Slaine Development Suggestions

43 Antworten [Letzter Beitrag]
Daemonax
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Beigetreten: 09/30/2009

Slaine Development page http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/slaine-development

On the development page it's suggested that xchat is removed and Trisquel goes back to using Pidgin.

I think that both suggestions are good. I never use xchat, and I suspect that most people who use irc end up using irssi or something else (I just use emacs) and Empathy doesn't seem to work with a couple of protocols that I use.

grvrulz
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Beigetreten: 09/23/2010

personally i think that the best irc clients are Konversation and irssi. emacs is good too. I'm in complete favour of removal of xchat as it is not up-to-the-mark.
For me Pidgin is as good as empathy, both do good as far as Jabber is concerned. But I think Empathy is better integrated into the GNOME desktop. While Pidgin is far more mature than empathy, it will be good if it supports voice and video chat on Jabber and desktop sharing...

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

It would be interesting to find out how many of us use IRC, and our of those, how many use. Personally, I use XChat. What's the problem with XChat, anyway? It's a solid,functional, stable IRC client.

grvrulz
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Beigetreten: 09/23/2010

Xchat is no doubt stable and functional. Only things it lacks are
_does not store nickserv credentials.
_Never remembers favourite channels.
apart from that its all good.

Mithrandir
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Beigetreten: 10/02/2010
Mampir
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Beigetreten: 12/16/2009

Pidgin does support voice and video through Jabber.

psz
psz
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Beigetreten: 01/05/2011

I agree that irssi is one of the best IRC client, for sure the best for console. I have never used XChat and probably I will never use it.

I love ircing/chating/messaging on console, so I prefer irssi for IRC and ekg2 for instant messaging. Anyway, I do think that Pidgin is a good sollution for people who love messaging on X Windows.

Ark74

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Beigetreten: 07/15/2009

El sáb, 25-12-2010 a las 05:26 +0100, name at domain escribió:
> Slaine Development page http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/slaine-development
>
> On the development page it's suggested that xchat is removed and Trisquel
> goes back to using Pidgin.
>
IMHO
XChat should remain on the predefined apps and get back to pidgin would
be good too :)

--
Luis A. Guzmán García
http://ark.switnet.org
¡Se Libre! -- http://fsfla.org/selibre/
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m3tti

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Beigetreten: 09/05/2010

i've added some suggestions maybe you are with me ;-). Just ideas

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

The problem with flashvideoreplacer and similar add-ons is that since 4.0 there is an unfortunate bug with Totem that requires you to wait a really LONG time before the video begins playing. Plus, there is no way to skip to different parts of the video and you have to reload the page to replay to video. Gnash is better at this point.

Mithrandir
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Beigetreten: 10/02/2010

I had the same problem, so I switched the MimeType to WMP (mplayer2) with FVR and it worked perfectly.

You can do this in FVR 2 ( http://www.webgapps.org/addons/flashvideoreplacer )

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

Ok, I've tried this and it's still really clunky. Still no replaying or skipping around, no loading progress bar, and on top of all that, you have to go full-screen to see the length of the video. But at least it doesn't have the startup problem anymore.

Mithrandir
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Beigetreten: 10/02/2010

Try switching the quality down to Medium or Low. If that doesn't help, try enabling HTML5 on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/html5 and disabling FVR for YouTube. (Videos encoded with h.264 will of course not play.)

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

I already had the quality set to medium. That has nothing to do with the problems I mentioned.

I've never had a YouTube account, so I'm just waiting for the HTML5 to go out of beta. Besides, Firefox can't play HTML5 videos until version 4.

Mithrandir
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Beigetreten: 10/02/2010

Yeah, it sucks that it's either buggy Gnash or slow alternatives.

BTW, you don't need a YouTube account for their beta test. And I made a test build of Icecat from Firefox 4 ( http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.gnuzilla/1792 ), although it's kinda buggy and h.264 encoded videos obviously don't play.

grvrulz
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Beigetreten: 09/23/2010

I think adding dockbarx is a great idea... and the bash patch is a good idea but it needs to be put to thorough testing..

grvrulz
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Beigetreten: 09/23/2010

I've added suggestion to use a greeter plymouth.. Pls provide suggestions..

juanda95
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Beigetreten: 01/04/2011

As this release will be based on Ubuntu 10.10, ¿"aptitude" won't come installed by default or it will come installed by default?. I'd rather to have it installed by default than installing it manually ;).

