bored

looks good, but it would be nice if those install buttons looked a little less like the big shiny ones I see everytime I go to megashare.com or something :) also, it would be nice to have a "more options" button that would allow you to choose whether you want to be on the, for instance, Nightly, Beta, or Standard release channels for Firefox. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Chromium not include Flash like Chrome does? I think it would be nice to make the default just plain Chrome because it's bundled with Flash, and so less work done by the user in installing flash, but that's just me :)

[firey]

Well, I got Arch installed on VBox tonight, my first time actually trying it out. Learned quite a bit, and I definitely see room for us to make it more user friendly. I find I have a hard time getting files from the repo, it's very hit or miss as to if the files are there that I want. To even get chrome I had to download the Tar.GZ, then extract it, then I had to makepkg it, then I had to use pacman to install it. I got mono installed and working. I'll look at trying to write some stuff to automate what I had to go through for chrome for other apps.

Currently running Gnome3 as the DE.. and I must say I am not a fan at all.

[Haggis Veteran]

So you would select the browser you want then the next page would give you a choice of stable nightly etc

[firey]

So you would select the browser you want then the next page would give you a choice of stable nightly etc

I will write a mono version of this today. I want to write something to automate a manual install (tb extract, makepkg, pacman install). And will build this interface around it.

[Haggis Veteran]

Any joy? lol

[DGMurdockIII]

here are app i would have

Brower: Firefox

Email: Evolution or Geary http://yorba.org/geary/

IM: instantbird http://instantbird.com/

Office: LibreOffice

Media Player: VLC

Image Editer: Gimp

other software: Moonlight (Sliverlight for linux), Wine , playonlinux,

moonlight http://www.go-mono.com/moonlight/

please dont use pidgin have pidgin as a defult app for one there devs are very frendly user and dont give much support please take a look at iinstantbird there dev and user are very very frendly and it just works those dosent have as much features as pidgin yet but it getting there please check it out

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

I don't think it's worth bothering with Moonlight. It's unlikely to provide any significant benefit to end users given how rare Silverlight applications are.

Instantbird looks quite nice though, worth considering, but again how's it's integration with Gnome?

[threesixtyflip]

Been trying to get Arch to make a test LiveCD with some of the bits I did with my VM from my blog post.

Damn it is hard to find a proper way to do it, love Arch but really cant find a decent way to make an Installer/LiveCD :(