Kamil Paral (kparal@redhat.com) said:

...

I would like to bring your attention to this bug report:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=880653

Since you're the maintainers of Fedora Desktop spin, could you please put your opinion into that bug report? I believe there is no reason to have LibreOffice on the DVD and not install it by default. It just wastes user bandwidth (it has to be downloaded from the Internet later) and time. Office suite is something that 99% of users need. Also it is a regression from Fedora 17.

The problem is the current infrastructure doesn't allow for it to be installed by default while remaining deselectable. While that might get fixed, it's highly unlikely to get fixed for F18.

Bill

Ah, that is very unfortunate. What do you think about integrating LibreOffice into GNOME desktop group/environment in F18? That means the checkbox won't be available at all, people will have to remove LibreOffice post-install if they don't want it. If I consider how many people want GNOME desktop with an office suite and how many people want GNOME desktop without an office suite, it seems like a good idea to me. It's more friendly approach. Once the infrastructure is in place in F19, we can separate it again into a standalone checkbox.

And what about the LiveCD? We don't have any comps problems there. I haven't seen any response. I think this is the correct place where questions like this should be decided, right?

On Tue, Dec 4, 2012 at 3:46 PM, Debarshi Ray rishi.is@lostca.se wrote:

Without LibreOffice, clicking an ODF file opens it in file-roller. :-/

Cheers, Debarshi

-- There are two hard problems in computer science: cache invalidation, naming things and off-by-one errors.

-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop

That's probably a bug in shared-mime-info or fileroller, it shouldn't handle ODFs... instead the desktop should tell you it needs extra software and allow you to install it.

Kamil Paral (kparal@redhat.com) said:

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And what about the LiveCD? We don't have any comps problems there. I haven't seen any response. I think this is the correct place where questions like this should be decided, right?

If it's wanted,

I think that's going to be the biggest problem here. I talked to Matthias before and he pointed me to this mailing list. But it's pretty dead in here. At least "we don't care" response would help. Anyone?

someone needs to do a test image and ensure it fits and works - just making the changes and hoping the nightly doesn't seem to be the best way to do it.

So I did. The size went from 786 MB to 911 MB. So it jumped a lot, but there is still some space.

I booted the image and tested a basic functionality, everything works.

When modifying fedora-livecd-desktop.ks, it wasn't enough to just comment out "-libreoffice-*" line, it still wasn't installed. But if I added "@libreoffice" to the end of the package section, it worked. I guess the first unsuccessful attempt was caused by "-java-1.7.0-openjdk" line that I didn't comment out. I don't know, I'm not a kickstart expert, you'll know for sure.

Bill, what can be done next? Maybe we could ask on devel (or other) list for some interested people in order to bring a new blood to the Desktop SIG [1] and revive it a bit? That could improve the discussion.

[1] http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/Desktop

Libre Office is great and useful but can always be installed later. That means it's a "We don't care".

But the same can be told about Evice, Eye of Gnome, File-Roller, Totem or any other "file viewer", right? But there is still some reason why we don't distribute just the "minimal installation" spin, but also the Desktop spin. It's about providing as convenient defaults as we can for our desktop users.

In this conversation I see one voice very much in favor (me), one probably in favor (Debarshi) and one neutral (Scott). I went ahead and created a bugzilla report asking for the change: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=885693

Thanks.

On Tue, 4 Dec 2012 16:02:45 +0200 Elad Alfassa wrote:

That's probably a bug in shared-mime-info or fileroller, it shouldn't handle ODFs... instead the desktop should tell you it needs extra software and allow you to install it.

Well, as ODF is essentially a compressed archive of a bunch of files (xmls, pictures, ...) it is actually correct for fileroller to open it if no word processor that handles it is installed...

Martin

Citation needed on that percentage. :) I think a large number of people

1. don't need an office suite at all
2. need Microsoft Office for compatibility or work-mandated reasons
3. use Google Docs or another online service

Since LibreOffice is relatively large, I can see a reasonable argument for leaving it out if it lets us put more shiny things into the LiveCD.

Maybe I just don't get that "the cloud" doesn't always refer to "cumulonimbus" ...

