Desktop Project: Default Applications

One of the more important and controversial tasks of the desktop team is to select the default applications. The defaults are reflected in the code in two ways; first, they get the "X-Red-Hat-Base" category in their .desktop file and thus appear in the toplevel menus rather than the "More..." menus; second, they are included in the comps file used by the installer for a default install, if the user doesn't make manual package selections.

The defaults are aimed at nontechnical users. Technical users can happily change the defaults themselves, nontechnical users will not.

Here are some of the dimensions used to evaluate an application for use as the default. Usually, no application is clearly the best along all dimensions, so tradeoffs need to be thought through.

• Long-term prospects, robustness, and direction of the upstream developer community. Are the upstream maintainers moving in the right direction; how many maintainers are there; do they make quality releases and write good code; are they responsive to questions/patches; etc.
• Usability. Does the application have a well-designed user interface, follow UI guidelines, and so forth? Are the app designers making an effort or just spewing widgets in every direction?
• Toolkit. Applications using an open source native toolkit (i.e. GTK+ or Qt) are preferred over those that don't.
• Feature set. Applications that meet the basic needs of the userbase are preferred. For example, an office application would usually need to have robust Microsoft Office import.
• Accessibility. The application should either have a11y support, or have some feasible path to adding it. Currently, only GTK+ applications really meet this criterion.
• Internationalization. The application should support Unicode and allow translation into multiple languages, and should support input methods. GTK+/Qt apps normally meet this goal without a lot of extra work - another reason we prefer apps that use a real toolkit.
• Integration. Does the application fit in to the Linux environment properly, using features such as the native file associations, drag-and-drop, and so forth?
• Environment-neutrality. Does the application use freedesktop.org specifications and other applicable means to avoid being tied to a particular desktop environment? Specifically, the app must run well under both GNOME and KDE.
• Longevity. Is this default application one we can expect to keep for a few releases at least, or do we already expect to replace it with some other default in 6 months? We don't want to create too much churn in the default application list.