Hi,
Recently the Workstation working group agreed to match the GNOME apps we install by default in Fedora with upstream GNOME's core apps. We will by default sync our default apps to upstream's, and make exceptions only for exceptional reasons if when proposed on this list. This adds a bit more cement to our status as the best GNOME distribution with minimal divergence from upstream.
I worked upstream with designers and release team to move many desirable apps into core, to better match what we're currently shipping in Fedora. I also created a gnome-incubator metamodule upstream, which is where we'll put apps that we want to be core apps by design, but which we recognize are not yet ready to be installed by default in distributions. Currently that is home to bijiben, gnome-boxes, gnome- calendar, gnome-dictionary, gnome-music, and gnome-photos.
Here is how we currently diverge from the new upstream recommendations:
Apps missing from Fedora: epiphany, gnome-logs
Extra apps in Fedora: bijiben, evolution, gnome-boxes, shotwell, rhythmbox
I see little value in discussing Epiphany again right now. Let's make an exception for that.
I have added Logs in Fedora just now, as I expect that will be uncontroversial and I don't see any value in diverging from upstream here.
Bijiben is just not very good yet, and it's not under active development. There's no good reason for us to diverge from upstream here, and I expect it will be uncontroversial, so I've dropped it.
I guess Evolution might be controversial; I use it religiously, and many of you probably do too. But the user interface is complex and confusing; users should not be exposed to this by default, barring drastic UI changes that are outside the scope of the Evolution project. Evolution is a great mail client for power users, but I'm confident that the average user will be better off with webmail services; folks who want a desktop client can simply install one, after all. We intend to replace it with GNOME Mail eventually, but nobody has started developing it yet. I propose we drop Evolution, but I have not done so yet, pending further discussion.
Boxes has too many serious bugs right now, so it cannot go into gnome- core yet, but we intend it to eventually. Since this is a significant application, I have not yet removed it from our default install, pending further discussion. My main concern is that it would look odd for us to remove such a significant app from the default install, then bring it back in a year or two. On the other hand, users won't notice a thing unless they make a habit of reinstalling Fedora, and it's not good to include apps we can't fully recommend. It's not clear to me what choice is best here.
I propose we make temporary exceptions to keep Shotwell and Rhythmbox, until their intended replacements, Photos and Music, move into upstream's GNOME core moduleset. That will very likely happen for Photos for F25. I'm less certain about Music.
Michael
On Sat, 2016-03-12 at 11:10 -0600, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
I have added Logs in Fedora just now, as I expect that will be uncontroversial and I don't see any value in diverging from upstream here.
Bijiben is just not very good yet, and it's not under active development. There's no good reason for us to diverge from upstream here, and I expect it will be uncontroversial, so I've dropped it.
I agree with these two changes.
I guess Evolution might be controversial; I use it religiously, and many of you probably do too. But the user interface is complex and confusing; users should not be exposed to this by default, barring drastic UI changes that are outside the scope of the Evolution project. Evolution is a great mail client for power users, but I'm confident that the average user will be better off with webmail services; folks who want a desktop client can simply install one, after all. We intend to replace it with GNOME Mail eventually, but nobody has started developing it yet. I propose we drop Evolution, but I have not done so yet, pending further discussion.
I don't see any viable alternative. I think this may have to go in the same bucket as firefox.
Boxes has too many serious bugs right now, so it cannot go into gnome- core yet, but we intend it to eventually. Since this is a significant application, I have not yet removed it from our default install, pending further discussion. My main concern is that it would look odd for us to remove such a significant app from the default install, then bring it back in a year or two. On the other hand, users won't notice a thing unless they make a habit of reinstalling Fedora, and it's not good to include apps we can't fully recommend. It's not clear to me what choice is best here.
Please go into some more detail here. What are those serious bugs you allude to ? I'm not aware of them.
I propose we make temporary exceptions to keep Shotwell and Rhythmbox, until their intended replacements, Photos and Music, move into upstream's GNOME core moduleset. That will very likely happen for Photos for F25. I'm less certain about Music.
I think we should make this replacement explicit goals for F25, and come up with criteria in advance for making this decision.
On 03/14/2016 08:59 AM, Matthias Clasen wrote:
On Sat, 2016-03-12 at 11:10 -0600, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
I have added Logs in Fedora just now, as I expect that will be uncontroversial and I don't see any value in diverging from upstream here.
Bijiben is just not very good yet, and it's not under active development. There's no good reason for us to diverge from upstream here, and I expect it will be uncontroversial, so I've dropped it.
I agree with these two changes.
I guess Evolution might be controversial; I use it religiously, and many of you probably do too. But the user interface is complex and confusing; users should not be exposed to this by default, barring drastic UI changes that are outside the scope of the Evolution project. Evolution is a great mail client for power users, but I'm confident that the average user will be better off with webmail services; folks who want a desktop client can simply install one, after all. We intend to replace it with GNOME Mail eventually, but nobody has started developing it yet. I propose we drop Evolution, but I have not done so yet, pending further discussion.
I don't see any viable alternative. I think this may have to go in the same bucket as firefox.
In general, I agree with Michael that Evolution is fairly complicated and perhaps overpowered for an average user. That said, an email client is expected default functionality on a new computer and the backlash we would receive for not shipping one at all would be significant. There are still many people out there who use IMAP or POP email accounts with either no webmail interface or one that is far more painful even than Evolution to navigate (I'm looking at *you* Zimbra).
I'm not sure I agree with Matthias that there's no viable alternative, though. Mozilla Thunderbird at least has a good guided first-launch experience. True, it's not integrated with GNOME Online Accounts (which I would love to see, by the way), but I'm not convinced that perfect integration is more important than availability of common functionality.
Of course, the other question is whether work can be done to improve the first-time usage experience of Evolution during the F25 timeframe. That could go a long way towards nullifying this discussion. (Then again, if upstream's plan is to replace it with a completely rewritten alternative, I can understand a reticence to expend any effort improving the deprecated one).
tl;dr: Please don't ship without a default email client, but I don't particularly care if it's Evolution.
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 09:09 -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
In general, I agree with Michael that Evolution is fairly complicated and perhaps overpowered for an average user. That said, an email client is expected default functionality on a new computer
Really? Or is it only expected for Linux distros, which are normally installed by power users?
I don't think I've ever bought a Windows computer that came with a mail client, but it's been a while; maybe they all do nowadays?
and the backlash we would receive for not shipping one at all would be significant.
Hm, if you really think there would be backlash, then I agree we should keep it.
Michael
On 03/14/2016 10:19 AM, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 09:09 -0400, Stephen Gallagher wrote:
In general, I agree with Michael that Evolution is fairly complicated and perhaps overpowered for an average user. That said, an email client is expected default functionality on a new computer
Really? Or is it only expected for Linux distros, which are normally installed by power users?
I don't think I've ever bought a Windows computer that came with a mail client, but it's been a while; maybe they all do nowadays?
MS has shipped with Microsoft Mail since Vista, IIRC.
and the backlash we would receive for not shipping one at all would be significant.
Hm, if you really think there would be backlash, then I agree we should keep it.
Like I said, I think it would be a problem not to have any at all. I don't particularly care if it's Evolution. (anecdote: I actually switched back to Thunderbird myself a few months ago, because Evolution was eating too much CPU processing my obscene volume of mail)
In general, I agree with Michael that Evolution is fairly complicated and perhaps overpowered for an average user. That said, an email client is expected default functionality on a new computer and the backlash we would receive for not shipping one at all would be significant. There are still many people out there who use IMAP or POP email accounts with either no webmail interface or one that is far more painful even than Evolution to navigate (I'm looking at *you* Zimbra).
