<< Lubuntu << Applications and Other Features

General Comments

PCMan: IMHO, the focus of LXDE is: lightweight + usability, not GTK+-only. GTK+ purity is not the point. Applications which are lightweight + user-friendly, no matter what GUI toolkits they use, should be our options. I suggest not to select applications by GUI toolkits only. Usability is the most important. When there is no real equivalent GTK applications, feel free to use Qt applications instead. Remember that now we already have GTK+ style (QGtkStyle) for Qt4 applications. So those written with Qt4 can have the same look and feels as gtk+ ones. Replacing a good Qt application with a poor GTK+ one just because the latter is written in pure GTK+ is quite insane. This is also the problem of GNOME or ubuntu. Our goal is to build a usable lightweight desktop, not necessarily a pure gtk+ one.

In addition to usability, dependencies is another important thing to consider. The command 'apt-rdepends' can be used to list all possible depencencies of a package recursively.

• LXDE Components
  • Included
    • PCManFM
    • LXLauncher

      • +1 Andrew Oakley but LXLauncher is pretty poor quality at the moment (Aug 2009). It needs a fair bit of love to bring it up to an acceptable standard. Basic things such the background colour are hardcoded; changing the background requires source code modification and recompile! Lubuntu developers should consider donating time to LXLauncher since LXLauncher is likely to be a key component of our target market - netbooks.

        • Christoph Wickert lxlauncher can be configured through /etc/xdg/lxlauncher/gtkrc without any modifications to the source

    • LXPanel
    • LXSession
    • LXSession Edit
    • LXAppearance
    • Leafpad
    • GPicView
    • LXTerminal
    • LXTask
    • Openbox
    • LXRandr
    • LXShortCut
    • LXDE Common
    • Menu-Cache
  • Not Sure
    • LXMusic
      • Reported Not Working In Ubuntu
  • Not Included
    • LXNM
      • Totally Broken

    • GtkNetCat

      • Not Compatible Ubuntu
    • Xarchiver
      • 0.5 Reported Buggy
• Applications and System Tools
  • Bootup services manager

    • BUM

      • Ed Hewitt -1
    • startupmanager (package available in repository)

      • FreeAtMind +1 (lubuntu need one app to configure bootup)

    • sysinfo

      • FreeatMind +1, newbies need to have a simple way to get info about is systems

  • Composite window manager

    • Gcompmgr

      • Ed Hewitt -1, this is stupid, do we need fancy effects for a lightweight distro.

Please think about what this distro is all about.

• David Sugar -1, agree with above...

• FreeAtMind -1, lightweight distro = effects optional.

• Login manager
  • Included
    • GDM
      • Ed Hewitt +1
      • David Sugar +1
      • PCMan: If you consider the usability, GDM is by far the best. Besides, all gtk+ libs are loaded in memory because gdm uses them. So this possible filesystem cache effect might make the loading of LXDE faster. In addition, the core GDM is actually quite lightweight and is almost gtk+ only. The additional dependencies comes from the user-switching applet included in the package, which is gnome-dependent. If that one can be removed from gdm, and get it packaged separately, gdm can be quite clean, I think.

      • Christoph Wickert -1, the new GDM introduced in Karmic requires lots of GNOME bits such as gnome-session

  • Not Included

    • SLIM - lightestIntel Atom processor & Via Nano processo

      • +1 Wiebelhaus

      • +1 Yves Dupont (Works like a charm, compatible to PolicyKit etc. , no project-maintainer)

• System monitor
  • Not Included

    • Conky

      • Christian Johansson: I think that Conky takes up resources all the time. Is that really a good idea on a low-performance system? Isn't it better to bring up a system monitor such as LXTask when you want to see memory or CPU usage and then close it again to free the memory?

