ubuntu-desktop metapackage - options?

[Björn Ottervik]

On Mon, 2007-01-01 at 10:46 +0100, Sebastian Heinlein wrote:
> On So, 2006-12-31 at 22:39 +0000, Alec Wright wrote:
> > Ok. Here's the situation. When you install Ubuntu, you might (like me)
> > not want Firefox, and prefer Epiphany instead. You might prefer mozilla
> > thunderbird over evolution, or BMPX over Rhythmbox. If you are one of
> > these people, you probably get rather annoyed that you have to keep
> > Firefox, Evolution and/or Rhythmbox, or remove ubuntu-desktop, hence not
> > receiving any updates to the desktop metapackage.
> > 
> > Here's the idea. The ubuntu-desktop metapacakge should allow different
> > options for the dependencies such as mozilla-firefox OR epiphany-browser
> > OR iceweasel, evolution OR mozill-thunderbird, rhythmbox OR bmpx etc
> > etc.
> > 
> > So what does everyone think? could this be acheived in fesity, or will
> > we have to wait until feisty+1?
> 
> The plan is to only recommend applications in the meta package. The
> desktop meta package will only depend on the basic desktop functions.
> 
> Recommends will be installed by default in the future.
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Sebastian
> 
> 

I agree that this would be the perfect compromize. The defaults could
still be installed upon install, but can easily be removed and replaced
without breaking the upgrade path.
Are there an serious shortcommings to this method, and it not, could it
be used for Feisty?

/Björn Ottervik