I know no one who uses a desktop email client and is a "general user". Literally, no one. And I tried remembering really hard :) I know some colleagues who use it, but those are all power users and can easily install it if needed.
In my eyes, the world has moved on, and desktop email clients are used only by old-timers, who will have no problem if new installs don't include it.
It would be pretty unpleasant if we removed say LibreOffice or Totem, because people want to click on a file and see it. That's something that should work out of the box, without knowing which program to use or search for it manually. But email clients require configuration anyway, and therefore it's not something that works out of the box, you need to know explicitly what you want to use and how to use it, and you need to non-trivially set it up before use. This is actually a good framework for thinking about this, I believe. Whether this is a software that enables you to work with something else (usually a file) that you already have on your computer, or whether it is a special-purpose software, and you even configure it to work properly (requires accounts). In the latter case, it's much easier to avoid installing them by default, because people already know the name of the software they need (or they don't need it at all).
Btw, if I search for "email" in gnome-software, the top results are Geary, Evolution, Thunderbird and Trojitá, all reasonably good email clients.
On 03/21/2016 01:02 PM, Kamil Paral wrote:
In general, I agree with Michael that Evolution is fairly complicated and perhaps overpowered for an average user. That said, an email client is expected default functionality on a new computer and the backlash we would receive for not shipping one at all would be significant. There are still many people out there who use IMAP or POP email accounts with either no webmail interface or one that is far more painful even than Evolution to navigate (I'm looking at *you* Zimbra).
I know no one who uses a desktop email client and is a "general user". Literally, no one. And I tried remembering really hard :) I know some colleagues who use it, but those are all power users and can easily install it if needed.
I can list four individuals in my extended family alone, none of whom are "power users". But anecdotes are not statistics.
In my eyes, the world has moved on, and desktop email clients are used only by old-timers, who will have no problem if new installs don't include it.
Right, because no old-timer has *ever* complained about their workflow changing? :)
It would be pretty unpleasant if we removed say LibreOffice or Totem, because people want to click on a file and see it. That's something that should work out of the box, without knowing which program to use or search for it manually. But email clients require configuration anyway, and therefore it's not something that works out of the box, you need to know explicitly what you want to use and how to use it, and you need to non-trivially set it up before use. This is actually a good framework for thinking about this, I believe. Whether this is a software that enables you to work with something else (usually a file) that you already have on your computer, or whether it is a special-purpose software, and you even configure it to work properly (requires accounts). In the latter case, it's much easier to avoid installing them by default, because people already know the name of the software they need (or they don't need it at all).
Btw, if I search for "email" in gnome-software, the top results are Geary, Evolution, Thunderbird and Trojitá, all reasonably good email clients. -- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
----- Original Message -----
On 03/21/2016 01:02 PM, Kamil Paral wrote:
In general, I agree with Michael that Evolution is fairly complicated and perhaps overpowered for an average user. That said, an email client is expected default functionality on a new computer and the backlash we would receive for not shipping one at all would be significant. There are still many people out there who use IMAP or POP email accounts with either no webmail interface or one that is far more painful even than Evolution to navigate (I'm looking at *you* Zimbra).
I know no one who uses a desktop email client and is a "general user". Literally, no one. And I tried remembering really hard :) I know some colleagues who use it, but those are all power users and can easily install it if needed.
I can list four individuals in my extended family alone, none of whom are "power users". But anecdotes are not statistics.
And I thought I'd mention that, once you've created the online accounts for Google or Microsoft accounts, the mail client works out of the box, without a need to use a browser.
How about ditching Evolution along with evolution-data-server and shipping Geary instead?
On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 11:35 AM, Bastien Nocera bnocera@redhat.com wrote:
----- Original Message -----
On 03/21/2016 01:02 PM, Kamil Paral wrote:
In general, I agree with Michael that Evolution is fairly complicated and perhaps overpowered for an average user. That said, an email client is expected default functionality on a new computer and the backlash we would receive for not shipping one at all would be significant. There are still many people out there who use IMAP or POP email accounts with either no webmail interface or one that is far more painful even than Evolution to navigate (I'm looking at *you* Zimbra).
I know no one who uses a desktop email client and is a "general user". Literally, no one. And I tried remembering really hard :) I know some colleagues who use it, but those are all power users and can easily install it if needed.
I can list four individuals in my extended family alone, none of whom are "power users". But anecdotes are not statistics.
And I thought I'd mention that, once you've created the online accounts for Google or Microsoft accounts, the mail client works out of the box, without a need to use a browser. -- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 9:13 AM, Misha Shnurapet misha@gnome.org wrote:
How about ditching Evolution along with evolution-data-server and shipping Geary instead?
Does Geary do plain-text email formatting yet? The last time I tried it, it did not. That made it completely unusable for developers that need to send patches.
josh
On 22/03/16 13:16, Josh Boyer wrote:
On Tue, Mar 22, 2016 at 9:13 AM, Misha Shnurapet misha@gnome.org wrote:
How about ditching Evolution along with evolution-data-server and shipping Geary instead?
Does Geary do plain-text email formatting yet? The last time I tried it, it did not. That made it completely unusable for developers that need to send patches.
Isn't Geary dead, since Yorba is no more?
Abis
On Tue, 2016-03-22 at 14:13 +0100, Misha Shnurapet wrote:
How about ditching Evolution along with evolution-data-server and shipping Geary instead?
It's dead upstream, and it's gonna be stuck on WebKit1 forever, so it's very insecure to the point where it should arguably be dropped from Fedora, and it's affected by WebKit crashes that will never be fixed, and there are no signs this will change. If someone starts maintaining Geary (including working on the WebKit2 port, possibly by rebasing Geary on Pantheon Mail) then we could consider it; otherwise, this is a blocker issue IMO.
I don't think we should switch from a well-maintained client to one that receives no maintenance anyway. Evolution upstream is actively working on porting to WebKit2 and have made lots of good progress, and they're great about responding to bug reports.
Michael
On Tue, 2016-03-22 at 14:13 +0100, Misha Shnurapet wrote:
How about ditching Evolution along with evolution-data-server
Hi, I've only a little clarification here, which wasn't spoken in other emails yet, while I see you miss a little point here.
The Evolution is only one of the clients of the evolution-data-server.
Just try to remove evolution-data-server in your Fedora and you'll see how many applications will be removed together with it (including gnome-shell, gnome-calendar, gnome-contacts, ...). I mean, you cannot get rid of both of them, because the evolution-data-server, despite its name, is not used only by the Evolution client. Bye, Milan
On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 8:09 AM, Milan Crha mcrha@redhat.com wrote:
On Tue, 2016-03-22 at 14:13 +0100, Misha Shnurapet wrote:
How about ditching Evolution along with evolution-data-server
Hi,I've only a little clarification here, which wasn't spoken in other emails yet, while I see you miss a little point here.
No, I'm totally aware of it and I am glad you have brought that up.
Just try to remove evolution-data-server in your Fedora and you'll see how many applications will be removed together with it (including gnome-shell, gnome-calendar, gnome-contacts, ...). I mean, you cannot get rid of both of them, because the evolution-data-server, despite its name, is not used only by the Evolution client.
That is what confuses me. It looks like the desktop depends on a component of Evolution. What is it going to look like when the GNOME's own mail app comes around? (Maybe that's a topic for another discussion.)
On Wed, 23 Mar 2016, 12:26 Misha Shnurapet, misha@gnome.org wrote:
That is what confuses me. It looks like the desktop depends on a component of Evolution. What is it going to look like when the GNOME's own mail app comes around?
gnome-shell and Calendar use the calendar component of e-d-s, Contacts the address book. So even if the hypothetical GNOME Mail app ends up not using e-d-s, this wouldn't have any effect on the other apps/components.