        • Ed Hewitt -1
• Services
  • Not Included
    • Samba
    • NFS-common
• Windows configuration

  • Obconf

• Networking
  • Included
    • Network manager + nm-applet
      • Works Well
      • PPOE Support (Widely Used In Asia)

        • Ed Hewitt +1 (Key for easy setup of WiFi)

        • David Sugar -1, has large footprint...
  • Not Included
    • Wicd

      • Christoph Wickert: Not sure about this one, it's memory usage is actually bigger than NetworkManager's.

    • Connman (Shae Smittle)

      • Not based on python; quicker?
      • Part of a large project supported by Intel

        • Christoph Wickert: AFAIK Connman is dead, Intel switched to NetworkManager-Netbook for Moblin.

      • Is it completely usable though?
        • David Sugar +1, is available separately from rest of Moblin stack in Debian and being actively tested for Karmic.

    • Pyneighborhood able to mount network drive/path of wlan/lan for network browsing using PCManFM. I'm not sure of any other application that can mount network drive/path in LXDE. (Payne Samad Loh).

      • Ed Hewitt -1, its slow
• Admin
  • Synaptic
    • Ed Hewitt +1
    • David Sugar +1
    • Benjamin P +1

• Games

  • CDRigby I'm as fond of games as anyone. (Indeed, probably more so.) However, this is a pretty extensive list. In the interest of keeping image size down, I would leave out most or all of these games.

  • Do we really need default games in Lubuntu? I suggest removing all of the games, and leave the disc space for other must-have tools, and for translations (*.mo). (PCMan)
  • I thought that some games might be good to make a distro less "boring". Just a few simple ones and nothing complex like Wesnoth and FPS. But I fully agree that this will be on the top of the trim list if we are low on image size.

  • Dave Slaughter - I think for size, for now, the games should be left our of a default install. I can write a script to install the games automatically after an install, that will install all the games for the user, all they have to do is double click the file, and it will do everything for them.

    • Ed Hewitt -1, waste of disk/cd space, games are not needed
    • Yves Dupont -1, FULL ACK Ed
    • David Sugar -1, waste of space, wrong mission for lubuntu, and some games tie to lots of extra dependencies.

    • Andrew Oakley -1 agreed, although one demo/familiar game such as Solitaire might be a good idea, even if optional during or shortly after install. Or perhaps an "install optional extras" icon on the desktop for sudo group users?

  • Some users may like to have one or two games preinstalled, but this definitely is really low priority. If there's space on the CD left, and if they don't have too many dependencies, and if, most importantly, we have time to waste on packaging them, only then I'll vote for an optional games pack. Mikhail Maksimov

  • AisleRiot Solitaire

    • +1 Andrew Oakley: Whilst I agree that having a large number of games would be a waste on a lightweight distro, having a Solitaire/Klondike game would provide a large degree of familiarity and comfort for our target audience, even if optional during or shortly after the install. Problem is, AFAIK AisleRiot is packaged together with a large number of other games in a single monolithic package gnome-games.

  • BlackJack

  • Chess

  • Freeciv

  • Five or More
  • Four-in-a-Row

  • FreeCell Solitaire

  • Frozen Bubble

    • +1 Luther: I think this is very fun for people of all ages.

    • +1 Druid Of System: This game is very funny.

  • Gnometris
  • Hangman
  • Iagno
  • Klotski
  • Mahjongg
  • Math Command
  • Mines
  • Nibbles
  • Robots
  • Same GNOME
  • Sudoku
  • Tali
  • Tetravex
  • Tux
  • Tux Racer
• Graphics
  • Xsane Image Scanner
    • How many users of LXDE really have a image scanner? I guess only few of them do. If most users don't use it, I suggest leave the space for other more frequently used tools, such as input methods for various languages. (PCMan)
  • Inkscape
    • Is this needed? It is not included in Ubuntu by default. (Shae Smittle)

      • CDRigby Suggest to leave this out. As Shae notes, it is not part of the Ubuntu desktop base installation. It is a good program, but with a specialist audience.

      • I suggest against including this. This is a tool for artist, not general population. A simple tool which can do basic image editing should be enough.
      • I agree that this should be left out.

      • Druid Of System This software doesn't seem important (and it isn't included in Ubuntu).

