Applications selection discussion....

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wed, 2008-09-03 at 15:06 -0400, Jim Gettys wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-09-03 at 14:50 -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
> > On Wed, 2008-09-03 at 11:08 -0400, Jim Gettys wrote:
> > > 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. 
> > 
> > So, the thing is, rather than trying to think about a bazillion
> > different spins that each largely replicate decisions that already have
> > to be made in other situations, I think there's instead a lot of value
> > in just ensuring that a user with a G1G1 can just download *any* spin of
> > Fedora, put it on a USB stick/SD card and use it.
> 
> Yes, but right now, the requisite kernel support is not available.

Based on the previous discussion -- all the big bits are upstream now
and just a matter of config, no?  Yes, maybe it's not as "perfect" of a
kernel in that there are some fixes which have not yet made it upstream,
but either
a) they're not critical or
b) if they're important, carrying a critical fix in the Fedora kernel is
doable as long as its being pushed upstream at the same time

> Nor will any existing spin fit in 1GB of internal flash.

We fit on 700 meg CDs, so it's definitely doable.  There's nothing that
would fundamentally prevent the way we do things for the cds to also
function off of jffs2.  Two different compressions is kind of silly,
though.  

Also, I did state "off of a USB stick or SD card".  I actually think
that in a lot of ways, that's better because it means that we can not
worry about using any of the built-in flash leaving all of it for use
with Sugar and then wanting to run a joyride build, etc.

> > > Fonts
> > > We'll need to sort through a lot of these and nuke a lot 
> > > of bitmap and other fonts (e.g. type1, etc).
> > 
> > The default font set that's being installed now should be pretty
> > reasonable.  If not, letting someone from the fonts SIG know would be a
> > lot better than just pulling haphazardly.
> 
> Sure...  But it looks like there is a significant amount of space to be
> had.
> 
> /usr/share/fonts# du
[snip]
> 13600	.
> 
> The Type1 renderer we have is terrible, and the bitmap fonts are antique
> and not used by any current modern Linux application.  Some fallbacks
> need to exist, however.

As I said, though -- rather than just pulling from a spin that's
specific to the OLPC, let's work with the people on the font SIG.  If
they're not needed on the OLPC, there's a pretty good chance they're not
needed in other cases as well.  Then we can have the efforts benefit all
of Fedora (freeing up 13 megs means more space for apps on the regular
livecds too) rather than just something done off in OLPC-land

> > > 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?
> > 
> > Claws is just an obsolete version of Sylpheed that's basically not
> > maintained anymore iirc.  Balsa is ...  not good.
> 
> I think you have it backwards; sylpheed-claws was the predecessor to
> claws, and is not maintained anymore.  Sylpheed seems less developed.

Err, yes -- I need more caffeine clearly.  The point about the maturity
of the app stands :)  

> > > 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 don't have cups-libs, you don't have GTK+.  So a) really isn't an
> > option.  This might work, but owuld need someone testing
> 
> cups-libs certainly has to exist; but it's a gnome print dependency
> rather than GTK+, just to be pedantic.

No, GTK+ provides printing widgets and directly uses libcups as of GTK+
2.10.

> > > 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....
> > 
> > cheese should be the answer here.  And if it's not good enough, file
> > bugs/fix it.  
> 
> Presuming dependencies are tolerable, let's go for it.

It didn't end up pulling anything beyond itself into the live images
when I added it a month or two ago, so it should be good.  That's
actually one of the nice things about it

Jeremy