The issue is not that it’s bloat but that it makes a bad first impression, especially on new users. This is very much “batteries-not-included” software.
In the old days, before it bitrotted, Rhythmbox could do a lot. You could play an entire album or playlist, search, sort, sync your iPod, you could play and rip CDs – and it was much quicker than iTunes nonetheless. Alternatively, you could use Totem for music and video and even that could do playlists. Modern Totem has some playlist functionality, but that functionality is so basic, it only works by opening multiple files at once from the file manager. Now Decibels basically does the same thing as modern Totem, except with a waveform background but not better in any other way.
While I wouldn’t oppose the idea of a pre-installed music player, I believe Rhythmbox was never a core application. I hope they won’t make a music player a core app because you cannot uninstall them because of dependencies. Also the first impression is the distro’s concern not GNOME’s. I support modularism instead of making softwares bundle in a bundle. For example, I should be able to use whatever file manager without worrying about the whole DE bloat. For GNOME, they are in too deep for dependencies, as for KDE.
I appreciate GNOME’s work for simplicity, but I don’t appreciate their dependency hell.
Rhythmbox was originally a GNOME 2 app that never fully made it into the GNOME 3 era. Otoh, “core apps” is a concept introduced some time after GNOME 3.0. That timeline can’t match up.
The original GNOME 3/4 core music player was/is GNOME Music. Except GNOME Music was so reduced as to be barely useful, especially at the beginning. Creating an opening for e.g. Lollypop.
Also the first impression is the distro’s concern not GNOME’s.
Before core apps were introduced thereight be distros that would randomly ship GNOME with VLC, FileZilla, and xterm. I.e. apps that don’t integrate well with GNOME and are not regularly used by average users.
The idea behind core apps was trying to influence app selection on such distros. To make sure that all distros would ship with a default selection of useful, well-integrated apps. Iow, first impression is a major reason why core apps are even a thing.
For example, I should be able to use whatever file manager without worrying about the whole DE bloat
I don’t think I worried about “DE bloat” any time in the past ten years. Might be different if I was using Raspi desktop. :)
The issue is not that it’s bloat but that it makes a bad first impression, especially on new users. This is very much “batteries-not-included” software.
In the old days, before it bitrotted, Rhythmbox could do a lot. You could play an entire album or playlist, search, sort, sync your iPod, you could play and rip CDs – and it was much quicker than iTunes nonetheless. Alternatively, you could use Totem for music and video and even that could do playlists. Modern Totem has some playlist functionality, but that functionality is so basic, it only works by opening multiple files at once from the file manager. Now Decibels basically does the same thing as modern Totem, except with a waveform background but not better in any other way.
While I wouldn’t oppose the idea of a pre-installed music player, I believe Rhythmbox was never a core application. I hope they won’t make a music player a core app because you cannot uninstall them because of dependencies. Also the first impression is the distro’s concern not GNOME’s. I support modularism instead of making softwares bundle in a bundle. For example, I should be able to use whatever file manager without worrying about the whole DE bloat. For GNOME, they are in too deep for dependencies, as for KDE.
I appreciate GNOME’s work for simplicity, but I don’t appreciate their dependency hell.
Rhythmbox was originally a GNOME 2 app that never fully made it into the GNOME 3 era. Otoh, “core apps” is a concept introduced some time after GNOME 3.0. That timeline can’t match up.
The original GNOME 3/4 core music player was/is GNOME Music. Except GNOME Music was so reduced as to be barely useful, especially at the beginning. Creating an opening for e.g. Lollypop.
Before core apps were introduced thereight be distros that would randomly ship GNOME with VLC, FileZilla, and xterm. I.e. apps that don’t integrate well with GNOME and are not regularly used by average users.
The idea behind core apps was trying to influence app selection on such distros. To make sure that all distros would ship with a default selection of useful, well-integrated apps. Iow, first impression is a major reason why core apps are even a thing.
I don’t think I worried about “DE bloat” any time in the past ten years. Might be different if I was using Raspi desktop. :)
Gnome Music still exists. This isn’t a music player, it’s an audio player.