On Sat, Oct 11, 2025 at 4:03 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > gnome-core declares a dependency on totem (>= 43) | showtime (>= 48). > > IMO this is unnecessarily strict. A variety of media players are available > for GNOME aside from totem or showtime. Celluloid [1], Clapper [2], and > possibly others also exist and are perfectly usable/integrated in a GNOME > environment. > > Since the user may opt for a different Gtk-based media player, in my opinion > this dependency is better relegated to the "Recommends: ..." area.
I think Showtime is a better fit for our default Debian GNOME install than Totem, but we ran out of time to make that swap for Debian 13. gnome-core is supposed to be a metapackage that closely follows what GNOME upstream considers core. I think ultimately we will add a new metapackage as requested in https://bugs.debian.org/1089002 to provide a more minimal GNOME experience for people who want more control over what apps are installed while still having the convenience of a metapackage to make sure that more essential parts of GNOME are installed. Thank you, Jeremy Bícha