        • Ed Hewitt -1, not needed, not even Ubuntu or Kubuntu use it.
  • Gimp

    • Luther: Am wondering if you should include a less complex graphics application as well, such as Cinepaint or Nathive? Never used them before though.

      • Dave:The reason I am thinking of going with Gimp is that it is something that everyone knows, and is the most used, and common image editor for Linux, as well as being in the Ubuntu base repositories.

      • +1 Mario Behling

      • Luther: Yes, I fully agree with you Dave. What I am wondering is, whether there is a need to have a less complex application as well. To clarify, I am suggesting that Lubuntu has 2 image editing applications eg, Gimp + Nathive for instance. More to target users who don't like Gimp (yes there are plenty around) and only want to do simple editing like MS Paint.

      • Simple applications are good, but we should try to keep the image rather small I think (Mario Behling)
      • PCMan: Simple image editing programs are good, but will this confuse the users? Why there are two programs doing the same thing? Most of the time when you open a image file, you just want to view them. GPicView can do this well. If you really want to edit a image file, a program like MS paint in Windows is apparently not enough. IMO, however, GIMP is not user-friendly at all and the UI is quite weird for general users. So a simpler alternative is a good idea.
      • Payne Samad Loh: I agree with PCMan, me myself still not familiar using GIMP, and I think the simpler alternative image editor should be lighter than GIMP which can save spaces.
      • Robin Arnaud: +1 to Payne. GIMP is not at all user friendly, let alone "newbie-friendly." The simpler and more lightweight the better.
      • Thomas Chace: I think more than one image editor is just bloat. I think nathive really looks cool and simple but GIMP is already in the base repository and is probably more powerful.

      • Christian Johansson: In any case, I think image files should by default be associated with a simple image viewer such as GPicView since most of the time you just want to view images, not edit them. I found it quite annoying in Xubuntu that image files were by default associated with GIMP, which took ages to start up on my low-performance computer.

        • Ed Hewitt +1, excellent editor which is quite light.

  • Kolourpaint

    • Kolourpaint is simple, as well as powerful for casual users (like me). It is Qt, however.

  • Mirage

    • FreeAtMind +1, Light image viewer

  • Fotoxx

    • FreeAtMind +1, Light image editor for me is the best option

  • MTPaint

    • Andrew Oakley +1, Lightweight bitmap / photo editor similar to Paint Shop Pro, can do all manner of bitmap editing with very low resources. Also runs full screen very well, ideal for notebooks (in exactly the same way that GIMP is not).

• PDF
  • ePDFView (Shae Smittle)

    • Luther +1

    • +1 (Payne Samad Loh) I have to say yes, PDF are very common document

    • Druid Of System +1

    • Ed Hewitt +1, its light and has no gnome dependencies
    • David Sugar +1, fits well with the mission, all reasons noted above me :).

  • Evince (I think it is fast and easy-to-use too - Henrique P. Machado)

    • -1 Christian Johansson My low-performance computer becomes unresponsive when trying to open a big .pdf document (for example 8 MB) with Evince since Evince tries to load the whole document at once. The computer hardly responds to moving the mouse or anything else. With ePDFView, I have no such problems so I would strongly recommend using ePDFView instead.

      • Ed Hewitt -1, uses gnome dependencies

      • FreeAtMind +1, better option and interface than ePDF.

  • Andrew Oakley agree with any of the above suggestions, but maintain the ability for folks to install the bloated "genuine" Adobe acroread from Ubuntu Partner repos, for those who have meatier systems.

• Multimedia

  • Music (see also https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Applications/MusicAndAudio)

    • Ed Hewitt -1, music manager is not necessary for a first install, can be installed later by user.

    • Aqualung

      • I think this one is best suited for LXDE. It's simple, powerful, and lightweight. Written in pure C/gtk+ without additional desktop-dependent dependencies. (PCMan)

      • John Thng: I have used and liked this player, as the sound quality output is excellent.

