GNOME dependencies

[Giuseppe Torelli]

On 8/9/07, Jani Monoses <jani.monoses at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are two problems with having separate GTK apps (not GNOME ones built without GNOME libs)
>  - duplication of effort. We would be better off if some apps were comaintained with Ubuntu.

So why does Xubuntu came to existence? Only to be shipped with XFCE?
Come on Jani!

>  - the GTK apps are usually less featureful and less actively maintained (ex: xfburn, xarchiver)

You are wrong here Jani. I'm actively developing Xarchiver after only
4 months of inactivity as anyone can realize by looking at the svn
log.

> So we would gain by starting to use some GNOME apps while keeping Xfce core obviously. But we'd give up
> some space on the CD (maybe not that bad) some memory and startup times. These will not help in making
> Xubuntu lighter. That characterization has only been true when compared to GNOME or KDE though, with
> python running in the base system (hplip daemon for HP printers ), firefox in the mix and the liveCD no longer
> installing iwth 128M it is not really a light distro anymore.

If there is no time to replace the heavy apps shipped with gnome libs
I think it is better to give up than simply copying the same app into
a distro that differentiate itself from the main Ubuntu because of its
being lighter.

> So we have a choice of keeping it like now, only small GTK only apps and let the user add whatever else she needs
> or start making a more complete and maintainable default at the cost of making it too heavy for some hw configurations.

Xubuntu came up to be lighter than Ubuntu. If we begin using apps that
require GNOME libs Xubuntu will become equal to Ubuntu even though it
will be shipped with XFCE.

> And by this I do not mean CD size or startup time or even short term memory use, those will probably not make much of a difference
> but long running processes. Do we want gnome-power-manager and network-manager? IS Xubuntu widely used on laptops and wifi setups?
> Do we want update-notifier (I am sure we do). All these are continually running and each eats up somewhere around 3-4 megs of RAM.

I think if one starts a project up does the impossible to keep it
growing. Let's unify the efforts and replace those Ubuntu apps which
still need gnome dependencies.

> The printing applet which is the default since feisty is also always running and is a python app, 4-5 megs probably.

The printing applet is buggy on my newly fresh installed Xubuntu Feisty:
gt[~]$ sudo python /usr/share/system-config-printer/applet.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/system-config-printer/applet.py", line 425, in <module>
    bus = dbus.SessionBus()
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/dbus/_dbus.py", line 669, in __new__
    mainloop=mainloop)
  File "/var/lib/python-support/python2.5/dbus/_dbus.py", line 293, in __new__
    mainloop=mainloop)
dbus.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Did not
receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did
not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply,
the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
gt[~]$

-- 
Colossus
Xarchiver, a Linux GTK+2 only archive manager - http://xarchiver.xfce.org