#166 Replace Cheese with Snapshot as the default camera application
Closed: Fixed 11 months ago by catanzaro. Opened 4 years ago by aday.

Currently we include Cheese in the default app set. It doesn't get used a huge amount, but it can be handy for taking odd pictures with the camera, or for testing that your camera hardware is working.

That said, Cheese's pitch - a Photobooth clone, with effects - feels a bit dated and doesn't particularly fit with the Workstation vibe. In the future it would be good to replace Cheese with a simpler and more generic Camera app.

We could do this by rebranding cheese and removing a few of the features, or by using a new app altgether. Apparently Purism had one at some point...


As it may not be obvious, "camera" in this scenario should mean:

  • stills and video
  • chooseable camera hardware

Another option would be to consider integrating the "testing" aspect of the use case in to settings. We can adjust/configure sound in the settings, why not video/stills? Basically, I am thinking something that shows you what the camera(s) sees and maybe lets you adjust some aspects.

Metadata Update from @chrismurphy:
- Issue set to the milestone: Fedora 34

4 years ago

Metadata Update from @tpopela:
- Issue tagged with: meeting-request

3 years ago

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: meeting-request
- Issue tagged with: meeting

3 years ago

Currently the app does not seem to be as well-maintained as Cheese. It's also not packaged for Fedora.

Action: Matthias will ask David to look into this app, and its dependency, libaperture.

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: meeting

3 years ago

Count with me to port gnome-control-center and gnome-initial-setup to libaperture if we decide to do the switch.

I guess I was the last one to touch these pieces of code in g-c-c and g-i-s.

Currently the app does not seem to be as well-maintained as Cheese.

It's never been released. Apparently they were waiting for GTK4 to be released, since it will solve some issues with the app.

Since it hasn't been mentioned in this ticket, and seems relevant: it seems that one motivation to adopt gnome-camera is that cheese depends on clutter, which we want to drop.

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue set to the milestone: None (was: Fedora 34)

3 years ago

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue tagged with: default-apps

3 years ago

Retitled this to "Remove Cheese." Corresponding upstream ticket: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Releng/AppOrganization/-/issues/8

@aday I think we can proceed with the new upstream app review process for Cheese. It requires two reviewers, one from release team and one from design team. That could be you and me, or alternatively you could recruit another designer. Sound good? Nobody has done this before, so I guess we'll figure out for ourselves how exactly it will work....

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue tagged with: pending-action

2 years ago

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue assigned to catanzaro

2 years ago

@catanzaro I'm not sure about removing Cheese before we have a replacement...

Also @amigadave is working on getting rid of clutter in Cheese (which was one of the motivations of abandoning Cheese)

@catanzaro I'm not sure about removing Cheese before we have a replacement...

@aday I don't think there will be a replacement because nobody is working on one and none has been designed. The camera app https://gitlab.gnome.org/jwestman/camera looked promising, but it has been abandoned. So honestly it doesn't make sense to keep this issue open if you don't want to remove it without replacement and no replacement is in progress.

Release team primarily wants to remove Cheese because we want to remove clutter, so yes we would indeed be less interested in removing Cheese if it did not depend on clutter. But that's not the only problem, though. I had to do the two previous releases of Cheese myself, which is not something we like to do if it can be avoided. Frankly, it's undermaintained and is posing a burden on release team.

Um, in particular, if you want Cheese to remain until a replacement is ready, please comment at https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Releng/AppOrganization/-/issues/8.

So there is a new app Snapshot that is intended to replace Cheese.

Action: Michael to perform upstream app review. Allan to perform upstream app review or cajole another GNOME designers into doing so.

The Snapshot review was completed and the app is part of the incubator (and also available on Flathub - https://flathub.org/apps/org.gnome.Snapshot). Let me adjust the name of this issue to reflect what is proposed. What are the next steps here? Get the app packaged in Fedora?

Metadata Update from @tpopela:
- Issue tagged with: meeting-request

a year ago

Metadata Update from @tpopela:
- Issue set to the milestone: Fedora 39

a year ago

Yes. It's also time to provide upstream with our feedback on Snapshot. If anybody feels that Snapshot is not yet ready to replace Cheese, we need to know now.

I reviewed the Snapshot UX last week. It's still a little immature, though not far off being better than Cheese.

The main issues I'd like to see resolved before we adopt it are fairly obvious polish items:

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: pending-action

a year ago

We should review Snapshot again after the GNOME beta.

There is also https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Incubator/snapshot/-/issues/74

A similar issue happens with Loupe, which is translated to "Lupa" in brazilian portuguese. Won't this confuse users into thinking that Loupe is a search app?

fyi: Snapshot is likely to be approved to enter GNOME core very soon. If there's any reason you wouldn't want it to be installed by default in Workstation, there is almost no time left to complain.

There is also https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Incubator/snapshot/-/issues/74

A similar issue happens with Loupe, which is translated to "Lupa" in brazilian portuguese. Won't this confuse users into thinking that Loupe is a search app?

I would leave this for the Portuguese localization team to figure out. The Workstation WG isn't going to be able to make good decisions on localization issues.

There is also https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Incubator/snapshot/-/issues/74

A similar issue happens with Loupe, which is translated to "Lupa" in brazilian portuguese. Won't this confuse users into thinking that Loupe is a search app?

heh, I don't think so. I'm a Brazilian Portuguese speaker. But if you want to discuss that, maybe open an issue in https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Translation/pt_BR/-/issues/new or bring it to the chat in https://matrix.to/#/#gnome-br:gnome.org

Snapshot has just replaced Cheese in GNOME core.

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue untagged with: meeting-request

a year ago

There is also https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Incubator/snapshot/-/issues/74

A similar issue happens with Loupe, which is translated to "Lupa" in brazilian portuguese. Won't this confuse users into thinking that Loupe is a search app?

heh, I don't think so. I'm a Brazilian Portuguese speaker. But if you want to discuss that, maybe open an issue in https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Translation/pt_BR/-/issues/new or bring it to the chat in https://matrix.to/#/#gnome-br:gnome.org

Loupe was recently renamed to Image Viewer and Snapshot issue was filed in the pt-BR translation issue tracker already (maybe it would be great to check other translations in case Snapshot doesn't get renamed to Camera). Sorry for the noise.

Is this going to happen for F39?

Probably not. I think we are currently planning on F40.

Metadata Update from @aday:
- Issue set to the milestone: Fedora 40 (was: Fedora 39)

a year ago

Snapshot is now packaged and available in F39 updates-testing: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2023-cada8c0744

We'll need a Flatpak and an update to pungi-fedora conf for Silverblue.

I already requested a snapshot flatpak, but it's missing 'snapshot-flatpak' package entry in koji - we need https://pagure.io/fedora-infra/ansible/pull-request/1595 to land to get new flatpak creation fixed.

Otherwise I have it all ready to go locally.

Comps PR to replace cheese with snapshot in F40: https://pagure.io/fedora-comps/pull-request/901

So, we're done, right? I'm going to close this.

Metadata Update from @catanzaro:
- Issue close_status updated to: Fixed
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

11 months ago

The flatpak is still missing due to the missing 'snapshot-flatpak' package entry in koji but that should hopefully get sorted out soon: https://pagure.io/releng/issue/11626 . Otherwise should be all done :)

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