0) Since I'm being literal here, what *are* the numbers? How about the install stats of LibreOffice resulting from the net install disks? Are there any stats on the absence of LO yum updates on installs known to have previously having had LO installed? 1) ??? -- although I also had this response when I once sent out a birthday party invitation in .pps converted from the native (then) openoffice.org format and people said "I don't use an office suite at home, I use it at the office; at home I want to relax" 2) I'd say Sun and now the Document Foundation have been successful; while my work computer, supplied by my employer, has MS on it, for a sideline job I do work all the time in LO and no one knows except that I happened to have mentioned it once (and yes they all use MS Office) ... 3) I used google docs once at someone's behest so that we could mutually plan a weekend, and guess who didn't bother to use it (here's a hint, I've already said I used it on that one occasion ...)

I'm in the camp of "install it properly off the DVD", but I know that there are tech issues preventing it on F18. I have been wanting OO.o / LO on the live CD since at least 2010 ( http://www.malak.ca/blog/?p=227 ) but of course as a grateful user I will not push this point. :)

Since LibreOffice is relatively large, I can see a reasonable argument for leaving it out if it lets us put more shiny things into the LiveCD.

Yes, but that argument was never made. No one ever proposed to put something very shiny on the disk instead of an office suite. Quite the opposite, I haven't seen much of any feedback until today. And when I should choose:

1) an install media with 215 MB empty space and no office suite 2) an install media with 90 MB empty space and an office suite

I definitely choose the latter. It provides a better user experience and a more complete Linux Desktop environment by default.

I secretly wish there were more people on this list who care about the default experience Fedora provides to their users, and I wish discussions raged here whether large LibreOffice is better or worse than smaller Abiword + some more shiny stuff, but as you can see, the discussions don't really happen. So that's why I took initiative and decided to fix at least something.

If you have other proposals how the default desktop should look like and what should/shouldn't be included, please post it. But please be clear about which Fedora release you want to target. Because F18 release data is very near and I _hope_ we will manage to implement at least my proposal. I don't think some large changes can be discussed and implemented in time.

I think somehow gmail ate my reply yesterday. Here it is again

On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 3:10 PM, Matthew Miller mattdm@fedoraproject.org wrote:

I think a large number of people

1. don't need an office suite at all
2. need Microsoft Office for compatibility or work-mandated reasons
3. use Google Docs or another online service

As an Ambassador, I can testify 'Why is LibreOffice not on the Live Image?' is a FAQ. Of course we can debate to death if these users are the majority, or even a significant number to justify a jump of 130Mb.

However, we also get negative points on online reviews for the very same reason. Since an office suite was removed due to space constrains that are now gone, I am all for adding it back and worry about it when more shiny things will be needed in the image and they will not fit in the 1Gb limit.

---

I (obviously) would like to see it on the LiveCD and it's always deeply frustrating to see LibreOffice on other distros equivalent offerings.

---

As an Ambassador, I can testify 'Why is LibreOffice not on the Live Image?' is a FAQ. Of course we can debate to death if these users are the majority, or even a significant number to justify a jump of 130Mb.

These seem to be two relevant voices here. As long as we're shipping all the other default apps on the live image, I'm ok with adding LibreOffice. We can revisit things when application installation works better. So, take this as my +1 for including libreoffice in the f18 desktop live image. It may be a little late now, but maybe we can still squeeze this change in.

OK, I'll make that change and close out the bug.

Great, thank you.

Of course, that likely means https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=880653 might pop up again as being more important, but... meh.

Do you think there's any chance to improve it in F18 somehow? Do you have any objections against hard-coding LibreOffice temporarily as part of the GNOME desktop, or is there a better way? Is it too late for that?

...

...

Of course, that likely means https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=880653 might pop up again as being more important, but... meh.

Do you think there's any chance to improve it in F18 somehow? Do you have any objections against hard-coding LibreOffice temporarily as part of the GNOME desktop, or is there a better way? Is it too late for that?

Choices are either:

1. document in common bugs/etc. that the office suite isn't included,

and point to where users can include it. (If they go into software customization, it *should* be obvious.)

2. Hardcode it in comps such that you can't deselect it.

Yeah, I know what the choices are :) My question was how do you feel about the latter one.

But let's go the easier route. I'll document 880653 in CommonBugs. Let's hope we have the new infrastructure ready in F19 and we can make LibreOffice selected by default (while still being de-selectable).