Idea for Lucid (and beyond..)

[Pasi Lallinaho]

J. Anthony Limon wrote:
> Hi team,
>
> I just thought I would open the door for some brainstorming in the area 
> of Lucid and beyond! I have some thoughts I'd like to extend everyone's way.
>
>
> 1) gnome-app-install
>
> Do we really need it? Who really uses it? How stable is it anyways?
>
> I feel gnome-app-install does more harm than good in the XFce desktop. 
> Firstly it does a poor job of representing the total software in the 
> repositories. Secondly, we almost *always* send people to Synaptic or 
> apt-get to install software. Thirdly, I've found it to be HORRIDLY unstable.
>
> On my system I've ---purge autoremove'd it. A nice side effect was that 
> my XFce menu looks a lot nicer without that wide entry at the top. :)
>   
I agree you on this. I don't really know gnome-app-install since I
always use apt-get or Synaptic myself. Maybe we should just seed
Synaptic as the default application/repository manager in Lucid?
> 2) gnome-system-monitor
>
> I know this app has some serious features that alternatives do not, but 
> is consistently a source of problems and bugs, primarily in the area of 
> super high CPU usage and memory leaks, ironic given the nature of the 
> application.
>
> On my system I use a mixture of xfce4-taskmanager and htop, I'm not sure 
> if this would be satisfactory on the majority of people's desktops but I 
>   am of the opinion that GSM has to go.
>   
For now, I don't think the Xfce components can deliver the same amount
of features and, regretfully, quality. I also like htop, but we can't
consider it as the main application for system monitoring, as it's CLI
and many people fear command line.
> 3) Totem
>
> Is the plan to stick with Totem for Lucid? It's kind of stagnant issue 
> but it's also a difficult one to address with the next release being LTS.
>   
Agree. There is loads of *decent* video player alternatives. I've never
liked Totem. It sounds it is from the stone-age. I'd really like to see
something else already in Lucid.
> 4) GDM
>
> This seems to be an issue entirely out of anyone's hands unless they 
> want to try making one using xfce libs.
>
> This is about all I can think of right now, but I do know I am missing a 
> couple things which I will bring up at another time. I feel this is a 
> good start to a brainstorming. Also, nobody has any intentions of 
> adopting Pulse Audio into the Xubuntu system, right? ;)
>   
My personal experience is that PA is only bringing in problems, but if
we can get those sorted out, I can live with it. I hear PA can do
wonderful things once it works.

We probably want to ship Exaile as our default media player for Lucid
also, but I want to finger at the really bad quality of media players in
general in Karmic. Most of them do not work for me at all (read: they
crash constantly or leak into memory).

Cheers,

-- 
Pasi Lallinaho
Xubuntu Marketing Lead
Web-designer, graphic artist
IRC: knome @ freenode