As mentioned before we are past feature freeze so we are going to consider changing default applications now. Some notes though
could you open a topic specific for 1? I haven’t compared those clients but mixing the discussion about different changes in one topic is usually not working great
we considered loupe but it didn’t feel it was ready/still lacking some feature compared to eog, also rust packaging is a bit challenging. Loupe isn’t a replacement for shotwell, it’s a viewer and not an photo manager.
about games, we remove those from the default installation this cycle
could you also open a topic about replacing rhythmbox by musicpod? it is too late to do such a change this cycle but we could look at it in the next cycles
Indeed, at least one of them (Teams) doesn’t even exist in the store anymore. Also, one of them (audacity) is wildly outdated, but that’s on snapcrafters (us) so we’ll fix that.
No, it is not! Stay away from Transmission, it needs no replacement. It’s excellent in its category.
No, it is not!
Rhythmbox is still a major favourite for many in Linux world, and on good performance related reasons. It’s an excellent player for music files, radio and podcasts (and to search for pods).
Conceptually I’d think those should be in sync, but it does look like the “Featured Snaps” section at the top of that page differs from what’s coded to be featured in App Center?
Yes, but, that’s not the topic I’m talking about. What you’re looking at are “categories” (on the website), which match the “sections” store backend.
However, the topic I am talking about is specifically the last image in the first-run installer. Which is a simple dialog with a grid of applications, which are “Recommended” immediately after you finish the desktop installation. Each icon is a application from a curated list (see the github link in my post above). This is a separate (hidden) “section” in the backend store, which is only used by the installer.
This (which is an old screenshot, but it’s this stage in the install):
And it’s the part from where the app starts, and apps that are baked into the ISO, only those are promoted there. For eg, cheese, gnome mines, these apps are promoted here. That’s where I requested the community to revisit about it. Now, I’m not sure if apps that are not baked into the iso will ever be promoted here. Also, 1 thing is very confusing here, Cheese, Transmission, Gnome Calendar are most of the cases preinstalled. Now, when a new user or an average user will open the app, he/she will see that Cheese, Transmission isn’t installed! Because, deb package has no correspondence with the snap package in this new store. So, there might be cases of redundant apps being installed. Like once, I faced such an issue with Foliate, it’s installed both as snap and deb, and the user thought that he was getting snap related issues.
I don’t think that vim-tiny should be in ubuntu-desktop because vim-tiny and vim-common are in ubuntu-minimal.
Now there is also gvim and its plugins and for terminals there are a lot of alternatives which could be installed by choice and replacing lines with sed which are catted and then piped without && or || or != is misconception taken from minix and therefore I think that vim-tiny should be purged from ubuntu-desktop included by ubuntu-minimal.
We should certainly take a look at which snaps are in this list, 3 of the first 6 are published by me, and they aren’t all that exciting. It would be great to bring this more in-line with what’s included in gnome-initial-setup in the first run experience.
We hard coded the ‘jump start your desktop’ alongside the switch to the minimal install by default in 23.10, this felt like a good way to let users who missed the applications included in the full install pick what they preferred. We intend to phase this out or deprioritise it once that decision has settled in for LTS users.
The rest of the store display is more dynamic, coming from the Snap Store, and we’ll be adding more dynamism with some ‘most popular’ style algorithmic content using the new ratings system shortly after release day.
In general the long term preference is for the Snap Store backend to populate the App Center rather than do anything meaningful on the client as you would expect, this means that down the line we can iterate more quickly on featured apps and new sorting methods, as well as provide things like curated stores for enterprise customers who want to restrict the availability of certain apps. For now the logic is mixed between the two simply to enable us to deliver the experience we wanted whilst respecting the various bandwidth constraints between the snap store team and desktop folks.
We’re certainly happy to remove local logic ultimatley, but we also need the confidence that the server side logic and update cadence is ready to take on rotational/featured duties in its stead.
I hope that helps clarify at least the thinking behind the current state of play.
There are certainly quite a bunch of outdated/unmaintained/broken snaps.
Some of them are still showing up. Woudl be cool if whoever is in charge of what is being displayed could take care of this.
There have been a lot of people on X complaining about malware on snaps, but if people only download verified snaps, they won’t have a problem. Also, no one is stopping anyone from installing debs using APT
It’s really nice that you are a big fan of debs, but this has not much to do with the discussion I linked here, given that those suggestions are only coming from a pool of snaps.
The problem is that a quite big bunch of apps that are suggested are either highly outdated, totally broken, don’t start and/or unmaintained nor fit to the current gnome design, which is the design most of the ubuntu desktop apps use, because 1) it useses the gnome desktop and 2) because inside yaru.dart we follow this design (and expand it).
Also it is not about personal preferences or “use my fav app please”. It is about sane suggestions users see when they open up the app center, and the biggest prio should be that those suggestions are def. not broken nor unmaintained. Everything else is a side by side comparison and prbly includes opinions, which… vary.
On topic of the default applications, there are two criterias, in my opinion:
being a working, well tested, solid application
being inline with the visual design currently in use of the desktop, for example there may be a big bunch of KDE apps that are awesome, well tested and rock solid, but they should not be pre-installed because of the Ubuntu uses gnome
Also:
Discussions are nice but it is kind of exhausting that some people high-jack many discussions to talk about how much they prefer XYZ over snaps.
I have not said anywhere that I would be a fan of debs. If you mention people, please make sure you do a good job! I actually am actively against old ways of software installations, or installing other type of package formats with elevated permissions. So…nope. Normal application installations should never have elevated privileges. I write this down only to answer the point I quoted from your rant towards us two.
The word you’re looking for is hijack
The suggested applications aren’t all great, OP’s suggestions like Fragments in the place of transmission, or MusicPod (my god!) to replace Rhythmbox (RBox is maintained, so far I know). MusicPod is barely useful overall, Fragments is a clear regression in comparison with Tmission. Although I don’t understand why a torrent downloading tool would be included as default application. Not a general need, not as much as a note taking tool or music app.
When people here consider applications, what to include or to promote, you all are so f… hung up on UI, the looks only, you sometimes forget to ask yourself: yeah, but what about the functions?! Are also the functions as great, the stability, UX. etc?!
)
and therefore I think that vim-tiny should be purged from ubuntu-desktop included by ubuntu-minimal.
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