Linux Mint 8, any new default apps?

[rhY]

I love Mint. I promote all over, and install it on as many machines as possible. However, there are a couple of chores I have to do on every install:

Install VLC, remove Totem, make VLC default video player.

Install Deluge, remove Transmission, make Deluge default torrent app.

Is there a list of the changes that are in the upcoming release? Can we get a poll on the best video player? Totem is really awful, VLC is much better, Mplayer is much better, there are even others that are better (though not as nice as VLC or Mplayer).

I for one would really rather not "roll my own" Mint just to make those two app changes. Are the forums even the right spot to talk about this?

[Charles_]

Thank you for posting this! I can hardly believe it's been a whole five days since the last time you you called for Mint to drop Totem and Transmission. Gosh how time flies.

Maybe if you keep calling on Mint to drop Transmission, as you did on the 17th, 14th, 13th, 11th, 9th, and 6th, it will appear that there's a huge groundswell for this in the forums.

[rhY]

Sorry, I guess I can be repetitive. I've gotten little or no response though, and really would like to know whether that's going to happen, now or ever.

I would really like to see Mint success, and ditching those vastly inferior apps would help. At the least if it isn't going to happen, I'd like to know why.

Truthfully, I'm considering rolling my own Linux, which would basically be a Mint clone but with VLC, Deluge, and Audacious in place of Totem, Transmission, and Rhythmbox.

In addition, I might redesign the desktop and have a customized AWN instead of the bottom task bar. I might make that an install time option though.

Any other suggestions on ways to improve Mint? Is this even the right part of the forum to make those suggestions?

[Charles_]

I would really like to see Mint success, and ditching those vastly inferior apps would help.

Thanks for replying! I'm interested in improving Transmission, and now that I've got your attention, am genuinely curious about what you think its weak spots are s.t. it's a "vastly inferior" app.

[rhY]

There is no Windows version. This is going to limit it's ability to become the default for the Windows crowd, and make their switching to Linux easier.

The Blocklist plugin.

Forced outgoing encryption.

Speed. It's just not as fast.

Granted, I have not tried the very latest Transmission. It may have remedied some or all of these problems, but Deluge is very solid, and has had all these features in good working order for several iterations.

It could be less bloated, particularly on Windows, but other than that it is quite a good client.

I think the advantage of Open Source is the great variety, but unfortunately the disadvantage is that there is a lack of hegemonic apps for devs to be attracted to. Imagine if the team of Transmission and Deluge worked together!! I'm quite sure that resultant app would be better than any torrent app in existence for any OS!

[Charles_]

There is no Windows version. This is going to limit its ability to become the default for the Windows crowd, and make their switching to Linux easier.

Neither Transmission nor Deluge make up even 1% of the BitTorrent use on Windows.

If you're wanting switchers, Transmission is your better choice because it's the most popular torrent client on OS X.

The Blocklist plugin.

...was added to Transmission in early 2008.

In 1.75, this option is in Edit > Preferences > Privacy > Blocklist.

Forced outgoing encryption.

...was added as an option in late 2007.

In 1.75, this option is in Edit > Preferences > Privacy > Require encryption.

Speed. It's just not as fast.

That's not been my experience... but there are a lot of variables involved here, so I'm not going to say Transmission's always faster either. It mostly depends on the swarm, and on which peers the tracker deals out to you.

Granted, I have not tried the very latest Transmission.

The blocklist and encryption issues you raised were added in 2007 and 2008...

[beauvin]

Well, i for one agree with dropping Transmission, i never like it, it's too simplistic in fact i really don't know why people preffer it over Deluge.
I come from windows like most people do and i want a native torrent client just like µTorrent on windows and Deluge is the perfect candidate for me. The UI is almost identical to µTorrent, it has all the plugins i want, it's stable and fast.

I would really like to know why is Transmission the default client? does it have anything that Deluge hasn't? or just because Ubuntu has it as default?

[RelicKylias]

No ideas for new stuff, but I agree, drop Transmission. While my personal choice is Vuze (undoubtedly a bit bloated for some users) there are better minimalist ones like Deluge.

[rhY]

Clem, would you at least post some of your thoughts on candidates for default apps? Thanks!

[clhodapp]

One problem with VLC is that it has a custom qt-based interface that is very feature-rich (cluttered?) and would likely confuse a lot of people who expect a simple program that fits into their Gnome desktop. Also, Totem has always performed admirably for me for everything except for playing DVDs. For that, I have started using Totem-xine which seems to work better than the gstreamer-based version. I definitely like/always use Deluge, though, as it's the only client that works on my dorm's wifi. Libtorrent-rasterbar2 FTW!

[johanar]

I would really like to see Mint success, and ditching those vastly inferior apps would help.

Thanks for replying! I'm interested in improving Transmission, and now that I've got your attention, am genuinely curious about what you think its weak spots are s.t. it's a "vastly inferior" app.

I prefer Deluge because it gives me better control of individual files in a torrent. Well you could say I basically want all that's hidden in Properties easily available in the main GUI. Suppose the current Transmission has a different target user group, ie people who just want to open a torrent and get a notification when it's downloaded

[dequire]

Well, I said this before and I will say it again - Brasero is broken. Just installed Main Ed on a 4th PC with a new Lite-On DVD-RW and for the 4th time in a row, Brasero would not work when K3b and Gnomebaker both did. Something's wrong somewhere. I should file this as a Mint bug I believe.