    • Gejengel

      • This is yet another interesting music player. (PCMan)
    • Exaile
      • Is it needed? I have not used it myself (Mario Behling)
      • Thomas Chace: I tried it recently and it took forever and loads of CPU load to scan my library(14-15GBs). I eventually had to kill the process. Rhythmbox, however, wuickly scanned my library and was lighter on the CPU.
      • David Sugar -1, between python dependencies and other things, it wanted to add over 170megs disk space to my minimal lxde install. I actually prefer Exaile over Rhytmbox, but not for Lubuntu at that cost :).
    • Rhythmbox
      • we also have LXMusic included already (Mario Behling)
      • David Sugar can we get LXMusic running? I imagine we can, and if so, then I agree with Mario...

    • Consonance (Shae Smittle)

      • Similar interface to Rhythmbox
      • Developer left, may need to be branched by LXDE and updated there.

    • Asunder -- Music ripping (Shae Smittle)

  • Video (see also https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Applications/Video)

    • gxine? (Shae Smittle)
    • SMPlayer + mplayer (PCMan): Mplayer is the best available lightweight multimedia player. Though written in Qt, it doesn't require any KDE libs and only needs pure Qt4 (just like VLC). Besides, this is one of the most user-friendly among availble GUI frontend for mplayers.
      • +1 (Mario Behling)

      • Luther: Mplayer doesn't work for me some times

      • Druid Of System Mplayer works very well and it doesn't depends on qt4.

      • Christian Johansson: +1

      • FreeAtMind +1, is lighter and good option, better for me than vlc

    • gnome-mplayer + mplayer
      • +1 Leszek Lesner
      • +1 Julien Lavergne
    • VLC?

      • Luther I always thought VLC is a must have for me.. as it handles every format I throw at it, without the need to install additional codecs.

        • Ed Hewitt +1, only if we can get rid of the QT4 dependencies
      • Thomas Chace: I agree with PCMan, mplayer is awesome.
      • David Sugar: Well, mplayer fits the mission better than most other choices...

        • Asunder -- Music ripping (Shae Smittle)

  • Video editing software? Equivalent or better than windows movie maker?

    • Pitivi (Thomas Chace)

      • Ed Hewitt -1, we do not need video editor, its a heavy app for fast computers. People who use Lubuntu will have slow computers. Again, think of our market.
      • David Sugar -1, I agree completely with Ed.

      • Andrew Oakley -1, total agreement, no neeed

  • Recording
    • Audacity
      • Do we need this? It is not included in Ubuntu by default.
      • In regards to the goal of making lubuntu a tool for people in countries/regions with low bandwidth access, it would be a nice thing to have in order to become an independent radio producer (Mario Behling)
      • Thomas Chace: Would be cool to have, many distros don't include it. It's very useful.
      • Ed Hewitt -1, we do not need sound editor, its a heavy app for fast computers. People who use Lubuntu will have slow computers. Again, think of our market.
      • David Sugar -1, introduces new dependencies through different widget set (wxwindows), and is not a commonly used app for most users.

      • Andrew Oakley -1, total agreement, no neeed

  • Webcam
    • ??

    • Cheese (Shae Smittle)

      • Andrew Oakley +1, Cheese is lightweight, netbooks are a target audience, most netbooks come with webcam, we need to demonstrate to the user that the webcam works

    • Druid Of System +1

      • Ed Hewitt -1
• Internet
  • Bookmarks of browsers: Web sites of LXDE and its forums should be added by default. (PCMan)

    • I plan on having all the relative links, (Ubuntu, LXDE, LubuntuWiki, etc.) on the Bookmarks Toolbar by default on a Lubuntu install, similar to what Mint, fedora, and other Distros do. (Dave Slaughter)

    • Lets plan together, which links to include. I would like to set up a start page, e.g. start.lubuntu.org (Mario Behling)
    • Are there any browser plugins, we should include by default?
    • I would also like us to define the search engines. Can we make them dependent on the language the system is installed?

