Re: Proposal for reducing the number of unremovable apps in GNOME Software

[Emmanuele Bassi <ebassi gmail com>]

On 6 November 2017 at 10:46, Florian Müllner <fmuellner gnome org> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 6, 2017 at 11:26 AM, Carlos Soriano <csoriano gnome org> wrote:
> > I actually had no idea about the shortcuts until recently, specifically for
> > screenshoting an area, so I would be slightly against this. If we had the
> > shorcuts window in GNOME Shell and the initial setup would show it as it's
> > planned then I would probably be fine with the removal.
>
> That's an argument for keeping it installed by default (or rather: in
> the set of apps we recommend distros to install by default). I agree
> that this makes sense, but installed by default is not the same as
> unremovable - I don't see why users shouldn't be allowed to uninstall
> the screenshot app in Software if they want to.

For two main reasons:

1. Because nobody will ever remove it, thinking that gnome-screenshot
is the utility that actually provides the screenshot functionality.
Yes, *we* all know this whole functionality has been moved to the
compositor, and that gnome-screenshot is just a glorified UI around a
DBus interface at best, or at worst a pure X11 application that pokes
at the contents of the root window. I'm pretty sure, though, that
posed in front of the question "should I remove this screenshot
application", people that aren't us won't press "uninstall" in fear of
losing the ability to take a screenshot.

2. The user cannot install any other screenshot tool, unless they are
also using X11 only, given that there is no unified screenshot
interface for Wayland. So even if they removed gnome-screenshot in
order to install something else, users would be constrained to the
gnome-shell screenshot shortcuts.

This does not mean that gnome-screenshot should be made unremovable,
but it definitely needs some additional thought.

Ciao,
 Emmanuele.

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