Applications selection discussion....

Wed Sep 3 15:08:17 UTC 2008

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

-- 
Jim Gettys <jg at laptop.org>
One Laptop Per Child