[ubuntu-studio-devel] Pre-Installed Application Review (effective for 20.10)

[Erich Eickmeyer]

Hi all,

So, first with the news: I'm done with the move and configuration of the
seed to KDE Plasma. If there's anything Xfce left, it's mostly remnants
at this point. Now, on to business.

In an effort to cut-down on application purpose duplication, we need to
review which applicationswe include by default.

First, I would like to start off with the video editors. Currently, we
have three applications that describe themselves as video editors:
pitivi, openshot, and kdenlive. At one point in time, these may have
served different purposes, but all three of them are video editors and
describe themselves as such. My recommendation is to drop pitivi and
openshot from the default install and use kdenlive as our video editor
for a number of reasons: 1) It's more feature-full, 2) It's KDE software
(by carrying Plasma we carry most of its libraries including the KDE
Frameworks), and 3) as a flavor for creative *professionals* we need to
be including the most professional software we can, and right now
Kdenlive fits that bill. If people need functionality that is in one of
the others, it's just a download away. The other objection I have for
keeping Openshot is that it has a nag button for the "latest" version,
which takes one to an appimage download, which isn't ideal.

You will notice I leave Blender out of that discussion because, while it
has video editing capabilities, it is primarily a 3D modeling and
animation application, and video editing is not its default
configuration. For this reason, we should leave Blender.

Len and I have discussed removing the Calf plugins from the default
install since lsp-plugins covers the things that Calf can do (and then
some), and Calf has a tendency to be prone to crashing when used in Ardour.

Gimp vs Krita: I recommend keeping both since, while both are equally
capable of each other's functions, each has a different target audience.
Whereas Gimp targets photo manipulation, Krita targets advanced
graphical art. We could lump MyPaint in with this as well, but as Eylul
has discussed with me, it fits a different niche altogether.

Brasero: I don't understand why we've been carrying this since Xfburn
was also installed. Now that we no longer carry Xfce, I recommend
changing that out for K3b since, once again, KDE, and since it is a
historically more powerful tool anyhow.

Darktable vs Rawtherapee: Both are RAW image manipulation applications,
with Darktable closely fitting the functionality of Adobe Lightroom. If
we had to pick just one, I'd say Darktable as it seems to be the more
professional of the two.

Additionally, while we haven't carried Shotwell in a number of years, I
think we could do with a photo catalog program. I think Digikam would be
a good addition since it has all sorts of plugins to enable people to
easily catalog their photos, including features such as facial
recognition and geolocation. I know as a photographer that kind of thing
makes my life millions of times easier.

With that, here's my recommendations so far (- means drop, + means add):

-pitivi
-openshot
-calf
-brasero
+k3b
-rawtherapee
+digikam

I'd love to hear thoughts about this, or other applications worth
dropping. Remember, our ISO is a whopping 3.4GB, which is a pretty hefty
download for some people. Also, believe it or not, that's only an
increase of 0.1 with Plasma.

And remember: this is a meritocracy, meaning those with the most
involvement in the project have the most sway. Those who simply follow
this mailing list without being otherwise involved have very little, if
any sway. This is in an effort to keep a potentially negative, yet vocal
minority from ruling.

Thanks,
Erich
----
Erich Eickmeyer
Project Leader
Ubuntu Studio

ubuntustudio.org



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