On Wed, Mar 23, 2016 at 12:52 PM, Florian Müllner fmuellner@gnome.org wrote:
gnome-shell and Calendar use the calendar component of e-d-s, Contacts the address book. So even if the hypothetical GNOME Mail app ends up not using e-d-s, this wouldn't have any effect on the other apps/components.
That being said, a component of Evolution demands laptop's processing power despite of Evolution being uninstalled. It's become essential to the desktop environment, I know, I know. But maybe for the sake of clarity it is time it changed its name to gnome-data-server?
On Wed, 2016-03-23 at 14:03 +0100, Misha Shnurapet wrote:
That being said, a component of Evolution demands laptop's processing power despite of Evolution being uninstalled. It's become essential to the desktop environment, I know, I know. But maybe for the sake of clarity it is time it changed its name to gnome-data-server?
Hi, the development of the data server begun as part of the evolution, thus it was named evolution-data-server. It was never aimed to be only for the evolution, as far as I know. It is not part of it at all too.
It seems to me that you claim only about the used name, that the "evolution-data-server" looks odd for you due to the "evolution" part of the name, which is there only for the historical reasons. I do not think the rename to "gnome-data-server" is good for anything, even KDE applications can use the evolution-data-server, aka when you do not run GNOME at all.
There is no gain in the rename from my point of view, only too much paper work and administration to adapt not only Fedora, but also upstream parts, 3rd party projects, .... It doesn't worth the effort and wasted time, from my point of view, because there are more important things to be done. Like the (client) application doesn't mind that much what structure name it'll use to get its calendar/address book data, as long as it gets to that data. I mean, better focus on functionality, than on paper work.
Just my opinion. Bye, Milan
On 03/23/2016 11:23 AM, Milan Crha wrote:
On Wed, 2016-03-23 at 14:03 +0100, Misha Shnurapet wrote:
That being said, a component of Evolution demands laptop's processing power despite of Evolution being uninstalled. It's become essential to the desktop environment, I know, I know. But maybe for the sake of clarity it is time it changed its name to gnome-data-server?
Hi, the development of the data server begun as part of the evolution, thus it was named evolution-data-server. It was never aimed to be only for the evolution, as far as I know. It is not part of it at all too.
It seems to me that you claim only about the used name, that the "evolution-data-server" looks odd for you due to the "evolution" part of the name, which is there only for the historical reasons. I do not think the rename to "gnome-data-server" is good for anything, even KDE applications can use the evolution-data-server, aka when you do not run GNOME at all.
There is no gain in the rename from my point of view, only too much paper work and administration to adapt not only Fedora, but also upstream parts, 3rd party projects, .... It doesn't worth the effort and wasted time, from my point of view, because there are more important things to be done. Like the (client) application doesn't mind that much what structure name it'll use to get its calendar/address book data, as long as it gets to that data. I mean, better focus on functionality, than on paper work.
<bikeshed> Perhaps "data-server-evolved" </bikeshed>
On Wed, 2016-03-23 at 14:03 +0100, Misha Shnurapet wrote:
That being said, a component of Evolution demands laptop's processing power despite of Evolution being uninstalled. It's become essential to the desktop environment, I know, I know. But maybe for the sake of clarity it is time it changed its name to gnome-data-server?
Renaming modules turns out to be really inconvenient for both upstream and downstreams. :(
Anyway, evolution-data-server and evolution are closely related, so I think the name makes sense. It's a bit confusing that evolution-data- server is a core component of the GNOME desktop whereas evolution is not, but it's not really any problem.
Michael
Last time I tried, Geary was so feature-incomplete that I had preferred facebook chat over it. Does it have GPG integration now? Filter support? A solid secure network stack? Does it clean unnecessary mail headers as does Evolution? Does it integrate with evolution-data-server to make gnome-contacts and the gnome-shell calendar work? Those are just the basic questions/requirements to replace evolution by default.
Still, the most important question: Is it actively maintained so we can expect fixes for security bugs and major crashers within a week or two?
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 08:59 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
Please go into some more detail here. What are those serious bugs you allude to ? I'm not aware of them.
The most important issue is:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=751696 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1271183
Here are some other ones that I reported, probably not blockers on their own, but collectively I think they indicate it's not quite ready for core:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=760692 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=756140 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=761479 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=761202
But we've had it in Fedora for ages, so maybe we should just leave it be.
Michael
Hi,
On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 2:09 PM, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 08:59 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
Please go into some more detail here. What are those serious bugs you allude to ? I'm not aware of them.
The most important issue is:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=751696 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1271183
Although that is a libvirt issue (one that I was hoping libbvirt folks would fix soon since it's pretty serious), I'll look into adding a work-around for it in Boxes.
Here are some other ones that I reported, probably not blockers on their own, but collectively I think they indicate it's not quite ready for core:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=760692 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=756140 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=761479 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=761202
I don't agree with your conclusion but I'll try and get them all fixed this week. :)
On 2016-03-12 18:10, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
I guess Evolution might be controversial; I use it religiously, and many of you probably do too. But the user interface is complex and confusing; users should not be exposed to this by default, barring drastic UI changes that are outside the scope of the Evolution project. Evolution is a great mail client for power users, but I'm confident that the average user will be better off with webmail services; folks who want a desktop client can simply install one, after all. We intend to replace it with GNOME Mail eventually, but nobody has started developing it yet. I propose we drop Evolution, but I have not done so yet, pending further discussion.
Does the shell have any kind of expectation of having a calendar application installed, in the same way it does with gnome-clocks? (it used to be before at least that if you didn't have Clocks installed, the shell will still display a "set up world clocks" button, but clicking it wouldn't do anything). - Andreas
On 2016-03-14 14:20, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
On 2016-03-12 18:10, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
I guess Evolution might be controversial; I use it religiously, and many of you probably do too. But the user interface is complex and confusing; users should not be exposed to this by default, barring drastic UI changes that are outside the scope of the Evolution project. Evolution is a great mail client for power users, but I'm confident that the average user will be better off with webmail services; folks who want a desktop client can simply install one, after all. We intend to replace it with GNOME Mail eventually, but nobody has started developing it yet. I propose we drop Evolution, but I have not done so yet, pending further discussion.
Does the shell have any kind of expectation of having a calendar application installed, in the same way it does with gnome-clocks? (it used to be before at least that if you didn't have Clocks installed, the shell will still display a "set up world clocks" button, but clicking it wouldn't do anything).
I tested again now, and it seems the world clock button goes away if gnome-clocks isn't installed. The shell calendar seems to work fine without evolution installed. - Andreas
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 14:28 +0100, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
I tested again now, and it seems the world clock button goes away if gnome-clocks isn't installed. The shell calendar seems to work fine without evolution installed.
The gnome-shell calendar uses eds, so you still have most of evolution installed (and running), just not the application itself.
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 09:50 -0400, Matthias Clasen wrote:
The gnome-shell calendar uses eds, so you still have most of evolution installed (and running), just not the application itself.
Hi, I do not think so. The evolution-data-server consists of a Camel library, which is used for mails, then of the address book and calendar (including tasks and memos) code, which is there to access, well, address books and calendars.
The Camel library is only a library, the other two provide background processes thus other clients (other than Evolution) can access the same data too.
If you want to divide the "evolution" into these three parts, then you are right, it's 2 running against 1 "offline". Being it on the code lines, then it is [1] 1061503 lines in eds versus 3246887 lines in the evolution git repository. That is, evolution is like 3 times bigger in git than the evolution-data-server. Bye, Milan
[1] Maybe a bit inaccurate counting from the git checkout running a lame grep over the whole repository, thus counting help pages and such non-code sources: $ git grep "" | wc -l
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 14:28 +0100, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
I tested again now, and it seems the world clock button goes away if gnome-clocks isn't installed. The shell calendar seems to work fine without evolution installed.
