On Wed, Feb 20, 2019 at 2:41 PM Bastien Nocera <bnocera@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
GNOME Videos will still be available, from here:
https://flathub.org/apps/details/org.gnome.Totem
with all the bells and whistles.
I think that, out-of-the-box, clicking on "Install" on this website will lead
to a better experience than 1) finding out about third-party RPM repositories
2) enabling said repositories 3) triggering the codecs to be installed, including
the aforementioned PackageKit-gstreamer helper bugs
That's probably true. And users who already know about this can do it already. But without desktop integration, it's unlikely we can get this message through to most of our users. Of course, spreading this information doesn't mean the default player needs to get removed. The player can be there, "half-functional", and we can do our best to inform our users how to improve the state (even if that means removing the pre-installed one and installing its Flathub version, that's just one extra step compared to your guide).
(Whether we can spread this information or not, link to Flathub with apps containing patented codecs, etc, is something that people with legal background should probably decide, I have no idea.)
But, one important thing should be considered. Many of those people who install patented codecs into Fedora will need to enable the system repositories anyway, Flathub's Totem or VLC will not be enough. And that's because web is the king now, and web browsers need those codecs to play most of the web's video content (except YouTube). Except Chrome, which is popular, but probably not something we want to encourage.
So I think a large number of users will need to find third-party codecs anyway (which "fixes" many apps including Totem), and asking them to install Totem from Flathub doesn't change the picture that much.
I intend to advertise the upstream distribution of totem via my own blog, and
Fedora Magazine (which apparently can link to Flathub without problems).
> Also, having a Workstation product without a pre-installed video player is
> guaranteed to get bad press (and I don't mean just journalists, but user
> opinions). Suddenly, "Fedora" can't even play open-source codecs by default.
> Our mission is to "advance software and content freedom", but we wouldn't be
> even able to play FOSS content out-of-the-box? That's really... weird.
Not to find false equivalences, but we don't ship with a mail client
out-of-the-box either.
I'd really rather not have the application available in Fedora, than have it
be a cut-down version that's really hard to extend. In the end, the end-users
will go the way you mentioned earlier, look for a video player, and end up
installing VLC from Flathub, instead of trying to figure out why this sucky
video player couldn't play anything.
OK, I think I understand now the reason of this proposal. You don't want Totem to be seen as a broken application, you're the main developer. I can relate to that. Personally, even though Totem doesn't have enough features for me, it's consistently more reliable for me than VLC. However, I still believe we should have a video player installed by default, and Totem is a good fit.
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