I'd like to get some discussion going on selecting the core set of apps that will be included with the new Symphony release. There are several key areas where there are several open source options to choose from.

Here is the current working set of apps (almost all are subject to change). Some of these are already being used within my current builds but others are tools that are not in current builds but we will want in the release.

Utility Apps

File Manager
We plan to eventually develop our own file manager (codename Conductor) which will be integrated into the desktop (the files tab will load a full screen file manager view). For the first release we will likely use an existing lightweight file manager. Some potential options include:

- Thunar
- Pcmanfm
- "Files" from Elementary OS
- Nautilus

Control Panel Tools
Our "Control Panel" will be the full screen settings menu. While that main view is being developed as part of Mezzo, many of the individual settings utilities that will be included there will be existing tools. For most things we will default to the utilities that ship with Ubuntu, for some items like appearance we must develop our own tools. I am certain that in some areas there are better tools out there than the ones that are included with Ubuntu. Do you have a particular utility or settings tool that you like?

Text Editor
There are several good basic text editors out there. We need to pick one to ship with Symphony.

Media Apps

When it comes to media apps, we have a couple options. We could go the route of including separate apps for video, music and photos, or we could integrate a media center app. I am torn on this idea. While I do like VLC, for ease of use and look and feel I am leaning towards integrating a media center app.

Games
Whether web based or native linux apps we would like to include a couple casual games by default. We'd like to pick some really great games to include. For native linux games we want to focus on apps that are open source, lightweight and don't have a ton of requirements. For web based games we can consider non-open source but free to play games from independent studios or individual developers.

Internet

Web Browser
Our current plan is to use Chromium as our default web browser. On my personal machines, whether on Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS, or Android I use Chrome currently. If anyone has another suggestion that they think is a better fit, post it here.

App Market
I will be developing an App market for SymphonyOS. This will simply be a Wordpress powered site with some additional plugins allowing us to browse app categories, view screenshots or videos, read reviews, and install free apps (utilizing apt-url). The market will not include any apps that are not free (as in cost, not speech).

Other Internet apps - I am not sure we need to include much else in the way of internet apps in the base distro. Please recommend other options here.

Note: - This thread concerns the default apps that will be included on the SymphonyOS iso. Most other apps will be easily installable via the app market which will be included as a web-app.