BTW, sorry for my english, I speak spanish but I want to improve my English management :).

bifeo3
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Beigetreten: 12/03/2010

My personal opinion, keep X-Chat, bring Pidgin back in the mix.

Let users decide what they want to use, install, or remove.

torak
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Beigetreten: 10/23/2010

vote for X-Chat and Pidgin...

> To: name at domain
> From: name at domain
> Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2011 18:13:45 +0100
> Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] Slaine Development Suggestions
>
> My personal opinion, keep X-Chat, bring Pidgin back in the mix.
>
> Let users decide what they want to use, install, or remove.

bifeo3
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Beigetreten: 12/03/2010

X-Chat and Pidgin are mature, they both use GTK+ which is consistent with the GNOME desktop, and they stand out from the built in applications in GNOME.

I'm not knocking GNOME or its applications, but they always seem a bit lackluster, and just as an example, the Novell stamp on Evolution creeps me out a bit, even though I love the way it works with Exchange these days.

Daemonax
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Beigetreten: 09/30/2009

X-Chat hasn't been updated for GNU/Linux for a long long long time now,
except for one tiny fix. The development seems to just be focused on
Windows now, which is their commercial version.

X-Chat doesn't work properly with transparency which is annoying, makes
it look ugly on a modern desktop like the standard Trisquel one.

On Wed, 2011-01-05 at 20:09 +0100, name at domain wrote:
> X-Chat and Pidgin are mature, they both use GTK+ which is consistent with the
> GNOME desktop, and they stand out from the built in applications in GNOME..
>
> I'm not knocking GNOME or its applications, but they always seem a bit
> lackluster, and just as an example, the Novell stamp on Evolution creeps me
> out a bit, even though I love the way it works with Exchange these days.

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

The current version of XChat for Unix-like systems is 2.8.8, whereas the newest one for Windows (released just 3 months later) is 2.8.9. The development for Windows is given a little more priority, but the Unix version hasn't been left to wither, far from it. And since it's free software, even if it were abandoned completely, other people would be free to take over the task of development assuming the need for more features or bug fixes arises.

I wouldn't be so quick to say XChat looks "ugly" just because transparency doesn't work. Transparency is nice, but not a bare necessity.

Adrian Malacoda

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Beigetreten: 12/26/2010

I also like the idea of keeping x-chat. I've had no problems with it.

X-chat is listed in the software blacklist (http://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines#XChat) with the comment "refers to non-free browser." Surely this is something easily fixed? Aside from this issue, I see nothing wrong with x-chat. Pidgin is usable as an irc client, but x-chat is more featureful. Pidgin should definitely replace empathy, I've always found pidgin to be more stable.

Speaking of browsers, how hard would it be to ship Icecat as the browser instead of the generic unbranded firefox? As far as I can tell, the browser Trisquel includes now is functionally equivalent to Icecat.

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

It seems nearly everyone here prefers Pidgin! As a non-user of IM or video chat, I can not give an informed opinion on the matter.

We get the IceCat question all the time. Basically, our browser is the same concept as IceCat (an unbranded Firefox that never recommends nonfree software), but unlike IceCat, ours is better integrated into the system and installs with fewer superfluous dependencies. Most importantly, our repository of free add-ons (http://trisquel.info/en/browser) is better than IceCat's because it includes source code downloads AND it does not direct users to the Mozilla add-ons website (which recommends non-free add-ons)

akirashinigami

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Beigetreten: 02/25/2010

I don't really have a preference regarding Empathy vs. Pidgin; I'll just use whichever one is installed by default. But if I recall correctly, Pidgin stores password information in an unencrypted XML file in the user's home directory. That might be an issue for some people.

bifeo3
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Beigetreten: 12/03/2010

Just some suggestions:

* Please include both gnome-terminal and evolution launchers on the panel with web browser and home folder. Don't hide the command shell from users any more. Users need to have that available.

* Please make default desktop icons smaller, as the days of big fat 'I can't find it' icons are long gone. (GNOME, circa 1999). Normal *NIX users in 2011 should have dual LCD monitors, bare setting 1280x1024 each. Big fat icons are a waste of space.

* Go easy on the dark themes and please continue to use lively and artistic themes such as the wallpaper for Taranis. Absolutely awesome. Dark themes however make distributions look and feel too much the Windows 7 or Vista.