We do need to change it to launch GNOME Calendar, though... once that moves into core.
----- Original Message -----
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 14:28 +0100, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
I tested again now, and it seems the world clock button goes away if gnome-clocks isn't installed. The shell calendar seems to work fine without evolution installed.
We do need to change it to launch GNOME Calendar, though... once that moves into core.
That should be a one-liner in the default apps shipped by shared-mime-info.
You can test whether it works by changing the default in the Details -> Default applications settings panel.
On 14 Mar 2016 2:20 p.m., "Michael Catanzaro" mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
We do need to change it to launch GNOME Calendar, though... once that moves into core.
Presumably only if Evolution is also dropped, otherwise there'd be two calendar apps installed.
----- Original Message -----
On 14 Mar 2016 2:20 p.m., "Michael Catanzaro" < mcatanzaro@gnome.org > wrote:
We do need to change it to launch GNOME Calendar, though... once that moves into core.
Presumably only if Evolution is also dropped, otherwise there'd be two calendar apps installed.
I filed https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=762329 but it was WONTFIX'ed.
But as both apps use the same backend, this isn't a big problem in any case.
On 14 Mar 2016 2:20 p.m., "Michael Catanzaro" < mcatanzaro@gnome.org >
wrote:
We do need to change it to launch GNOME Calendar, though... once that moves into core.
Presumably only if Evolution is also dropped, otherwise there'd be two calendar apps installed.
I filed https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=762329 but it was
WONTFIX'ed.
I concur; I'd not want Evolution broken because a shiny new app duplicates some of its functionality.
But as both apps use the same backend, this isn't a big problem in any
case.
Back end isn't the issue, it's bad UX have two apps do the same thing.
One can specify a default calendar app anyway, so I guess no changes would need to be made to Shell, but as long as Evolution is installed it makes sense to use its calendar.
----- Original Message -----
On 14 Mar 2016 2:20 p.m., "Michael Catanzaro" < mcatanzaro@gnome.org > wrote:
We do need to change it to launch GNOME Calendar, though... once that moves into core.
Presumably only if Evolution is also dropped, otherwise there'd be two calendar apps installed.
I filed https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=762329 but it was WONTFIX'ed.
I concur; I'd not want Evolution broken because a shiny new app duplicates some of its functionality.
Why exactly would it be broken?
But as both apps use the same backend, this isn't a big problem in any case.
Back end isn't the issue, it's bad UX have two apps do the same thing.
One can specify a default calendar app anyway, so I guess no changes would need to be made to Shell, but as long as Evolution is installed it makes sense to use its calendar.
Except that Evolution's calendar isn't as usable as GNOME Calendar hopes to be. Which is why we're going to be replacing Evolution's functionality piecemeal.
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 15:51 +0000, Richard Turner wrote:
Back end isn't the issue, it's bad UX have two apps do the same thing.
I agree, but we've already crossed that bridge with Contacts, which we've had forever, and Notes, which we are admittedly dropping for now.
We really need someone to get the ball rolling on GNOME Mail, the only part of Evolution we haven't replaced yet. Unfortunately, that's a huge project.
Michael
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 11:04 -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 15:51 +0000, Richard Turner wrote:
Back end isn't the issue, it's bad UX have two apps do the same thing.
I agree, but we've already crossed that bridge with Contacts, which we've had forever, and Notes, which we are admittedly dropping for now.
We really need someone to get the ball rolling on GNOME Mail, the only part of Evolution we haven't replaced yet. Unfortunately, that's a huge project.
I think that's a somewhat misleading statement. Whether gnome-calendar or gnome-contacts 'replace' the corresponding components in evolution really depends on your use case.
And whether 3 or more freestanding applications can ever fully replace the tightly coupled components of such a 'groupware' UI is not clear to me.
Anyway, as you say: there is no freestanding GNOME mail client available for us to ship anyway. Geary is dead and pantheon mail is just doing small amounts of window dressing on the geary code base.
On 14 Mar 2016 4:08 p.m., "Michael Catanzaro" mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
On Mon, 2016-03-14 at 15:51 +0000, Richard Turner wrote:
Back end isn't the issue, it's bad UX have two apps do the same thing.
I agree, but we've already crossed that bridge with Contacts, which we've had forever, and Notes, which we are admittedly dropping for now.
That's a good point, and with Contacts can lead to some gnashing of teeth, or at least a frown of confusion. The precedent isn't justification for compounding the problem though.
I guess if Evo's calendar can be disabled and GNOME Calendar can fill its shoes without loss of functionality then that'd be fine. I don't know how feasible that is given that the Evo team doesn't "think that the Evolution (or any other application in general) would provide some awkward interface for things which it can do directly".
It's one (good) thing for GNOME to iteratively build a new calendar, but another to adopt it at the expense of Evo's calendar, or otherwise at the cost of creating user confusion, if it hasn't yet reached parity with Evo's.
We really need someone to get the ball rolling on GNOME Mail, the only part of Evolution we haven't replaced yet. Unfortunately, that's a huge project.
Yep, it's be nice to have a power user's email client that's faster and more stable than Evolution. For Linux desktops that wheel hasn't yet been reinvented enough ;-)
On Sat, 2016-03-12 at 11:10 -0600, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
I guess Evolution might be controversial; I use it religiously, and many of you probably do too. But the user interface is complex and confusing; users should not be exposed to this by default, barring drastic UI changes that are outside the scope of the Evolution project. Evolution is a great mail client for power users, but I'm confident that the average user will be better off with webmail services; folks who want a desktop client can simply install one, after all. We intend to replace it with GNOME Mail eventually, but nobody has started developing it yet. I propose we drop Evolution, but I have not done so yet, pending further discussion.
One of our interns performed a usability test on Evolution. The results are at [1] and are highly negative. It seems the users had difficulty configuring Evolution to use their mail accounts; in particular, Gmail always rejects your password without any error message unless you configure Gmail to allow access to "less secure apps." Users found the interface to be outdated. All of the users indicated that, outside of the usability test, they exclusively use webmail.
Upstream, we emphasize the recommendation to not install Evolution by default by including it in the extra apps moduleset, rather than the core moduleset. I really no longer see the value in diverging from upstream here. Users who want it can easily find it. We might move Geary into core in the future, now that it's actively maintained again, if it improves to the point that it provides a really compelling user experience, but the Evolution developers have been clear that they don't want any UI changes. We should drop it (without replacement) for F26. I don't agree that mail clients are expected functionality for new computers in the age of webmail. And anyone typing Evolution in the overview will still find it, thanks to the Software search provider.
/$0.02
Michael
[1] https://dkripak.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/ux-test-results-part-ii/
Hey,
On Tue, Sep 06, 2016 at 10:47:34PM -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
Geary into core in the future, now that it's actively maintained again, if it improves to the point that it provides a really compelling user experience, but the Evolution developers have been clear that they don't want any UI changes.
I have heard that Milan (Evolution maintainer) is now playing with the idea of an alternative UI. I don't know any details, though.
Cheers, Rishi
On Tue, 2016-09-06 at 22:47 -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
One of our interns performed a usability test on Evolution. The results are at [1] and are highly negative. It seems the users had difficulty configuring Evolution to use their mail accounts; in particular, Gmail always rejects your password without any error message unless you configure Gmail to allow access to "less secure apps."
