Catanzaro: GNOME Core Apps Update

Posted May 12, 2023 8:57 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582)
Parent article: Catanzaro: GNOME Core Apps Update

Is there a point of designating certain apps "core apps"? I would imagine most users have their preferred apps, maybe vlc for media, firefox for web, whatever. GNOME terminal may be nice but so is xfce4-terminal, and some may prefer foot or alacritty or whatever, all of them are usable in any desktop environment. The article makes it sound like console developers lost interest because Fedora Workstation rejected it. That suggests the motivation for developing the app is wrong. Same with GNOME Web (née Epiphany), what's the point of it? If the point is to have an alternative lightweight browser, good, that's an itch worth scratching. If the point is only to have a gnome "core app", or worse, if it's because the GNOME committee said a "core app" for browsing is needed, that's not very motivating.

Catanzaro: GNOME Core Apps Update

Posted May 12, 2023 9:05 UTC (Fri) by zdzichu (subscriber, #17118) [Link] (4 responses)

Or what's the point of application like Maps? It has no offline mode, so it is not better than ordinary Web Browser. A web browser is even better, as it gives access to different map providers.
I see the developers put a lot of work into Maps (I read the maps blogposts on GNOME Planet for almost a decade), but there was no rationale given why it was selected to be a core app.

Catanzaro: GNOME Core Apps Update

Posted May 12, 2023 13:36 UTC (Fri) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link] (2 responses)

IMHO "core apps" should be those apps that every user _must_ install in order to use the desktop, the message should be "do no bother installing desktop X, unless you also install app Y"; and "Maps" would surely not be on my list.

Catanzaro: GNOME Core Apps Update

Posted May 12, 2023 13:54 UTC (Fri) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

I think part of the problem is that GNOME's Core Apps are a mix of "don't bother with GNOME if you don't want this app installed" and "the GNOME developers commit to keeping this working as best they can for GNOME users". Everyone agrees that the former category is "core apps", and covers things like the file manager; but we don't (AFAICT) have a good name for the latter category, of apps which are developed in exactly the same way as the required (core) apps, but which aren't a vital part of the desktop environment.

Catanzaro: GNOME Core Apps Update

Posted May 12, 2023 20:24 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> "don't bother with GNOME if you don't want this app installed"

Let's just hope they don't get the Android disease then ...

Cheers,
Wol

Catanzaro: GNOME Core Apps Update

Posted May 12, 2023 14:34 UTC (Fri) by walex (guest, #69836) [Link]

My guesses:

* The browser argument can be nowadays applied to *anything*, it can be the runtime environment for whatever, given WASM etc.; see all the apps that use Electron, and not everybody is happy with that.

* Developers are volunteers and they decide themselves what kind of app they want to develop. Perhaps they want to maintain the possibility that Maps will have an offline version too eventually.

* GNOME exists in cellphone, tablet and embedded versions too, some with rather modest hardware capacity.