* Throbbers (aka, Trisquel/Ubuntu boot screens). Get rid of them. They used to belong in web browsers. Have an animated spinning or whirling Trisquel, or do something at least a bit more interesting. Maybe even consider removing boot wallpapers and animations all together and speed things up?

* Graphical programs should have a corresponding command line option for we crazy power users who want to keep things out of sight, out of mind, and SFW: finch is command line for pidgin, irssi for x-chat, etc.

* Does Trisquel come default with vim, emacs, and nano? These are bread and butter for any administrator or programmer. Just wondering. These are all excellent and powerful editors.

Overall, Taranis is still my favorite release, as it seemed to have a great balance of performance and looks.

Please continue to keep Trisquel tight, functional, and free.

I'm very pleased with this distribution.

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

The one thing I agree with you on is that our graphical boot screen (and yes, we should have one) should be something more interesting than a simple "throbber". I would love to see a spinning Triskelion instead.

The rest of your suggestions are only relevant to very advanced computer users and/or hackers. If your needs are that advanced, you certainly already know how to customize your system as you please. The average home user doesn't need most of the things you suggest to be the default. News flash: big icons are even more necessary when you have a very high resolution. And most users don't have a dual monitor setup.

We should not avoid dark themes merely because they are more reminiscent of Windows Vista/7. Windows happens to get a heck of a lot of things right interface-wise. Dark themes look slick and polished and most would agree with me.

bifeo3
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Beigetreten: 12/03/2010

The only reason I suggest some integration of the advanced items, is because once Trisquel starts to gain a little more steam, I imagine members of the FSF, EFF, hackers, the Free Software community in general, will want to give Trisquel a test drive as well. Surely, it's a superb desktop distribution already, suitable for home and office, the regular 'Joe' user. I'm merely making suggestions, so take them with a grain of salt. This isn't my baby. I just want to help when and where necessary. Maybe all this can come in the form of a more 'hacker' tailored flavor or something.

My personal opinion is that the dark themes are all the rage these days, with the last what, two or three versions of Ubuntu? Easier on the eyes, nice to look at, but it just reminds me a bit much of the evil Empire.

That's all.

Carry on.

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

...but that brings us back to my point that hackers have never needed a "flavor" tailored for them...they can just do all the customizations they need in five minutes flat.

akirashinigami

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Beigetreten: 02/25/2010

I'm pretty sure most people don't have a dual-monitor setup.

I think Trisquel comes with vim and nano installed by default, but not emacs. I happen to like emacs a lot, but I don't think it's something most users would appreciate. Besides, it's right there in the repositories, for anyone who wants to install it.

bifeo3
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Beigetreten: 12/03/2010

Every person in my coporate team (80+) has dual monitors. Every person in my team uses both vim and emacs. All Dell boxes. I got Trisquel to work like a dream on these Dell machines, and I've also got my own workstation to successfully integrate with our current 99% Windows network, including Exchange email, calendar functions, as well as the GAL (Global Address List). I can make Windows shares for nearly anyone in the company, I can print, rsync, all of it. I am not bound by the evil GUI which slows my productivity.

Trisquel claims to be a superb choice for home, office, even gaming, and I believe it. I made it work for me here at the office, and I was thrilled.

Eventually, I will need to convince the rest of my team that this is not only a top notch solution for our productivity, but it will help us all feel right at home with the familiar UNIX environment we all long for.

I am not out to bankrupt or disrupt my own company in any form. What I am trying to do, is allow my team and myself some leverage with this excellent alternative desktop. I know for a fact that at least half the team would love to be able to migrate from Windows, if not immediately.

So all this said, where have I said anything wrong?

Magic Banana

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Beigetreten: 07/24/2010

Nothing wrong except that your sample of users is too small and not representative at all since they all belong to the same company. Furthermore, it is more important to help Joe than your colleagues (that have you to configure their desktops).

By the way, I love Emacs and spend most of my working time on it. ;-)

bifeo3
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Beigetreten: 12/03/2010

I will be helping 'Joe' with my superb documentation skills. Editing, writing, the occasional screen shot clip, and the like.

Thank you all for your input, critiques, etc.

Looking forward to improving Trisquel for 2011.

