gnome apps

[Vincent]

On 31/01/2008, Jérôme Guelfucci <jerome.guelfucci at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I know I've not been very diplomatic. Well the point is that this
> mailing list DOESN'T represent the Xubuntu community. The decisions
> that were taken during the Gutsy development cycle were validated
> because you and two or three members of the mailing list wanted this,
> this is at least how I feel it.


Well, I think this list represents most people that want to be involved with
where Xubuntu is going, by helping in making decisions and contributing in
their field of expertise. Anyone can subscribe. That is the *community*.

Now, this list does not fully represent the *users*. Perhaps the users don't
like the direction Xubuntu is going, but they can either contribute (i.e.
join this list) or move to another project. And the Xubuntu users also come
from other projects to Xubuntu because they do like where it is going. So
the users are a result of the developers' decisions, not the other way
around.

The unfortunate thing about Xubuntu is that it gained a reputation of being
the last resort for old computers, while one of Xubuntu's goals from the
beginning has been to be user-friendly (as well as fast). If there are users
that can switch to Fluxbox, then I think their position as part of Xubuntu's
target audience can be seriously doubted, because Fluxbox/Fluxbuntu is a
huge step backwards in terms of user-friendliness when compared to Xubuntu.

On the Ubuntu French Forums, the feedbacks I had is that people are
> using Xubuntu because it's light, it's a godd alternative to Gnome,
> BUT many of them were disappointed because Xubuntu 7.10 is tto heavy
> and moved to things like Fluxbuntu, or removed the xubuntu-desktop
> package to keep xfce only stuff, and choose apps they wanted.


Odd, because I've also read a lot of praise to Xubuntu becoming faster than
7.04.

Now that we moved to Universe, we have the opportunity to build a
> Xubuntu identity, to have our own applications easily, without filing
> MIR all the time. I think it's unfair to say that those applications
> are unmaintained (xfmedia will be removed soon :) ), and buggy, they
> seem to work fine for most users. We have backported a lot of stuff to
> our ppa, XFCE 4.4.2, squeeze, ristretto, and we received very positive
> feedback from the community.


Of course, the backporting is awesome.

Regarding the Xubuntu identity though: the identity supposedly is being
user-friendly and fast. It can be enforced more effectively from universe.
And again: if using GTK versions of applications does not degrade the
quality of the applications in terms of usability, and you have the
resources to do so, then I'm all for it :)

I recognize it could have been announced on the mailing list or on
> IRC, but the few time I've spent on this list shows me that most of
> those posts become ~ a XFCE/GNOME flamewar.


I agree that they often turn out like that, yet, that needs to be gone
through if you want to keep Xubuntu a community project - a community that
does not just include developers, but also documentation writers, artists,
website maintainers, evangelists and whatnot.

If you have some particular wishes, don't hesitate to file a bug
> report/blueprint.


This method per se is not that bad, however, in order to encourage
(constructive) discussion a post to the mailinglist (even if it's just a
link to the bug report/blueprint) would be highly appreciated.

Jérôme
>

Best,
-- 
Vincent
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