New proposed Strategy Document - Text Editor discussion

Thu Nov 7 15:42:23 UTC 2013

On 07/11/13 17:02, legacy daily wrote:
> Geany seems to fulfill multiple editing needs for me. However, it's an
> easy install - in terms of default mousepad or leafpad do the job just
> fine. Just my 2 cents...
>
> Regarding the Xubuntu strategy, please allow me to add a voice and a
> few thoughts but first let me thank you for all your hard work related
> to this project. It's an outstanding solution that is rock solid and
> of high QUALITY (the larger meaning of the word quality). Since I
> respect the work you have done very much, please accept these as my
> humble suggestions.

Thanks for the praise!

> 1. Would you find it appropriate to include a stronger mention of
> privacy and user's rights - diverging from where I see Ubuntu going? I
> mean protecting users from unwanted searches and unrequested Amazon
> suggestions or other similar steps. If users specifically want such
> capabilities, let them choose to install something. Let the OS do
> nothing to promote and instead do the opposite (discourage upsteam
> from building such features into DEs, exclude packages from default
> install that do such things, etc.). I understand the distro makes many
> choices but let those choices be guided by principles of freedom and
> privacy as much as possible.

While this is not specifically mentioned in the Strategy Document, the
components in Xubuntu do not do this, and if anything that does would be
proposed for inclusion, it would need a thorough discussion. I think I
can speak for the whole team that nobody wants such things in. However,
it would be quite some work to get a well thought out strategy written,
so I'm uncertain if we want to take the extra step unless we need to
make a clear decision for or agaisnt such things.

Ultimately, while security and privacy is important for us, we aren't
exactly a security-focused OS, nor is it our goal to become one. There
are other OS'es that do it better than us. (Again, this is not to say I
think we shouldn't care about the privacy of our users.)

> 2. Would you consider expanding the reach of Xubuntu by adding its
> deltas to Debian? The polish and style of Xubuntu are superb but the
> release cycle and decisions of Ubuntu are not always ideal. How
> amazing it would be to have Xubuntu on Debian? I see Xubuntu as not
> just another Ubuntu but of far greater potential (because of many
> factors as an example the choices made by Unity and Gnome3).

I'm not sure what you are after. The Strategy Document already states
that we should "Attempt to reduce our delta by pushing appropriate
patches upstream" (though this part is soon to be moved out of the SD to
the process descriptions).

> 3. Would you consider mention of support for smaller devices (such as
> Raspberry PI, etc.) or is this something that you relegate to Ubuntu
> and Debian or other distros and outside the scope of Xubuntu? In other
> words, in terms of target audience I would hope Xubuntu would be run
> on huge servers, small desktops and laptops but also on tiny devices
> that require some UI.

Unless we suddenly gain more contributors to these areas, we simply do
not have the heavy lifting power to do such things.

My personal opinion is that there are probably better UI's for small
devices than Xfce and better solutions for servers than Xubuntu. That
doesn't stop anybody using Xubuntu on such setups though; it's always
nice to hear Xubuntu works with this or that, and in this or that setup.
Ultimately, I value stability more than being able to run an OS with as
many devices as possible.

Cheers,
Pasi Lallinaho
Xubuntu Project Lead

> Thanks again for your hard work and for making Xubuntu the outstanding
> distro that it is today.
>
> - Gevorg
>
> http://legacydaily.com
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 7, 2013 at 7:58 AM, Richard Elkins
> <richard.elkins at gmail.com <mailto:richard.elkins at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I think that the discussion got off track.  A good engineer's editor probably supports any language - it does for me.  
>
>     The choice of default text editor should be based on the target audience for the release which has evolved since the first 'buntu, quite
>     a bit.  Who is the target audience nowadays?  Or, should we default in one for simple note-padding and one with a lot of engineering capabilities?
>
>     Keep in mind that they are both low on dependencies, relative to other packages.
>
>     On 11/07/2013 05:55 AM, Eero Tamminen wrote:
>>     Hi,
>>
>>     On keskiviikko 06 marraskuu 2013, Joshua O'Leary wrote:
>>>     It mentions C++ programs as being unsuitable, but this is clearly not the
>>>     case as core components (such as apt and software-centre, and now even
>>>     gcc) are coded in C++
>>     Also all browsers use C++, from Dillo to Firefox
>>     (Gecko and Webkit HTML engines are coded in C++,
>>     even if the GUI toolkit wouldn't use C++).
>>
>>
>>     	- Eero
>>
>
>
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>
>
>
>

-- 
Pasi Lallinaho (knome)                      » http://open.knome.fi/
Leader of Shimmer Project and Xubuntu       » http://shimmerproject.org/
Graphic artist, webdesigner, Ubuntu member  » http://xubuntu.org/

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