Hi, while the article says they used GNOME 3.20 and Fedora 24, the screenshot of the password prompt shows a background which was used in Fedora 23. I'm unsure which version they used in reality.
The thing is, the Evolution 3.20 has Google's OAuth2 implemented natively, thus what you do when configuring a Google account is: a) File->New->Mail Account b) type your name and email user@gmail.com c) click Next, the account gets prefilled for you d) click Next and Finish
And now, you are not asked for your password, but a window with Google login is opened instead, where you grant access for the Evolution to your Google sources, just like with GOA. It cannot be simpler, I'm afraid, and it uses the OAuth2, thus the secure thing.
Nonetheless, when I tried in the real Fedora 24, it turned out that the above works only if users keep checked to use at least the calendar or contacts part from the Google server, otherwise (when both are unchecked by the user), the account asks for a password in the way as on the screenshot. That's a bug, noted, I'll fix it for 3.22.
Users found the interface to be outdated.
That's not fair. We want to be close to gtk+ widgets, but it's harder each release of gtk+. We even were rejected recently: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=766773 The stock gtk+ widgets are insufficient as they are for the Evolution use, where folders can have hundreds of thousands messages.
..., but the Evolution developers have been clear that they don't want any UI changes.
Right, that's true. Nonetheless, the opinion tends to change in the time. Mine for sure. As Rishi said, I'd like to create an alternative UI for the Mail part of the Evolution. A "modern" one. It's a future feature, many background things require changes, thus it's just a plan, an idea, at the moment. I saw mockup for the GNOME Mail. It can get close to it.
We should drop it (without replacement) for F26. I don't agree that mail clients are expected functionality for new computers in the age of webmail.
You seem to be concentrated on the Mail, but it's only 1/5 of the Evolution. It knows Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Tasks and Memos, all integrated in one application, cooperating together. I know you have separate applications for it, but it's not the same. Like with the Google Mail account at the beginning of this message, if you indicate that you want to use also the Calendar and Contacts from the Google, then you get it for free, with one credentials being entered only, all together, in one step. No need to configure Mail, then Contacts, then Calendar and even Tasks (yes, the Calendar checkbox provides both Google calendars and tasks).
You also should not forget of the enterprise usage, like when people need to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server. If you think that the Geary + GNOME Contacts + GNOME Calendar + GNOME Tasks can handle the enterprise usage, then it's great.
And anyone typing Evolution in the overview will still find it, thanks to the Software search provider.
Hmm, application naming is a problem. Either you already know that a certain application does certain things, or you are lost. Would you ever think that "geary" means "mail application"? Similar with the "Evolution", if you want to just look for an application which covers all 5 parts (see above), then the last word you'd search for will be "Evolution", unless you heard about it earlier. I'm not blaming here, I'm just mentioning the fact.
In any case, if you (plural 'you') feel that the Evolution doesn't worth it to be pre-installed, then feel free to remove it from the Fedora Workstation pre-installed applications. After all, I've no voice in these decisions. You can always push it back, in case it'll evolve from the late 90's to the 21st century. Bye, Milan
If you think that the Geary + GNOME Contacts + GNOME Calendar + GNOME Tasks can handle the enterprise usage, then it's great.
Actually they don't because online accounts doesn't yet have CalDav or CardDav support. Don't think just for gmail users. So the only way I can have all these into Gnome is through Evolution. I don't use it as a client because of UI issues. But Geary & California or even Gnome Calendar & Gnome Contacts sync with evolution-data-server for these kind of data.
So until Online Accounts gets up to speed with Open Standards, I think it would be a step back (in terms of Workstation functionality) to drop Evolution.
~nikos
On Wed, 2016-09-07 at 09:41 +0200, Milan Crha wrote:
Hi, while the article says they used GNOME 3.20 and Fedora 24, the screenshot of the password prompt shows a background which was used in Fedora 23. I'm unsure which version they used in reality.
Indeed, the desktop wallpaper shows a Fedora 23 background, and the screenshot of Epiphany shows an empty web view, whereas nowadays we show a first-run welcome screen there, so it's definitely Fedora 23.
The thing is, the Evolution 3.20 has Google's OAuth2 implemented natively, thus what you do when configuring a Google account is: a) File->New->Mail Account b) type your name and email user@gmail.com c) click Next, the account gets prefilled for you d) click Next and Finish
And now, you are not asked for your password, but a window with Google login is opened instead, where you grant access for the Evolution to your Google sources, just like with GOA. It cannot be simpler, I'm afraid, and it uses the OAuth2, thus the secure thing.
OK, that's great. A shame the usability test was not performed with Fedora 24.
Users found the interface to be outdated.
That's not fair. We want to be close to gtk+ widgets, but it's harder each release of gtk+. We even were rejected recently: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=766773 The stock gtk+ widgets are insufficient as they are for the Evolution use, where folders can have hundreds of thousands messages.
CSS issues are just details. Are you ready to remove the menu bar, the toolbar (you could put a couple monochrome buttons in the header bar, but only a couple), the contacts/calendar/tasks/memo integration, and a majority of the preferences? All of these things would be required to become GNOME Mail.
Anyway, regarding CSS stability: the new stability policy is that theme changes are never allowed in a stable release series (basically recognizing your complaints), so this will be less of a problem for you going forward if you track the stable GTK+ branch (GTK+ 3). (Of course, to become GNOME Mail, you would need to track the development branch GTK+ 4, and then it's back on the unstable train....)
Right, that's true. Nonetheless, the opinion tends to change in the time. Mine for sure. As Rishi said, I'd like to create an alternative UI for the Mail part of the Evolution. A "modern" one. It's a future feature, many background things require changes, thus it's just a plan, an idea, at the moment. I saw mockup for the GNOME Mail. It can get close to it.
OK, well that changes everything and is super exciting.
We should give you more time to see what you can build; I'll drop my suggestion (again).
You seem to be concentrated on the Mail, but it's only 1/5 of the Evolution. It knows Mail, Contacts, Calendars, Tasks and Memos, all integrated in one application, cooperating together. I know you have separate applications for it, but it's not the same. Like with the Google Mail account at the beginning of this message, if you indicate that you want to use also the Calendar and Contacts from the Google, then you get it for free, with one credentials being entered only, all together, in one step. No need to configure Mail, then Contacts, then Calendar and even Tasks (yes, the Calendar checkbox provides both Google calendars and tasks).
So the issue here is that if you want to become a core app, you have to not be redundant with other core apps. Even if you prefer the all in one strategy, that train left the station a long time ago. Contacts and Calendar are core apps. Tasks is GNOME Todo, which isn't core, but could be. Memos is GNOME Notes (Bijiben), which isn't core because it's unmaintained and not good, but is tracked for core (it's in the "incubator" moduleset for stuff that's just not good enough yet -- which is where we can put Evolution if you start actively working on the GNOME Mail mockups). We're not going to get rid of these apps, and we don't want any core apps to be redundant with them.
This is a solvable problem, though. You could add, say, a preference to show or hide the non-mail modes. That preference could be honored if set, or if unset it could default to mail-only in GNOME and the whole shebang in other desktops. Or something else; there are options here.
Regarding ease of setup. You don't have a way to access it in Xfce, but we do have GNOME Online Accounts to configure your accounts for all of these apps in the same place. I never added my calendar separately to Evolution and Calendar, I just added a Google account in system settings. In Workstation, this is a step in initial setup, so you can do it there too.
You also should not forget of the enterprise usage, like when people need to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server. If you think that the Geary + GNOME Contacts + GNOME Calendar + GNOME Tasks can handle the enterprise usage, then it's great.
I honestly don't think this case is important relative to having a simple UI and Gmail support -- the few users who need Exchange support can just install it -- but of course it's a nice advantage for Evolution.
