Wish list for Xubuntu 13.04

[Sean Davis]

Good day,

My thoughts...  :-)

On Thu, Nov 29, 2012 at 7:00 AM, <xubuntu-devel-request at lists.ubuntu.com>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> As suggested by ochosi on IRC, I would like to discuss this wish list
> for Xubuntu 13.04 with you:
>
> 1. LibreOffice in the iso instead of Abiword and Gnumeric. Xubuntu is
> a full fledged alternative for the big boys Unity, Gnome and KDE. So
> it needs to have a professional office suite by default. Note that I
> *like* Abiword; heck, I even translate it upstream. But it's natural
> place is in a mini like Lubuntu...
>

As far as space concerns go, LibreOffice is a beast.  At this point, it
absolutely won't fit on the CD, and might pose problems for even larger
image.  Abiword and Gnumeric might not be the best at what they do, but
they are sufficient for light word processing and spreadsheets.  And since
office applications are not really the heart of a distribution, I think
it's best that we provide users some "good-enough" office applications and
be well-rounded in other areas.


> 2. Synaptic and GDebi in the iso. Especially Synaptic is such a cool
> professional tool...
>
Of course you can install it afterwards. But first impressions are
> important: the default installation of Xubuntu should be a powerful
> statement about it's coolness.
>

Synaptic and GDebi are poorly (if at all) maintained.  Ubuntu is moving
forward with the Ubuntu Software Center and fully supporting it.
 Additionally, the USC is the only place that users can access the pay-for
applications, which are increasing as Ubuntu becomes more profitable to
game developers and other software companies.  And if we're already having
space issues, I don't think we really don't need three applications that
serve the same (or similar) purpose.


>
> I suppose this would mean a DVD iso instead of a CD iso. But CD's are
> dying anyway; when I go to a store, it's nearly all DVD+R and DVD+RW
> that I see on the shelves. Somewhere tucked away you can still find
> CD-R's, if you're lucky.
>

I agree that a CD format is probably not preferable in the long run.  The
Linux kernel, applications, libraries, toolkits, and localisations are
growing in size.  If we're having space issues now, I foresee having to
drop even more stuff for future releases, and probably be further
prohibited from actually adding anything new.

Cheers,
Sean
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/xubuntu-devel/attachments/20121129/4773b687/attachment.html>