Ubuntu
gnome-icon-theme package

Why are gnome-icon-theme, humanity-icon-theme and any icon themes mandatory dependencies?

Asked by Mélodie

It seems to me that having more and more mandatory themes isn't a good solution for the users. We would need to slow down on increasing the size of the disk images provided for all.

I know that many will argue that the hard drives are bigger and bigger, so I agree that the problem is not there. What is a problem is that the bandwidth in many countries and areas isn't bigger and bigger, and also the bandwidth used has a real cost on the electric consumption : bigger is the download, more there is electricity used for the transfers.

The world needs to use less electricity, this is very clear to me, and it should be clear to everybody. I will use numbers taken from a lab of experiments related to email : raw text versus html, just to give a start to the idea:
http://www.greenit.fr/article/bonnes-pratiques/eco-conception-web-preferer-le-texte-brut-au-html-4651

It says there:
A basic HTML message uses as an average:
* at least 2 images (the logo and a signature down the page), which is about 10 Kb ;
* 12 Kb of HTML code for the formatting (inline styles, frames…) ;
* 4 Kb of text (the message + 2 links).

Which makes it finally:
* 26 Kb as HTML ;
* 4 Kb in raw text.

Which is 6 times more in HTML than in raw text, and an economy of 22kb per e-mail sent. In a company with
15 000 employees, this is : 22 x 40 x 15 000 = 13,2 GB of bandwidth and space disk saved each day.

Now imagine we do the maths when it comes to saving bandwidth and space disk altogether : for Canonical, for the million mirrors holding packages and ISO files, for the enterprises using them, for the final user?

Huge, isn't it? I'm not yet talking about the climate change, and how us Free software people can help with that. :-)

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

I suggest you report a bug

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Mélodie (meets) said : 		#2

Hi actionparsnip,

Doing so can I link to the present question or should I copy the full question there?

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#3

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

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Mélodie (meets) said : 		#4

Different icon themes have become part of the core of all desktops, and however can be different from what a community edition leader has chosen.

This is a problem as it makes the ISOs bigger and bigger for no need. Here is how it started for the gnome-icon-theme and other themes.

It starts with libgtk-3-common.

In Debian Wheezy:
https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/libgtk-3-common

there are no icon themes in the depends.

In Debian Jessie:
https://packages.debian.org/jessie/libgtk-3-common

dep: adwaita-icon-theme (>= 3.14) appears.

then it's also there in Stretch and in sid.

adwaita-icon-theme in return brings in hicolor-icon-theme:
https://packages.debian.org/jessie/adwaita-icon-theme

From there, in Ubuntu Wily where I noticed several big icon themes coming soon while building a custom setup in my computer using a mini.iso:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/wily/libgtk-3-common
→ adwaita-icon-theme

and:
http://packages.ubuntu.com/wily/adwaita-icon-theme

We get the followin depends:
hicolor-icon-theme
    default fallback theme for FreeDesktop.org icon themes
(…)
ubuntu-mono
    Ubuntu Mono Icon theme
ou adwaita-icon-theme-full
    default icon theme of GNOME

I noticed Lubuntu has ubuntu-mono and gnome-icon-theme; I haven't checked in Xubuntu. Why is it a problem?

Some told me "the hard drives are very big now it's not a problem anymore". Well , it is however a problem for all users who live where the bandwidtch is low.

It is also a problem because using more disk space costs electricity. We all have electricity, right? Well using more electricity (while downloading, while transferring and so on) costs electricity. It's a matter of economics (for all) and a matter of ecology (for all).

Some studies have show a simple mail coming with 4k (text mode) comes with 26k when in html and in large companies ( 15 000 employeess, makes : 22 x 40 x 15 000 = 13,2GB bandwidth and space disk saved each day…) when they setup the mail clients to use text mode only they have saved millions of $ in electricity.
Source (in French, so just use translate Google if you need it) http://www.greenit.fr/article/bonnes-pratiques/eco-conception-web-preferer-le-texte-brut-au-html-4651

Fancy what the difference will be when reducing the ISOs just by being careful about the dependency trees in the packages? How many editions of Ubuntu are there now, which are currently renewed each day and then each 6 months, becoming bigger and bigger, just because of one icon theme brought by a lib, which in return brings one more which brings on more?

The only very basic icon theme needed everywhere is hicolor-icon-theme. And it does not even come as a first range mandatory one.

I suggest first that this information be shared everywhere it can be relevant, and told to all packagers. Then I secondly suggest to ask all packagers to add the ^bloat/in themes in the recommands section of the package and not in the mandatory section.

We only have one planet, and while many Ubuntu distributions help saving many computers from the recycle bin, the GNU/Linux distributions should stay as frugal as possible where there is no necessity to get fat.

Thanks for reading this far.

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#5

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.