Some suggestions for the gnome spin

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hello, some years ago i made a thread called “what i think is a default sane gnome system”

the reason why i did this is the fact that when i tried the gnome spin, i was literally overwhelmed with apps, literally, probably every single gnome app was bundled in there, even old and outdated ones, and that was, well, overwhelming

i don’t know if someone really listened to me or it’s just a coincidence, but i have (with pleasure) found that the new openmandriva 6.0 gnome spin is not as bloated anymore. Still there is something that could be improved
let me start

i found Characters and Gucharmap installed, Characters is a gtk4 list of selectables characters and emojis, while Gucharmap is the same app but gtk3

so pratically two apps doing the same thing, maybe one (the gtk3) can be removed?

then i found
Eye of gnome - an image viewer
Shotwell - an image viewer
gThumb - an image viewer
Loupe - an image viewer

there are 4 image viewers, maybe some could be removed?i think, Loupe is the one that should stay, especially now that it gained editing abilities

there are also

gnome-terminal - a terminal
vte terminal for gtk3 - a terminal
vte terminal for gtk4 - a terminal

3 terminals and also very old, and gnome-terminal also has been superseeded by ptyxis, so maybe it’s a good idea to replace those three terminals with ptyxis? (for the record, i don’t use ptyxis, i use black box, but ptyxis is what gnome suggest now)

there are two system monitors, gnome-system-monitor and gnome-usage, in my case i removed system monitor cause i like usage, but i think system monitor should stay in a default iso as it’s what gnome suggests

also, there are some very very old applications, gnome-system-log, and gnome-power-manager which i think they could be removed

in more than ten years using linux i never needed the log app, and now power management is integrated into gnome (for pc performances)

i removed games too and some other apps, but that i suppose is due to personal tastes

anyway, i’m glad to see the distribution look really modern now, and in my opinion could be even better if all those redundant apps are removed

just wanted to give my 2 cents since i’ve used gnome for almost 8 years now :slight_smile:

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Are you volunteering? We have a very small team. I think only one is focused on Gnome. He is talking about leaving and if he does so, there will be no Gnome spin.

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that would be lovely but unfortunately i know zero about programming, i just thought about giving my impressions, especially now that the spin evolved in a good way…

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You see kid, I am as overwhelmed as you were when I first installed the GNOME desktop on the welcome screen for desktop. It was bloated and it just seemed as if it was outdated in a way that was keeping some old and new software, either maintained or or inactive.

I never really tried gnome and despite switching to it, it was as overwhelming as it was, I just Immediately uninstalled GNOME desktop and restarted my computer and back to my usual KDE Plasma 6 series. I once tried COSMIC but I just, well, uninstalled because it just wasn’t as “polished” as it is, nor is it as stable since it is in it’s alpha stage, but I would be willing to test out COSMIC if there needs some fixing or just some critical user feedback.

Now, I am also not a programmer (yet, because I am still learning Python and C, but it’s gonna take some time while I focus on other things like gaming and browsing, and just general learning), but if I were a programmer I would just help him out and just remove the applications that GNOME doesn’t necessarily need to be there and add things that are up to date and maintain it for a while until someone comes in and helps me maintain the Desktop, but I diegress. It’s called being a software developer, but I am not sure about this one.

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And just a quick heads up: Gnome isn’t gonna be maintained as a spin, no more spin for the gnome. I get it, “resource allocation” is what I found, but do we need a seperate developers for maintaining different desktops like Team A would focus on KDE whole Team B is gonna focus on GNOME desktop development. Which I highly doubt because the development team is as small as a small indie game development group around 5 people working the game.

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Yes we did.
However it was some time ago but now we may count on more folks to help :wink:

See also:

Ping @AngryPenguin

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i had thought about trying this, but there was no italian language so i passed, but, i suppose i should try that in live :slight_smile:

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Yeah, I would be glad to test this version on a VM, but in the OM Welcome, Software, Desktop of Gnome, I am not sure if there is a Slim version of the download. Yes there is Gnome Vanilla but I am not sure if there is a specific repository for a OM customized version of Gnome Slim, I am not sure about this one though.

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@SilentRanger in virtual machine you can just install the gnome slim iso.