  • Email (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Applications/Mail)

    • Claws
      • Leszek Lesner +1

    • Sylpheed (Shae Smittle)

      • Surveys I held for U-lite showed people preferred Sylpheed to Claws
      • I never found either of them to easily allow formatting in composing outgoing messages.
        • Using an external editor to compose mail and copy it to the mail program is no less resource-hungry than using Thunderbird, is it? (Robin Arnaud)
          • Ed Hewitt +1
          • Yves Dupont +1
          • David Sugar +1 I like Sylpheed, and yes, it is lighter than Thunderbird, which would have been my other suggestion.
  • IM

    • qutIM 0.2 beta

      • free open-source multiprotocol instant messenger for Linux(beta has good quality)
    • Pidgin

      • +1 (Henrique P. Machado)

      • Druid Of System +1. Pidgin supports a lot of protocol (MSN, Jabber, IRC, ...)

      • John Thng +1. It can support QQ(Great for China users), AIM(Great for American Users), Skype interface plugin, facebook plugin and others.

      • Ed Hewitt -1
      • Yves Dupont +1
    • Emesene: The best MSN only messanger I think. (PCMan)

      • FreeAtMind +1, is light msn only protocol, but is stable and planed to have audio and video

    • aMSN

      • Luther: I haven't tried Emesene, but I am happy with aMSN

      • Ed Hewitt -1
      • David Sugar -1, we should avoid any of the extra oddball im's...if we do any it should be Pidgin...
  • IRC
    • Xchat

    • Druid Of System +1

      • Ed Hewitt +1
      • Yves Dupont +1
      • Irssi
      • we have pidgin already. maybe they are good, but as I said I would like to keep the image as small as possible.
      • +1 I think Pidgin is enough (Shae Smittle)

      • +1 CDRigby

      • +1 I vote pidgin too since it supports multiple protocols. Luther

      • +1 (Payne Samad Loh)
      • +1 Not the best, but good enough for sure. (Thomas Chace)
      • David Sugar +1, lets reduce redundancies :). If we have pidgin, then yes...

      • FreeAtMind +1

  • FTP
    • Ed Hewitt -1, we dont need FTP by default, can be installed by the user if needed, doesn't PCManFM do ftp now???
    • David Sugar -1, agree with Ed
    • gftp
      • Do we need a FTP program by default? (Shae Smittle)
    • Filezilla 3
      • For FTP, I believe that filezilla can do much better than gftp. It's powerful, feature-complete, and have very good support to different filename encodings (gftp cannot handle this correctly). (PCMan)
      • Filezilla had issues before in Linux and with our own server (LXDE) some time ago. I dont know how it is now. Gftp worked out of the box. So I did not check more about problems with Filezilla. Have a chat with Mwei maybe. (Mario Behling)

      • +1 John Thng

  • Bittorrent

    • Transmission (Shae Smittle)

      • +1 Henrique P. Machado

      • Ed Hewitt +1
      • David Sugar +1

      • Druid Of System +1

      • FreeAtMind +1

  • Browser (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Lubuntu/Applications/Browser)

    • Let us decide on one browser. I am for Firefox at the moment, but might favour to switch Midori in a later release. Does anyone know how to add our own plugins, change the default start page and add other search engines to Firefox?
      • Firefox
        • +1 I think Firefox is the best browser at the moment for this project. (Shae Smittle)
        • Ed Hewitt +1
          • Surveys I held for U-lite showed people preferred Firefox to Opera, Midori, and Kazehakase. (Shae Smittle)

        • +1 Luther Firefox with extensions beats the rest hands down IMHO.

        • This Explains how to se global preferences. Only tells you how to set the global home page, though. (Thomas Chace)

        • +1 John Thng Compatibility with web sites and fast security patches from official sources

        • Yves Dupont -1: Firefox is not slim or lightweight. Memory Consumption is too high.