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

We certainly welcome your help and your enthusiasm! :)

quiliro@congresolibre.org
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Beigetreten: 10/28/2010

name at domain">
> Every person in my coporate team (80+) has dual monitors. Every person in
> my
> team uses both vim and emacs. All Dell boxes. I got Trisquel to work like
> a
> dream on these Dell machines, and I've also got my own workstation to
> successfully integrate with our current 99% Windows network, including
> Exchange email, calendar functions, as well as the GAL (Global Address
> List).
> I can make Windows shares for nearly anyone in the company, I can print,
> rsync, all of it. I am not bound by the evil GUI which slows my
> productivity.
>
> Trisquel claims to be a superb choice for home, office, even gaming, and I
> believe it. I made it work for me here at the office, and I was thrilled.
>
> Eventually, I will need to convince the rest of my team that this is not
> only
> a top notch solution for our productivity, but it will help us all feel
> right
> at home with the familiar UNIX environment we all long for.
>
> I am not out to bankrupt or disrupt my own company in any form. What I am
> trying to do, is allow my team and myself some leverage with this
> excellent
> alternative desktop. I know for a fact that at least half the team would
> love
> to be able to migrate from Windows, if not immediately.
>
> So all this said, where have I said anything wrong?
>

Great initiative. Congratulations.

Migration from non free software to freedom must be taken in well planned
steps, making the users feel it was advantageous. Usually they will
welcome the change if they do not suffer many problems or can solve them
easily. Try to plan this migration carefully with a good support platform
and help at their fingertips. Remember most of your users will have no
idea about free software and some even very little knowledge of computers.

Also talk to your users about why the migration is made. Some suggestions
about this could be that freedom brings them: privacy, safety,
independence from providers of software, auditability so they can be sure
software does what it promises, modifiability (does that word exist?),
shareability, security, etc.

Hope this helps bring freedom to your company.
--
Saludos.

Quiliro Ordóñez
(593)9-8218696
Quito, Ecuador

ruben
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Beigetreten: 09/24/2010

> * Please include both gnome-terminal and evolution launchers on the
> panel with web browser and home folder. Don't hide the command shell
> from users any more. Users need to have that available.

Nope. :)
The terminal is not so needed (if it is we are doing something wrong),
and the mail is already in the panel via the indicators applet.
That kind of settings are easy for the user to make, the defaults
should be simple and clean.

> * Please make default desktop icons smaller, as the days of big fat
> 'I can't find it' icons are long gone. (GNOME, circa 1999). Normal
> *NIX users in 2011 should have dual LCD monitors, bare setting
> 1280x1024 each. Big fat icons are a waste of space.

They are not so big, they are bigger Mac and equal size in Windows. And
if you have two high resolution LCD screens you have plenty of space for
good looking icons. :)

> * Go easy on the dark themes and please continue to use lively and
> artistic themes such as the wallpaper for Tanaris. Absolutely
> awesome. Dark themes however make distributions look and feel too
> much the Windows 7 or Vista.

I'm not sure if I completely follow you, Taranis' background is kinda
dark. I made it by tossing the camera in the air:
http://quidam.cc/fotos/23-08-2010/camera-tossing-scarily-fun

> * Throbbers (aka, Trisquel/Ubuntu boot screens). Get rid of them.
> They used to belong in web browsers. Have an animated spinning or
> whirling Trisquel, or do something at least a bit more interesting.

That was my first attempt to modify a plymouth theme, and I tried to
make it simple. I think boot screens should be very minimal, so don't
expect many changes for the default one. But we can have many
alternative ones for the users to customize, if someone wants to start
making them.

> * Graphical programs should have a corresponding command line
> program. Finch is for Pidgin, irssi for X-Chat, etc.

Interesting idea.

> * Does Trisquel come default with vim, emacs, and nano? These are
> bread and butter for any administrator or programmer. Just wondering.
> These are all excellent and powerful editors.

We have vim.tiny and nano. Both vim and emacs are big, and we do not
want to have an internal editor war by having only one. Advanced
editors are for advanced users, and they know how to install them.

> Overall, Tanaris is still my favorite release, as it seemed to have a
> great balance of performance and looks.
>
> Please continue to keep Trisquel tight, functional, and free.

We will try! Thanks for the suggestions.

