Call for testing empathy

[Jorge O. Castro]

On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 5:12 PM, Laurent Bigonville <bigon at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Empathy[1] will be part of the upcoming GNOME 2.24 desktop.
> The ubuntu desktop team considers using it instead of Pidgin for
> intrepid as default IM client.

Hi everyone,

I wanted to throw in my 2 cents since I've been using empathy since it
started being developed and have been using it since. I am currently
using the version in Intrepid.

>From a distro perspective:

 * Follows the GNOME release cycle - Now that empathy has been
included in GNOME we have a predictable schedule we can depend on.
 * Usage of existing GNOME infrastructure - GNOME bugzilla, etc. We
have good workflows with working with GNOME projects as far as patches
and bugs go.
 * Enthusiastic Ubuntu volunteers - The Telepathy PPA folk do a good
job of maintaining Empathy and shipping it out to users, this helps
get out new versions for testing.
 * Enthusiastic upstream - As you've seen already, Xavier is involved
in the discussion and addressing concerns about Empathy in Ubuntu.

>From a "Jorge the normal user" perspective:

 * Just Works voice - I was able to call someone using Gtalk and voice
just worked. I was also able to call someone on an N810 and it just
worked.
 * Simple - UI feels less cluttered and out of my way.
 * Notifications - sometimes I miss messages because I don't notice
the icon changing in the tray, perhaps some libnotify support that is
well thought out and not spammy might be worth investigating.
 * Brave New World - There's an adium theme branch in git which I
haven't gotten to try to build yet but it's nice that there is effort
going in this area to bring slicker interfaces to IM.
 * Brave New World II - Empathy is a good "gateway drug" to bringing
Telepathy to the desktop, and all those crazy whack ideas and features
that come along with it. It's been shipping on the Nokia devices for a
while, and it's about time we brought this voice/video awesomeness to
the GNOME desktop.

There are some rough edges, particularly the Video UI looks ugly and
other little things that could be fixed, but given the amount of
improvement that has gone into Empathy lately and the responsiveness
of upstream I am confident that they will be addressed.

On a related note: I would like to thank all the people reporting bugs
in launchpad: https://bugs.launchpad.net/empathy/+bugs - specifically
those of you taking the time to find the corresponding bug in GNOME
upstream and then making a link between Launchpad and Bugzilla. These
linkages are crucial in helping us determine which bugs are
Ubuntu-specific and which bugs we can send upstream that will help the
Empathy developers improve their software.

Cheers,

--
Jorge Castro
jorge (at) ubuntu.com
External Project Developer Relations
Canonical Ltd.