After all, I've no voice in these decisions. You can always push it back, in case it'll evolve from the late 90's to the 21st century. Bye, Milan
Well, you seem to be able to type, so you do have a voice here. ;) I didn't realize you were planning major UI changes. Let's revisit this in a year.
Michael
Hi,
On Wed, 2016-09-07 at 07:13 -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
CSS issues are just details.
though the most visible details. As you cannot do what gtk+ does internally without awful workarounds, like styling the header bar the same it is in the GtkTreeView, then what you call "details" is a major problem for custom widgets, which doesn't fix CSS stability, because of missing required API, intentionally not provided by the gtk+ itself. Even WebKit2 still draws its scrollbars incorrectly in the 2.13.90 version of it, thus you might know what I'm talking about, I believe.
Are you ready to remove the menu bar, the toolbar (you could put a couple monochrome buttons in the header bar, but only a couple), the contacts/calendar/tasks/memo integration, and a majority of the preferences? All of these things would be required to become GNOME Mail.
Are they? There won't left much, if you remove all of that (what I consider useful). As some applications can have different look (and feel) for GNOME, I can imagine the Evolution can do it too. We'll see, we are far from being at the end.
Regarding ease of setup. You don't have a way to access it in Xfce, but we do have GNOME Online Accounts to configure your accounts for all of these apps in the same place.
I do run gnome-control-center from a terminal from time to time, I know how (GNOME) Online Accounts look and where to find them, no matter what desktop environment I'm currently using. :-)
I didn't realize you were planning major UI changes. Let's revisit this in a year.
To be fair, I cannot promise when it'll be, thus you can do what you suggested now and re-evaluate once the work on the Evolution side will be done. I'm currently at "one day, it would be good to update the UI of the Evolution, as an option, a new view" plan, while I know there is plenty of work to be done first, not only that which is piled in my ToDo for too long time, from which will benefit all those applications which are currently pushing the Evolution itself away from the GNOME, but also other work, like to make the UI widgets performance wise, better than the stock gtk+ widgets.
Bye, Milan
On Wed, 2016-09-07 at 10:46 -0500, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
Please file a bug, they look good to me :)
Hi, here you are: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=161735 Bye, Milan
I support the proposal to drop Evolution and leave it at that. Not just webmail, but dare I say Gmail is more expected than the client.
A shame the usability test was not performed with Fedora 24.
They are not that different. The whole user experience did not turn around in 24.
Misha https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Misha English / Español / Italiano / Русский
On Wed, Sep 7, 2016 at 5:47 AM, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
On Sat, 2016-03-12 at 11:10 -0600, Michael Catanzaro wrote:
I guess Evolution might be controversial; I use it religiously, and many of you probably do too. But the user interface is complex and confusing; users should not be exposed to this by default, barring drastic UI changes that are outside the scope of the Evolution project. Evolution is a great mail client for power users, but I'm confident that the average user will be better off with webmail services; folks who want a desktop client can simply install one, after all. We intend to replace it with GNOME Mail eventually, but nobody has started developing it yet. I propose we drop Evolution, but I have not done so yet, pending further discussion.
One of our interns performed a usability test on Evolution. The results are at [1] and are highly negative. It seems the users had difficulty configuring Evolution to use their mail accounts; in particular, Gmail always rejects your password without any error message unless you configure Gmail to allow access to "less secure apps." Users found the interface to be outdated. All of the users indicated that, outside of the usability test, they exclusively use webmail.
Upstream, we emphasize the recommendation to not install Evolution by default by including it in the extra apps moduleset, rather than the core moduleset. I really no longer see the value in diverging from upstream here. Users who want it can easily find it. We might move Geary into core in the future, now that it's actively maintained again, if it improves to the point that it provides a really compelling user experience, but the Evolution developers have been clear that they don't want any UI changes. We should drop it (without replacement) for F26. I don't agree that mail clients are expected functionality for new computers in the age of webmail. And anyone typing Evolution in the overview will still find it, thanks to the Software search provider.
/$0.02
Michael
[1] https://dkripak.wordpress.com/2016/09/04/ux-test-results-part-ii/
desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
I support the proposal to drop Evolution and leave it at that. Not just webmail, but dare I say Gmail is more expected than the client.
Which is the exact opposite of having open source software. Why would you want to have a free software linux distro and still use proprietary SaaS platforms to give away all the freedom you just gained from replacing M$ Winodws?
On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 3:03 PM, Christian Stadelmann genodeftest@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Which is the exact opposite of having open source software. Why would you want to have a free software linux distro and still use proprietary SaaS platforms to give away all the freedom you just gained from replacing M$ Winodws?
Does having Evolution pull mail from Google change that?
On Thu, Sep 8, 2016 at 2:49 PM, Christian Stadelmann genodeftest@fedoraproject.org wrote:
Those are just the basic questions/requirements to replace evolution by default.
It's better to drop it then.
Misha https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Misha English / Español / Italiano / Русский
Regarding GNOME Mail: Where are these mockups? Can you please put them on a wiki page at wiki.gnome.org?
On Thu, 2016-09-08 at 13:06 +0000, Christian Stadelmann wrote:
Regarding GNOME Mail: Where are these mockups? Can you please put them on a wiki page at wiki.gnome.org?
Hi,
These are really rough mockups (at the bottom):
https://wiki.gnome.org/Design/Apps/Mail
Clearly all the details are missing, but it gives the general idea.
Michael
By the way, no one so far has questioned the results of the UX test being based on responses of 7 (seven) people. Where do these people live, in America? The target population is worldwide. How is the sample group of 7 people representative of target population? What is the margin of error and will the results repeat with a larger group?
The emoji-based evaluation. I can kind of conjure their answers without knowing who they are, based on the operating system they use.
The first two Windows girls are very basic users.
1 — “a happy face”: discovered something that's not Windows; entertained; 2 — “hmm”: “Ooh, computers!” — and then forgot about it;
3 and 4 are, of course, happy: they come from OS X.
5 — now that is your crazy uncle kind of person that learned their ways through Windows — and computers — back in the days of 98 that he would still apply in every other operating system; they still defragment their hard drives; it is the person that you hate to argue with because they think they're hackers; nonetheless they can't explain their problem when they ask for help; they use computer lingo in a random way that no one can figure out; I feel it's him who said the brilliant “As a person who doesn’t like adopting and getting used to new systems, I wouldn’t like to use GNOME.”; his two emojis represent the two reactions: “WTF is that?” and ”WTF was that?”;
6 — now that's the one I get emotional about. She's even a lighter user than the 1 and 2. She uses OS X. She gets confused when an application's icon jumps. :'(
7 is your white male Linux r00t that has been using KDE or tiling window manager for years; he passed his experimenting stage awhile ago, he knows what waits for him in GNOME, tried it before, didn't like it, he's already crafting his final words for the test; he put — both times — the dullest icon he could find, a face that doesn't express anything, just for the fun of it; he took the test to f* around; he's someone who had to be filtered out with a preliminary questionnaire; we've lost this person a long time ago, and there is no sense to have a person like that giving their feedback.
All of the above, of course, are deliberately exaggerated.
Misha https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Misha English / Español / Italiano / Русский
On Thu, Sep 08, 2016 at 06:00:22PM +0200, Misha S. wrote:
By the way, no one so far has questioned the results of the UX test being based on responses of 7 (seven) people. Where do these people live, in America? The target population is worldwide. How is the sample group of 7 people representative of target population? What is the margin of error and will the results repeat with a larger group?
Look for "Deciding the number of testers" in: https://renatagegaj.wordpress.com/2016/08/01/final-scenario-tasks-and-prepar...