        • FreeAtMind +1, in future maybe chromium ;), for now firefox is the best option not light but have all features and stability needed

        • Andrew Oakley +1, none of the lightweight browsers work well with Flash. Option to install Flash must be available, indeed option to install "genuine" Adobe Flash must be available from Ubuntu Partner repo. That basically means Firefox. I've browsed videos on Youtube with LXDE + Firefox 3 + Adobe Flash on a virtual system with 128MB and 1x 1.6GHz CPU and seen only 96MB RAM consumed. So long as you don't browse multiple flash-heavy pages then Firefox 3 can be remarkably resource-anorexic.

        • Add an option to customize Firefox for small screens? Might be desirable for netbooks. Mikhail Maksimov

      • Kazehakase

        • Luther: I added this as it is lighter than firefox. It is for people who want a lighter browser.

      • Midori

        • Luther: I added this as it is lighter than firefox. It is for people who want a lighter browser. This is quite new.

        • IMHO, Midori can be good in the future. However it's not yet ready for real production use since it's too unstable.
        • I have tried the ver 0.1.2, it can't even login to facebook, I didn't try the newer version I'm not used to compiling

        • Yves Dupont: In fact its a really lightweight and fast browser, perhaps we should stick with WebKit Engine. But Midori is not stable yet. We should find an alternative

      • Arora 0.6

        • Arora still has few bugs, but it is stable, fast and user-friendly.
        • I have tried the ver 0.6, yes its fast and user-friendly and less bug than midori 0.1.2
        • Ed Hewitt -1, its very quick and light, but very buggy and unstable, it crashes loads/
      • Opera
        • If proprietary software is acceptable, this one is absolutely most suitable. (PCMan)
        • in my experience opera 9.64 sometimes crashes, i'm not sure about other versions (Payne Samad Loh)
        • I think proprietary is no choice here. Alternatives are widely adapted and I favour the concept of Open Source. It is also in line with the Ubuntu community. (Mario Behling)
        • Opera is neither freely distributable nor does it works with as many sites as Firefox, firefox is the better choice. (Thomas Chace)
      • Epiphany (default browser in Gnome)

        • Christian Johansson: I added this since I think it can be a good alternative to Firefox. I have gone over to using Epiphany instead of Firefox. Epiphany works fine with the same flash and Java plug-ins as Firefox uses. I have yet to encounter a page that works with Firefox but not with Epiphany. Epiphany seems to use slightly less memory than Firefox but it has the limitation that it has much less features than Firefox.

        • David Sugar +1, it fits the mission better than Firefox, especially for very low end specs.
      • Chromium
        • Julien Lavergne +1
• Office and related
  • CHM Viewer
    • Ed Hewitt -1
    • David Sugar -1

    • FreeAtMind +1, or maybe optional

    • xCHM

      • IMHO this is not needed by default (PCMan)
      • +1 (Mario Behling)
      • Will people switching from windows expect to open CHM files by default?
      • Maybe, but it's not the most popular format anyways unless your crazily into ebooks. (Thomas Chace)
  • Editor
    • Ed Hewitt -1
    • Bluefish

    • Geany

      • +1 For geany, awesome IDE. However it should be noted gedit would do quite well as a basic editor (Thomas Chace)
      • David Sugar -1, I love geany also, but this is the wrong mission and not a commonly used thing for most users.
    • gEdit

    • Scribes

  • Presentation
    • Any presentation viewers out there that can be included?

    • Freemind(Mind Map) for some presentation? John Thng

      • -1, mind maps are not common enough IMHO Mikhail Maksimov

  • Spreadsheet
    • Gnumeric
      • Ed Hewitt +1
  • Wordprocessor
    • Abiword
      • Ed Hewitt +1
      • David Sugar +1

  • OpenOffice.org 3, IMHO, should be kept despite its "obesity". It's the only one having best MS-office compatibility in the free world. This is quite critical. (PCMan)

    • +1 Luther

    • +1 (Payne Samad Loh)

    • +1 (Henrique P. Machado)

    • +1 (Thomas Chace)

    • +1 John Thng

    • Ed Hewitt -1, its an excellent package, but not light. Abiword and Gnumeric does a good enough job.
    • David Sugar, a very very *strong -1*, this kills the idea of lightweight distro. It can always be installed later. If there is concern about bandwidth, it can always be added to a full size CD being handed out or shipped for post-install selection if someone wants to do that, but it should NOT be part of the base Lubuntu seed.

