XPost: linux.debian.maint.gtk.gnome
On Sat, Mar 1, 2025 at 2:26 AM Frederic Peters <
fpeters@debian.org> wrote:
I did not investigate further as I had no time for it and it was just
simpler to switch back to evince. Looking at it now, with the same
simple PDF, Papers consume ~4 times the memory Evince consume.
Yes, Papers uses more memory than most other apps I am running now
other than web browsers or Electron apps. I believe this is true for
any Rust app, so this issue also applies to Loupe which we now use by
default instead of eog. I think this is because Rust apps are
currently compiled statically in Debian instead of using shared
libraries like C apps. I don't think this will change a few months
from now and might not change before we release Forky.
My opinion is that I wouldn't block switching because of this issue.
It is still possible to install Evince for people who have the need to
open many PDF files simultaneously. Firefox (and most web browsers)
can also open PDFs natively; although I guess that wouldn't help for
conserving memory.
A few other things I've learned since starting this conversation:
- RHEL 10 Beta and similar distros have already switched from evince
to papers. RHEL 10 Beta is generally shipping GNOME 47 so this is
arguably even more aggressive than Debian switching.
- Based in part on Ubuntu and Debian's actions, the developers of
Fedora Workstation 42 (to be released approximately in May with GNOME
48) are considering switching to Papers also.
- Once Papers is accepted into GNOME Core, the display name will
change to "Document Viewer" like was done for Evince. I'd like to
include that string in Papers 48.0 upstream so that it can be
translated early and we may then include a patch to update the
.desktop file with the more permanent name.
- Maybe we would then change Evince's .desktop to "Evince" which is
already translated. This would help users differentiate the apps.
- We also include gnome-sushi in the default install which currently
still uses GTK3. This means we would keep the Evince libraries
installed but not the Evince app.
I think a reasonable deadline to make these kinds of default app swaps
is the Transition Freeze so I'd like to wrap up this conversation by
the end of this weekend and make a decision by late Sunday or early
Monday.
Thank you,
Jeremy Bícha
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