And "The right number of testers" in: https://renatagegaj.wordpress.com/2016/08/19/first-impressions-of-gnome-usab...
On 2016-09-08 18:00, Misha S. wrote:
By the way, no one so far has questioned the results of the UX test being based on responses of 7 (seven) people. Where do these people live, in America? The target population is worldwide. How is the sample group of 7 people representative of target population? What is the margin of error and will the results repeat with a larger group?
The exact composition of who you ask to participate in a study is indeed important, but while it would be great to have a more geographically diverse sample, sometimes you'll have to settle for what you can realistically get hold of. I'm really happy that there is usability testing being done in the first place. I personally felt discouraged from making any kind of usability testing in the past, mostly because I didn't have a usability test lab set up at home, with a two-way-mirror and all the necessary equipment. As a result, I ended up doing no usability testing at all. :(
Jakob Nielsen recommends around 5 people, because in his experience, you'll just keep seeing the same things over and over after that, and 5 easily catches the most obvious errors. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-many-test-users/
That said, the test should be able to be repeated by pretty much anyone, with new participants.
5 — now that is your crazy uncle kind of person that...
Eh, so these are people who volunteered their precious time in the hope to make a project better, and as a community we should be grateful for their contributions. As part of the introduction they were promised that it was the software that was tested, not them. I would become extremely hurt if I tried to help make software better, just to have the project call me a crazy uncle afterwards. - Andreas
Michael Catanzaro píše v So 12. 03. 2016 v 11:10 -0600:
Hi,
Recently the Workstation working group agreed to match the GNOME apps we install by default in Fedora with upstream GNOME's core apps. We will by default sync our default apps to upstream's, and make exceptions only for exceptional reasons if when proposed on this list. This adds a bit more cement to our status as the best GNOME distribution with minimal divergence from upstream.
I worked upstream with designers and release team to move many desirable apps into core, to better match what we're currently shipping in Fedora. I also created a gnome-incubator metamodule upstream, which is where we'll put apps that we want to be core apps by design, but which we recognize are not yet ready to be installed by default in distributions. Currently that is home to bijiben, gnome-boxes, gnome- calendar, gnome-dictionary, gnome-music, and gnome-photos.
Here is how we currently diverge from the new upstream recommendations:
Apps missing from Fedora: epiphany, gnome-logs
Extra apps in Fedora: bijiben, evolution, gnome-boxes, shotwell, rhythmbox
I see little value in discussing Epiphany again right now. Let's make an exception for that.
I have added Logs in Fedora just now, as I expect that will be uncontroversial and I don't see any value in diverging from upstream here.
Bijiben is just not very good yet, and it's not under active development. There's no good reason for us to diverge from upstream here, and I expect it will be uncontroversial, so I've dropped it.
Agreed, Bijiben 3.20 is broken, so I don't see a reason to include it.
I guess Evolution might be controversial; I use it religiously, and many of you probably do too. But the user interface is complex and confusing; users should not be exposed to this by default, barring drastic UI changes that are outside the scope of the Evolution project. Evolution is a great mail client for power users, but I'm confident that the average user will be better off with webmail services; folks who want a desktop client can simply install one, after all. We intend to replace it with GNOME Mail eventually, but nobody has started developing it yet. I propose we drop Evolution, but I have not done so yet, pending further discussion.
Frankly, GNOME Mail is almost as improbable to happen as GNOME Chat. No one has started developing it and IMHO no one will. Even Geary doesn't fly as a project. It's mostly power users who still see a value in desktop mail clients (I, for instance, do, my parents just use gmail.com) and they're IMHO much better served by Evolution than by Geary or something that should come out from the GNOME Mail design.
So it's a question if we want a mail client in the default installation or not. If we want, Evolution is still our best option. I don't have a strong opinion about it, with GNOME Software the default set of apps is not as important as before since you can easily install whatever you want from the repos. But considering Fedora Workstation targets rather power users I think it still may have its value to have it pre- installed.
Boxes has too many serious bugs right now, so it cannot go into gnome- core yet, but we intend it to eventually. Since this is a significant application, I have not yet removed it from our default install, pending further discussion. My main concern is that it would look odd for us to remove such a significant app from the default install, then bring it back in a year or two. On the other hand, users won't notice a thing unless they make a habit of reinstalling Fedora, and it's not good to include apps we can't fully recommend. It's not clear to me what choice is best here.
I would keep it in for the time being, but it's true GNOME Boxes need to improve. I'm not sure if we can achieve it with the current scope. It's too simple to be used by power users. I've talked to Fedora QA several times what would have to change in order to make them switch to Boxes as their daily drivers, so that it can get enough test coverage. There are quite a few fundamental features missing. I don't think that with the current scope of Boxes it's something the virt guys who now develop virt-manager would be interested in. Again many fundamental features missing. So the problem of Boxes is that it could be a nice tool for average users, but people who can move it forward don't use it and because of missing features it's not really interesting for them.
I propose we make temporary exceptions to keep Shotwell and Rhythmbox, until their intended replacements, Photos and Music, move into upstream's GNOME core moduleset. That will very likely happen for Photos for F25. I'm less certain about Music.
With Photos, I'd rather wait until we have camera import implemented. We already have someone working on it, but it will land in F26 at the earliest.
Jiri
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256
One of biggest beefs I noticed with several GNOME project is the lack of focus and the sheer amount of incomplete, unfinished and abandoned applications ((bijiben, empathy,disk,calculator, music). It would be nice nice to consolidate effort to improve and encourage newcomers to get enthusiasm to actively maintain them. The organization should look at their shortcoming then properly addressing their issues.
- -- Luya Tshimbalanga Graphic & Web Designer E: luya@fedoraproject.org W: http://www.coolest-storm.net
On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 09:53:39AM -0700, Luya Tshimbalanga wrote:
One of biggest beefs I noticed with several GNOME project is the lack of focus and the sheer amount of incomplete, unfinished and abandoned applications ((bijiben, empathy,disk,calculator, music). It would be nice nice to consolidate effort to improve and encourage newcomers to get enthusiasm to actively maintain them. The organization should look at their shortcoming then properly addressing their issues.
I find this email, like so many other random things on the Internet, insulting and patronizing. However, I suspect that the established world order expects me to let you get away with it, so I will.
On Sun, Sep 11, 2016 at 12:53 PM, Luya Tshimbalanga luya@fedoraproject.org wrote:
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One of biggest beefs I noticed with several GNOME project is the lack of focus and the sheer amount of incomplete, unfinished and abandoned applications ((bijiben, empathy,disk,calculator, music). It would be nice nice to consolidate effort to improve and encourage newcomers to get enthusiasm to actively maintain them. The organization should look at their shortcoming then properly addressing their issues.
It's easy to sit on the internet and point out problems. It's far harder, requiring actual effort, to help fix them. If you care about the GNOME project, I would suggest pitching in to fix things things you see wrong with it. If you don't, then you're doing nothing but trolling. I can't tell which you're intending here.
Either way, your message isn't helping anything and might be negative enough in tone to scare away newcomers interested in helping.
josh
Mea culpa and sorry for the message.
On Sun, 2016-09-11 at 18:18 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
Agreed, Bijiben 3.20 is broken, so I don't see a reason to include it.
FYI, you've responded to my proposals for F24... this one was already implemented last cycle!
I would keep it in for the time being, but it's true GNOME Boxes need to improve. I'm not sure if we can achieve it with the current scope. It's too simple to be used by power users. I've talked to Fedora QA several times what would have to change in order to make them switch to Boxes as their daily drivers, so that it can get enough test coverage. There are quite a few fundamental features missing. I don't think that with the current scope of Boxes it's something the virt guys who now develop virt-manager would be interested in. Again many fundamental features missing. So the problem of Boxes is that it could be a nice tool for average users, but people who can move it forward don't use it and because of missing features it's not really interesting for them.
