Default XMPP client
Why isn't Gajim the default XMPP client? It has all XMPP features and is supported by JMP.chat. Pidgin does not support all the features for JMP.
I don't like having two XMPP clients installed. I can't uninstall Pidgin without uninstalling most of Trisquel. (This is one of the reasons I dislike Debian/Trisquel's way of grouping packages; you can't uninstall a member of a group like in Fedora and Parabola.) I guess Pidgin will just have to clutter up my menu. At least it's not as bad as the Everything option in Slackware.
Does Pidgin support carbons? JMP requires this. https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0280.html
A quick search on the internet has shown me https://github.com/gkdr/carbons
But this only seems to matter if one objectively needs those functions, not just having them just to have them.
Why isn't Dino or AstraChat the default XMPP client? Why isn't Claws Mail the default email client? Someone has to decide such things. Fortunately you're not stuck with such decisions. The package you're removing isn't a dependency of the one you're removing, the one you're removing is a dependency of the packages it will remove. See
https://packages.trisquel.org/nabia/trisquel-recommended
jason@localhost:~$ sudo apt purge pidgin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
pidgin* pidgin-guifications* trisquel-recommended*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
After this operation, 2,764 kB disk space will be freed.
If you notice this isn't removing all of those items just "trisquel-recommended" itself (i.e., it's not removing abrowser, etc.) Do you have a different outcome?
What is trisquel-recommended?
It's a metapackage. You said "I can't uninstall Pidgin without uninstalling most of Trisquel" and so I thought that meant you saw trisquel-recommended being removed, like in my example? But this example is doing nothing beyond removing the trisquel-recommended metapackage:
jason@localhost:~$ sudo apt purge pidgin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
pidgin* pidgin-guifications* trisquel-recommended*
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 3 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
After this operation, 2,764 kB disk space will be freed.
If you notice this isn't removing all of those items just "trisquel-recommended" itself (i.e., it's not removing abrowser, etc.) Do you have a different outcome?
If it were removing more than that, you'd see something much longer like:
The following packages will be REMOVED:
abrowser aisleriot at-spi2-core backintime-qt blueman bluez bluez-cups bogofilter brasero pidgin pidgin-guifications trisquel-recommended* (and a bunch more)
Perhaps more information is needed on exactly what you mean when you say "I can't uninstall Pidgin without uninstalling most of Trisquel" Can you share the output of what happens when you try sudo apt purge pidgin?
What all comprises trisquel-recommended? Will it remove anything else
besides Pidgin?
trisquel-recommended is a metapackage; it doesn't contain anything by itself. I mean, side from the usual .deb control files and machinery. It's an empty package that exists to provide a convenient way to install other packages. See the full list that I linked to earlier on https://packages.trisquel.org/nabia/trisquel-recommended. One could get the same result by doing sudo apt install with that long list of dependencies.
"Will it remove anything else besides Pidgin?"
What does the package manager say is being removed? I'm still left wondering what problems you're having when you run sudo apt purge pidgin. I'm just getting more questions instead.
I guess Pidgin will just have to clutter up my menu.
If you are using MATE, in "Preferences", "Appearance", "Main menu" (I translate this from my own language, how it appears in English might be different), you can untick all what you don't want to see in menus.
If you are using another DE, I am sure there is a solution without uninstalling the package, ask here.
Why isn't Gajim the default XMPP client? It has all XMPP features and is supported by JMP.chat. Pidgin does not support all the features for JMP.
I have not tried JMP.chat (it looks nice but it only provides numbers of North America and this is not where I live) but I have seen posts of people saying Gajim/Dino versions in Trisquel repo did not support features for JMP.chat, so setting Gajim as the default Trisquel XMPP client might not help you.
That said, I also find Gajim far more usable than Pidgin (but if you ask any Gajim developper, they will say the version in Trisquel is "too old" while it actually works fine).
If you are using another DE, I am sure there is a solution without uninstalling the package, ask here.
There is actually a standard way to store menus. Thanks to that the menu editor you suggest, named Alacarte, works on most desktop environments. Here is its description in 'man alacarte':
alacarte is a graphical editor for the freedesktop.org menus that are used by many desktop environments. It can also edit and create application desktop files.
Anyway, as jxself, I guess calher believes that removing the trisquel-recommended metapackage would actually remove applications, which it does not.
> Thanks to that the menu editor you suggest, named Alacarte, works on most desktop environments.
There is no Alacarte on my Trisquel 11 Aramo system.
There is, however, "a menu editor for MATE using the freedesktop.org menu specification" named Mozo - MATE Menu Editor:
man mozo
Mozo is a fork of Alacarte, as specified as well in in its manual.
And, indeed, the default Trisquel desktop ships with Mozo, not Alacarte. Avron was certainly referring to Mozo. Both are named "Main menu" in the main menu, hence my confusion.