Daemonax
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Beigetreten: 09/30/2009

>
> * Graphical programs should have a corresponding command line program. Finch
> is for Pidgin, irssi for X-Chat, etc.
>
> * Does Trisquel come default with vim, emacs, and nano? These are bread and
> butter for any administrator or programmer. Just wondering. These are all
> excellent and powerful editors.
>

I think it's best to not include things by default, and let the users
install what they need. I always install emacs-snapshot, and having
emacs installed by default is annoying as I want the snapshot version,
and many other people simply have no need for emacs, they might use vim
or even just gedit.

And having other apps like finch just leaves something that will
probably be unused by most people, but can easily be installed by those
that want it.

It's a pain going through a new install removing stuff that I don't want
cluttering up my system. I think it's best to have the minimum first,
and let users install what they need. As it is now, I think that
changing to pidgin would be an improvement, and X-chat... Well my last
message responded to that.

cladelpino
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Beigetreten: 05/02/2010

2011/1/6 Daemonax <name at domain>

>
> >
> > * Graphical programs should have a corresponding command line program.
> Finch
> > is for Pidgin, irssi for X-Chat, etc.
> >
> > * Does Trisquel come default with vim, emacs, and nano? These are bread
> and
> > butter for any administrator or programmer. Just wondering. These are all
> > excellent and powerful editors.
> >
>
> I think it's best to not include things by default, and let the users
> install what they need. I always install emacs-snapshot, and having
> emacs installed by default is annoying as I want the snapshot version,
> and many other people simply have no need for emacs, they might use vim
> or even just gedit.
>
> And having other apps like finch just leaves something that will
> probably be unused by most people, but can easily be installed by those
> that want it.
>
> It's a pain going through a new install removing stuff that I don't want
> cluttering up my system. I think it's best to have the minimum first,
> and let users install what they need. As it is now, I think that
> changing to pidgin would be an improvement, and X-chat... Well my last
> message responded to that.
>
>

Only wondering: Wouldn't it be nice for the trisquel community to have a
page like canonical's Q&A where there's space to propose new ideas and vote
for them, propose different approaches and vote for them ?

I have no idea at how to do this, but I am willing to help on anything a I
can do or learn relatively quickly.

shackra
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Beigetreten: 07/26/2010

better left xchat in the default installation, i use it and i think is easy to use for new users.

and i think than add greasemonkey and http://e-valkov.org/linterna-magica/ for video play on any site like youtube.

Daemonax
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Beigetreten: 09/30/2009

Surely there is some better graphical IRC client available now?

Xchat for GNU/Linux hasn't been updated for a long time. The
developer(s) have just been maintaining the Windows port and have all
but abandoned the GNU/Linux version.

On a modern desktop environment like the version of Gnome that comes
with Trisquel, Xchat looks ugly, it only uses pseudo-transparency which
is hideous on a desktop with true transparency.

On Mon, 2011-02-21 at 01:52 +0100, name at domain wrote:
> better left xchat in the default installation, i use it and i think is easy
> to use for new users.
>
> and i think than add greasemonkey and http://e-valkov.org/linterna-magica/
> for video play on any site like youtube.

AndrewT

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Beigetreten: 12/28/2009

XChat for GNU/Linux was updated last year. The GNU/Linux port is currently just one version behind the Windows port. It hasn't been abandoned, and anyway it's already fully mature.

This is sort of subjective, but I fail to see how XChat looks ugly. Transparency is not a necessary feature, and it doesn't make the difference between an ugly application and an attractive one.

Noneless, removing it was the right decision to avoid bloat. Pidgeon already functions as a suitable IRC client.

skbochs
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Beigetreten: 02/20/2011

If the issue is Pidgin vs. XChat, my guess is that users are more likely to have used Pidgin than XChat, and will appreciate having Pidgin pre-installed. That, on top of the fact that Pidgin can serve as an IRC client, makes me favor Pidgin. XChat can always be installed from repositories if preferred (presumably you have an Internet connection if you plan on using either).

As for Pidgin vs. Empathy… some good points have been raised for both sides. However, Empathy lacks a lot of the features Pidgin has accumulated over the years with its plugins, and even though it stores passwords in the clear, it at least sets the permissions to forbid anyone but the user from reading the file (but I agree that this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed at some point).

Ark74

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Beigetreten: 07/15/2009

As for the Sound and Video,
What would you think about replacing Exaile for Clementine, since it is already on the Slaine repository :)

It gives a great alternative to other well known players (IE Rhythmbox, Banshee, Exaile).