Well most of the bugs I complained about got fixed; it works fine for me now. I use it on a daily basis and I'm pretty happy with it. When I tried to use virt-manager, I couldn't figure out how to create and start a VM, so I'm pretty sure that's not a viable competitor. :)
We actually wound up moving Boxes to GNOME core upstream, shortly after I wrote this complaint and Zeeshan started looking into those bugs. There's really only one major problem I see remaining regarding virtualization, which is that sometimes it gets stuck just spinning its spinner forever. That's unfortunate, but not the end of the world. The other major problem is that it replaced our remote desktop client, vinagre, but it can't handle RDP yet. That would be a cool project to work on.
With Photos, I'd rather wait until we have camera import implemented. We already have someone working on it, but it will land in F26 at the earliest.
The working group agreed on this, so you won't hear me talking about Photos again until after camera import is working. Shame, I was hoping to get rid of it sooner. ;)
Michael
On Sun, 2016-09-11 at 18:18 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
Agreed, Bijiben 3.20 is broken, so I don't see a reason to include it.
FYI, you've responded to my proposals for F24... this one was already implemented last cycle!
I would keep it in for the time being, but it's true GNOME Boxes need to improve. I'm not sure if we can achieve it with the current scope. It's too simple to be used by power users. I've talked to Fedora QA several times what would have to change in order to make them switch to Boxes as their daily drivers, so that it can get enough test coverage. There are quite a few fundamental features missing. I don't think that with the current scope of Boxes it's something the virt guys who now develop virt-manager would be interested in. Again many fundamental features missing. So the problem of Boxes is that it could be a nice tool for average users, but people who can move it forward don't use it and because of missing features it's not really interesting for them.
Well most of the bugs I complained about got fixed; it works fine for me now. I use it on a daily basis and I'm pretty happy with it. When I tried to use virt-manager, I couldn't figure out how to create and start a VM, so I'm pretty sure that's not a viable competitor. :)
We actually wound up moving Boxes to GNOME core upstream, shortly after I wrote this complaint and Zeeshan started looking into those bugs. There's really only one major problem I see remaining regarding virtualization, which is that sometimes it gets stuck just spinning its spinner forever. That's unfortunate, but not the end of the world. The other major problem is that it replaced our remote desktop client, vinagre, but it can't handle RDP yet. That would be a cool project to work on.
With Photos, I'd rather wait until we have camera import implemented. We already have someone working on it, but it will land in F26 at the earliest.
The working group agreed on this, so you won't hear me talking about Photos again until after camera import is working. Shame, I was hoping to get rid of it sooner. ;)
Michael
Michael Catanzaro píše v Út 13. 09. 2016 v 14:59 -0500:
On Sun, 2016-09-11 at 18:18 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
Agreed, Bijiben 3.20 is broken, so I don't see a reason to include it.
FYI, you've responded to my proposals for F24... this one was already implemented last cycle!
I would keep it in for the time being, but it's true GNOME Boxes need to improve. I'm not sure if we can achieve it with the current scope. It's too simple to be used by power users. I've talked to Fedora QA several times what would have to change in order to make them switch to Boxes as their daily drivers, so that it can get enough test coverage. There are quite a few fundamental features missing. I don't think that with the current scope of Boxes it's something the virt guys who now develop virt-manager would be interested in. Again many fundamental features missing. So the problem of Boxes is that it could be a nice tool for average users, but people who can move it forward don't use it and because of missing features it's not really interesting for them.
Well most of the bugs I complained about got fixed; it works fine for me now. I use it on a daily basis and I'm pretty happy with it. When I tried to use virt-manager, I couldn't figure out how to create and start a VM, so I'm pretty sure that's not a viable competitor. :)
We actually wound up moving Boxes to GNOME core upstream, shortly after I wrote this complaint and Zeeshan started looking into those bugs. There's really only one major problem I see remaining regarding virtualization, which is that sometimes it gets stuck just spinning its spinner forever. That's unfortunate, but not the end of the world. The other major problem is that it replaced our remote desktop client, vinagre, but it can't handle RDP yet. That would be a cool project to work on.
I spoke with Kamil Paral of the Fedora QA the other day and when I mentioned Boxes his comment was: "We tried to use it again, but found it completely broken." We didn't go into any details and I will certainly speak more in detail about with them. But this is what I got after insisting they should use it on daily basis to properly test it.
I've used both virt-manager and Boxes and while you're right that the user experience of virt-manager is pretty bad it's a tool that has never failed on me unlike Boxes (people around me have similar experience) + it covers pretty much all features required by power users. In the last LinuxVoice magazine virt-manager even won the contest of desktop virtualization tools for Linux, so apparently others don't find it so hopeless and not being a viable contender.
And BTW Adding RDP support to Boxes is planned.
Jiri
On Wed, 2016-09-14 at 20:22 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
I spoke with Kamil Paral of the Fedora QA the other day and when I mentioned Boxes his comment was: "We tried to use it again, but found it completely broken." We didn't go into any details and I will certainly speak more in detail about with them. But this is what I got after insisting they should use it on daily basis to properly test it.
I've used both virt-manager and Boxes and while you're right that the user experience of virt-manager is pretty bad it's a tool that has never failed on me unlike Boxes (people around me have similar experience) + it covers pretty much all features required by power users. In the last LinuxVoice magazine virt-manager even won the contest of desktop virtualization tools for Linux, so apparently others don't find it so hopeless and not being a viable contender.
And BTW Adding RDP support to Boxes is planned.
FWIW I pretty much always use virt-manager too, I rarely touch Boxes. But I haven't looked at it for a while, either, and I just tried it very briefly and it seems like it may be a bit more conduicive to QA use than it was before; I'll try and remember to use it a bit.
Still, it still has some obvious issues for our purposes; I can't see any way to change any of the system devices except the CD/DVD, for instance, so I can't attach or remove hard disks, which is vital for lots of my tests. I quite often still have to switch between VNC and Spice, too, and I can't see a way to do that either. I can't see any way to do a direct kernel boot, either.
On 14/09/16 11:22 AM, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
I've used both virt-manager and Boxes and while you're right that the user experience of virt-manager is pretty bad it's a tool that has never failed on me unlike Boxes (people around me have similar experience) + it covers pretty much all features required by power users. In the last LinuxVoice magazine virt-manager even won the contest of desktop virtualization tools for Linux, so apparently others don't find it so hopeless and not being a viable contender.
And BTW Adding RDP support to Boxes is planned.
Jiri
I heavily use Gnome Boxes on Fedora 24 for testing Design Suite. One of its benefits is the ease of use as I have less time to fully customize virt-manager and the nearly seemless setting. Granted bugs still occur like occasional flickering on some distributions.
One of few elements Boxes needs is GPU passtrought, files sharing and remote connection (potential to replace vinagre)features and improved hardware acceleration. I agree with Adam that seemless integration of some features from virt-manager will be great.
desktop@lists.stg.fedoraproject.org
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Adam Williamson -
Alexander Bisogianis -
Andreas Nilsson -
Bastien Nocera -
Christian Stadelmann -
Debarshi Ray -
Florian Müllner -
Jiri Eischmann -
Josh Boyer -
Kamil Paral -
Luya Tshimbalanga -
Matthias Clasen -
Michael Catanzaro -
Milan Crha -
Misha S. -
Nikos Roussos -
Richard Turner -
Stephen Gallagher -
Zeeshan Ali (Khattak)