I hope this app goes away. Fast.

[DrHu]

Install VLC, remove Totem, make VLC default video player. Install Deluge, remove Transmission, make Deluge default torrent app.

Is there a list of the changes that are in the upcoming release? Can we get a poll on the best video player? I for one would really rather not "roll my own" Mint just to make those two app changes. Are the forums even the right spot to talk about this?

Sure it is.

But you can't expect a personalized version of the release unless you do roll your own

While I might agree with some of your choices, and I don't think Totem is a good choice for a video player, when VLC or Mplayer are available, except it is the Gnome desktop choice, and that kinda inhibits other preferences
--just like Tomboy as the notes application; again when there are better applications available

[clem]

Hi,

First, let me say that I personally use Deluge and VLC myself. I'm a big fan of American football and I download and watch about 3 matches a week so I know about torrent apps and media players. Deluge and VLC are perfect for me and they're among the first things I installed on a "vanilla-mint" install

Now, having said that.. Mint is not designed for me personally, it's designed for a broader audience. When choosing the applications which make it into the default selection many criterias come into account, so it's not only about choosing the best application for the job, but also the one that fits in and brings balance to the overall system. Transmission gives you about 90% of the functionality of Deluge and a much easier interface, so for most people, who do not use torrents all the time, it's more than good enough, it's easier to use than Deluge and it takes almost no space on the CD.. Deluge in comparison is quite big.

In the case of VLC it's down to the size it takes and the bad performance of its browser plugin. The plugin simply isn't good enough, so the mplayer plugin is needed anyway. Note that we're reassessing this with every release but we won't ship with a bad plugin by default, no matter how good the player is.

Charles: About transmission, one of the features I miss in comparison to Deluge is the ability to move the storage for torrents. In Deluge, you can right click a torrent and move it elsewhere. Most people probably don't need that, but because I've got so many installed systems at any given time and I'm jumping from one partition to another, re-dimensioning them, moving them around, and I've got a huge pool of NFL matches, I very often need to move things around and that feature is just saving me a lot of time. I also rely on the labels in Deluge, so I can label torrents to say "Yes, I watched that one..", or "This is week 5" or something... I can't remember if that was in Transmission. A suggestion, more than labels, I'd love to be able to comment torrents. And finally, Deluge lets me filter my torrents by tracker. I can't remember if that was in Transmission either. In the end I found Deluge better for me, but Transmission better suited for Mint.

Clem.

[Charles_]

Charles: About transmission, one of the features I miss in comparison to Deluge is the ability to move the storage for torrents. In Deluge, you can right click a torrent and move it elsewhere.

This was added in 1.70 back in June 2009... it's "Set Location" in the torrent menu and the right-click context menu.

And finally, Deluge lets me filter my torrents by tracker. I can't remember if that was in Transmission either

Yep, that's been in Transmission since... hm, I think 1.0, back in January 2008.

I also rely on the labels in Deluge, so I can label torrents to say "Yes, I watched that one..", or "This is week 5" or something... I can't remember if that was in Transmission. A suggestion, more than labels, I'd love to be able to comment torrents..

Well, you've got me there. The GTK+ client doesn't do labels/tagging yet.

[clem]

Nice, I'll check that out so.

Clem.

[mzsade]

I hope this app goes away. Fast.

Me too, the first thing i do after a Mint install is remove Brasero and install Gnomebaker. Would also remove Scanner Utility if it didn't entail removing Mint meta gnome, etc., Xsane works fine for me.
Also, Ubuntu tweak doesn't work on 8.

[mmesantos1]

I hope this app goes away. Fast.

Me too, the first thing i do after a Mint install is remove Brasero and install Gnomebaker. Would also remove Scanner Utility if it didn't entail removing Mint meta gnome, etc., Xsane works fine for me.
Also, Ubuntu tweak doesn't work on 8.

I would like to see a Mint Tweak!

[neo21]

+1 Transmission

...like it, simple & easy, not cluttered, works, integrates well into gnome...keep it

[El_Tate]

Well... i think that we should revise the multimedia apps by default. I don't use totem since always has a problem with each type of format..., i don't use rythmbox since i don't like the jukebox style (i don't know why the hell all the world has to mimic the iTunes UI).

What i do when i have a fresh install of Mint is... first of all install Audacious2. It's a great music player... simple and fast and has all the functions that i look for a music player. A playlist, an Eq (importing from winamp), last.fm scrobbler, integration with gnome (and emesene, and music-applet) and plays every format that i've on my music collection (from mp3 to flac passing from m4a, wma, ogg, mpc, ape...). So i think that we should include Audacious2 (or audacious classic or audlegacy from the ppa of the developer) by default instead of rythmbox. Plus, i don't know anyone who is comfortable with rythmbox...

In the video side..., as i've said before... i always have a issue playing a video with totem. No matters the backend (better with xine and plugins installed), always there's a problem that crap.
What i do is install MPlayer (anyone of the variants... gnome-mplayer, mplayer itself or SMPlayer) and enyoy my videos without a problem since is FFMpeg based. And/or VLC considering the QT dependencies.

For the browser plugins maybe moszplugger can solve than and gecko-mediaplayer o mplayer-plug-in..., with the others too (helix, xine)

But for me, mplayer is a great solution for dvd and video reproduction.

PS: Sorry for the misspelling, i talk spanish.