    • FreeAtMind +1,

    • +/- 0 Andrew Oakley OOo is excellent and a "must-have" for most/many, but very resource hungry. This should be a "guided optional"; either selectable *during* install, or through a large and prominent "Install optional extras" facility immediately after install (eg. desktop icon for all sudo users). Fallback to Abiword and Gnumeric. But make sure that installing OOo though the "optional extras" feature automatically defaults to removing Abiword and Gnumeric.

      • -1 to the last part. We don't really have to remove Abiword etc. after installing OOo. I'd use Abiword for fast-viewing documents even on decent hardware, it loads instantly and shows (the text content of) .doc well enough. We may add an option of removing lightweight office tools after OOo installation, but this must not be the default behaviour. Mikhail Maksimov

• Accessories
  • Calculator
    • Galculator
      • Ed Hewitt +1

      • Andrew Oakley +1

  • Gcolor2 (colour picker)

    • Ed Hewitt -1
  • Notepad
    • Leafpad
      • +1 (Payne Samad Loh) one notepad is enough.
      • +1 Agree. (Mario Behling)
      • Ed Hewitt +1

      • Andrew Oakley +1, yes one notepad is enough. Leafpad is good enough and why vary from the LXDE default?

    • Mousepad

    • Beaver

      • Ed Hewitt -1
    • gEdit
      • Ed Hewitt -1

    • ScITE

      • I think that SciTE is more powerful than Leafpad. ScITE covers the needs of casual users, as well as of advanced ones: [optional] tabs, search/replace with regular expressions, syntax colouring. It is also as fast as LeafPad in boot time. I would therefore replace LeafPad with this one.

    • medit

      • FreeAtMind +1, have all features needed

  • take screenshot
    • lxscreenshot (right now in the Lubuntu desktop ppa, written in Vala) - Stephen Smally
    • xfce4-screenshooter
      • Ed Hewitt +1
    • gnome-screenshot
    • screenshot tool for gpe can be considered. (PCMan)

    • Scrot is a great tool. The only GUI is Shutter

  • gucharmap

  • dictionary
  • CD burner
    • Ed Hewitt, cant decide between Xfburn or Brasero, do not mind which one.
    • David Sugar, agree, either Xfburn or Brasero would be fine for this...

    • Graveman

    • X-CD_Roast

    • Xfburn of xfce is quite good. (PCMan)
      • Ed Hewitt +1

    • GnomeBaker

    • Brasero

      • Ed Hewitt +1

      • FreeAtMind +1

  • Multi language input
  • Terminal
    • Xterm
    • Lxterminal
      • Ed Hewitt +1
      • David Sugar +1

      • Andrew Oakley +1, one terminal is enough. Lxterminal is good enough and why vary from the LXDE default?

    • Roxterm (This is my favorite. PCMan)

      • +1 Luther

    • Terminator (Awesome terminal emulator, tabs and split windows. Thomas Chace)
  • Partition Tool
    • GParted (by far the best. PCMan)
      • +1 (Payne Samad Loh) I agree with PCMan, general users prefers more on GUI than CLI
      • +1 The king of GUI partitioners. (Thomas Chace)

      • Druid Of System +1

      • +1 John Thng

      • FreeAtMind +1, needed to manage the usb drives

      • -1 Andrew Oakley. No partition editor should be installed by default. For 99% of users, partitioning will be done once during install, then never again. Any user with enough experience to want to do re-partitioning or partition external drives will already have the knowledge to download and install their partition editor of choice.

