Bringing the Canola Media Center into Ubuntu

Registered by Luis Felipe Strano Moraes

We would like to present the Canola project, a media center well suited for a great range of devices, show it running on Ubuntu (it's already packaged on a PPA) and also on mobile devices, and go quickly through it's features, both for developers and for end users. The project has recently been open sourced with a GPL3 license and there are screenshots and a list of features at http://openbossa.indt.org/canola/.

Blueprint information

Status:
Not started
Approver:
Rick Spencer
Priority:
Undefined
Drafter:
None
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
None
Definition:
New
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Unknown
Milestone target:
None

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

== Goals ==

 * Overview of Canola
 * Proposal for inclusion into Ubuntu

== Canola Intro ==

 * Initially, a media player for Nokia internet tablets (N8x0)
    - no video acceleration
    - touchscreen

 * Canola 1
    - C, GObject and SDL
    - Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yALbL_3XYbM
    - closed source

 * Canola 2
    - Python and EFL
    - Good interaction between designers and developers
    - Youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElPeP6lanI0
    - recently open sourced using GPLv3 license

== Features ==

 * Modular architecture, everything is a plugin
 * Different processes to do different things:
   - Canola daemon takes care of scanning (uses lightmediascanner now, but can be changed)
   - Atabake handles actually playing media
 * Plugins for:
   - local playback of music and video
   - image viewer
   - {pod, video, photo}casts
   - youtube
   - last.fm
   - flickr (entirely made by community, before Canola was even open sourced)
   - settings and options
 * Backends for GStreamer, MPlayer, OSSO media server (N8x0 specific)
 * Works great on x86 and arm devices
 * Focused on touchscreen based devices
 * Needs some work for better user experience with other input methods

 * Canola is built on top of Terra framework
    - built specifically for this kind of applications

 * Other cool apps can be created

 * The action menus on the top can be expanded for other functionalities, such as quick control and network connection (connman)

 * Can Canola use the shared media library that was proposed for Ubuntu ?
   - Yes, it's written in Python and it would be very straightforward to use it

== Community ==

 * Canola is the most downloaded application from Maemo Garage
 * Really active user community (ITT forum)
 * 5 projects accepted on Google Summer of Code
   - Picasa
   - Remember the Milk (RTM)
   - Bittorrent
   - Twitter
   - Instant Messaging

== Inclusion into Ubuntu ==

 * PPA already available
   - http://launchpad.net/~barbieri-profusion/+archive/canola2
 * Recently created Canola project and team on Launchpad
 * MOTU? Anyone?

(?)

Work Items