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I hear this a lot from people new to FOSS, in general. To that I say, you never know where you are going to fit in until you find a part that interests you. If you can think logically and use it to solve problems, then you just need to know how to do that in a programming language. Some people are better at scripting, some at packaging, and some at building an entire distribution. We all got where we were by finding where we fit, building knowledge and passion, and making mistakes. Hopefully that helps you look at it a little differently. If you want to help maintain the GNOME spin, then find out what part of it you want to focus on.

My advice is to spin up a Cooker install and figure out how to package first. Since you want to debloat, it would help to figure out how packaging and dependencies work. @bero and @AngryPenguin are good resources for debloating GNOME already. The Cooker chatroom is a good place to get more info on packaging as a general concept and how that happens for OMLx specifically.

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I am wondering if you are refering to the matrix room chat? I suppose? I will check it out since I am also into trying to become a programmer due to high damand. Yes I know this may sound, annoying or just begging (I don’t know how you call it since I usually come from Discord, socially). But I want to also help out the OpenMandriva to see if I can help or if they want some people to help GNOME to be debloated. Which is the goal here.

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@SilentRanger There is no shortage of opportunities to help out around here and any help is welcomed. Element is the least painful of the browser clients.

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Let me address a few things at once.

Yes, I agree, some packages may be unnecessary and to reduce unnecessary bloat they will be removed from ISO list in future releases.

yes, that’s actually too much, although gthumb and shotwell are not apps with the same profile.
View and organize your images
gThumb is an image viewer, editor and browser while shotwell is mostly a picture organizer.
There will be changes here, maybe Loupe will be removed (due to rust) and Eye of Gnome. But we’ll see.

Terminals, this is a packaging error. In the VTE package there appeared sample implementations of terminals, due to an oversight these files ended up in the main vte package - which is installed on the iso, and they should have gone to some subpackage, for example.
This will be fixed.

As for choosing the default terminal. For now it’s gnome-terminal, we do have a few alternatives like gnome-console or ptyxis, but that doesn’t mean gnome-terminal is outdated or inferior to them in any way. It’s still an application under development and there’s no indication that it will cease to be. We’ll see how it goes, the master branch already uses modern gtk4, so we’ll see how it works out.

Yes, that’s agreed. One has to be removed. I’m leaning towards removing Usage… but as an alternative we have modern “resources” and I also plan to package “mission center”.
However, I think the default choice will remain on the ISO and the rest will be available from the repo.

I think it will be, however.

The problem is that both Plasma is developed by one person (mostly) and Gnome by one.
The difference is that Plasma is the default ISO and gets more tests than Gnome. There are no more differences after all.
This is not a paid job, just a group of volunteers, you can’t force anyone to abandon work on package A and focus on B, because otherwise they will throw their papers and go develop A somewhere else. That’s how FOSS works.

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Out of curiosity, what’s the problem with rust?

anyway, gthumb is also an organizer i think, as you can have picture folders too and so on

for the terminal, i think i read somewhere gnome-terminal was gonna be reworked in gtk4 but the dev decided to concentrate on ptyxis, anyway if you say i am wrong then it’s a good news as gnome-terminal is a great terminal :slight_smile:

my main point anyway, is that i like to have a consistent system, that’s why i prefer generally to have gtk4 apps, althought it’s no problem till the distro works, and openmandriva gnome works just fine, mostly :slight_smile:

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That’s probably a very heated debate with a lot of philosophical viewpoints. On a functional level, they do have code you can view to see how their compiler is written (though it is not reliable, and they will probably go the way of Haskell and .net when the compiler is completed).

That is about where the plus sides end. The memory safety they tout is provided to them by C even though they trash that community, make equally elitist statements about other languages that they claim to disdain about C/C++, and the community itself is highly toxic.

The need to rewrite what exists already instead of creating more than just Firefox is another negative. The compiler messages also treat the users and devs like children and leaves no room to expand the language in the downstream which leaves everything up to the upstream and their gatekept community. Everything they claim to want to solve about how people cannot have reasonable access to #LearnToCode is entirely undone by their existing model and compiler enforcement of what they claim are proper development practices.

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