  • Archiver

    • Peazip

      • Luther: I am suggesting that we consider peazip even though we have Xarchiver. I think it looks better :p

  • Screensaver
    • Gnome-Screensaver (Just so much better looking then xscreensaver, at least when locking. Custom themes could be made. Thomas Chace)
      • Ed Hewitt -1
      • David Sugar -1
    • Xscreensaver
      • Ed Hewitt +1
      • David Sugar +1

Other features

• A few custom .desktop files for few things
  • like a logout/shutdown button on the panel.
• Menu entries for
  • GCompmgr
  • XCompmgr.
• A couple of custom art items
  • like the LXDE logout menu, making a custom banner for that
  • As well as a custom menu button.

• CDRigby A "modular" installer? Modular in the sense that the installer installs the base Ubuntu system with a minimal LXDE desktop. Let's call that LXDE-base. It would include only those apps needed for basic 'Net-centric productivity. Then the installer presents the user with a set of installable bundles. Taking games as an example:

  • Light games bundle: text-only/2D graphics only, no network support required
  • Medium games bundle: 2D graphics, networked/multi-player
  • Heavy games bundle: As above, but 3D games included.
  A similar arrangement could be used for other domains, such as office apps, web/program development, etc. Would this be too complicated for most users? Perhaps it would only be available to "expert" mode installations?

  • I think this might be a bit difficult for the first version, but would come in very handy for users. We should do that definitely! Mario

  • +1 Mikhail Maksimov Must-have for any distribution, including core Ubuntu. Since we aim at lower-end machines, we absolutely must provide choices for office, browser, etc. to give user more "features vs. hardware power" flexibility. Afterthoughts:

    • Expert mode is probably aimed at lower level troubleshooting/tuning than just selecting pre-configured bundles and options. What about defaulting to bare minimum (that is, the least resource-hungry application in every "100% useful" category, no games, no GIMP, etc.), then asking if the user wants to install more powerful tools that require more computing resources?

    • Short guide/hints may come in handy, like "OOo is powerful and features best known ms office compatibility but it does require (number) Mb of disk space and will probably prove useless if you have less than (number) Mb RAM" or something. May be hidden for geeks, but _should_ be accessible for the rest of us, including myself

    • Extra applications for Ubuntu Server edition may be a good example implementation of a similar installer feature.

• Lubuntu Netbook Remix just like UNR Payne Samad Loh

• LXlauncher could be used for the Netbook Remix (Thomas Chace)

  • Dave Slaughter - I was thinking the same thing, I think what I may do for now, is write a script to install it if the user wants it, and that way, there is only one iso needed.

  • (Payne Samad Loh) LXlauncher can be closed or switchable, whereby user can choose whether they can view it in launcher mode and in wallpaper background mode. Selectable/changable launcher themes

  • +1 Andrew Oakley but LXLauncher is pretty poor quality at the moment (Aug 2009). It needs a fair bit of love to bring it up to an acceptable standard. Basic things such the background colour are hardcoded; changing the background requires source code modification and recompile! Lubuntu developers should consider donating time to LXLauncher since LXLauncher is likely to be a key component of our target market - netbooks.

• Only ever use Long Term Support (LTS) releases

  • +1 Andrew Oakley This is a lightweight distro so we are not going to be using cutting-edge whizz-bang stuff like Compiz graphic card support, fancy network management, user switchers etc. We should base the distro on Hardy or the next Long Term Support release. Hardy already has perfectly acceptable support for graphics cards, network and WiFi management, 3G/bluetooth support, user switcher, we do not need the newer fancier stuff. By sticking to LTS releases only, we will provide a solid, stable, infrequently changed distro which will be loved by three primary audience markets: 1) Netbook manufacturers; 2) People with secondary PCs; 3) IT staffers who need to provide virtual machines to their end users. I simply do not have time to waste upgrading every one of my 5 Ubuntu physical computers and 4 virtual machines every 6 months, and then debugging the consequences. If we stick to LTS releases then it will start to make economic sense to mass-produce USB sticks, preload netbooks, preload kiosk machines, mass-deploy virtual machines etc. Lightweight should also mean hassle-free. LTS releases are kept up-to-date for 3-5 years.