Re: Debian Desktop... but which Debian on my Desktop... now?!
Am Donnerstag, 30. September 2004 19:05 schrieb Christoffer Sawicki:
> > I've read about Project Utopia and the KDE Volume Manager before but
> > always had the impression that those were a bit far off to be really
> > integrated and nice and all. Though the availability of the GNOME Volume
> > Manager might prove me wrong there =).
>
> Ubuntu Linux ships with Project Utopia already, which I believe shows it's
> mature enough (or almost) already.
>
> > Still it seems to be quite a bit harder to get all this (HAL, D-BUS, KDE
> > VM...) going instead of 'just' adding a supermount-ng patch to the
> > kernel... don't know just wish KDE or my distribution-of-choice (DDD? :))
> > would handle this out of the box.
>
> supermount is considered a hack. ervin of Kalyxo is working on a media:/
> kioslave for KDE which I believe will solve a lot for us. I don't remember
> the latest plan on how to automount stuff though. :-) I'll ask.
>
If DDD / Kalyxo Debian ships with that it would rock just a bit more =)
>
> > But then again I've a pretty clear view of what the perfect KDE desktop
> > should look like out of the box and I shouldn't expect anyone to fullfill
> > this ;)
>
> Feel free to show how you would like it. A screenshot or so.
OK, first I'd like to say that the following is more like a way I think a
sensible default should be like - not as much what I would set up for myself
- more something I would call ready out of the box to be used at our company
as a desktop OS as well as by my mom and tech savvy colleagues and friends -
something where there's no _need_ to change everything to get a useable
system, though you will have to change it if you've got some more specific
wishes.
*Sorry it came out longer than I anticipated, though I'm sure I missed a lot
that I'd consider really important if it came to my mind... hope you don't
mind the long read*
Here we go - just what would differ from a mostly default KDE setup (i.e. I
would not specifically state that there should be just one kicker bar at the
bottom of the screen):
Basically the first impression a new user has seems to be based on the look of
the system to a high degree, so I think that's important too.
Look, Style and Decoration
--------------------------
- Plastik with a nice and light colour set like the default Plastik colour set
though the blue highlighting could replaced by a more 'branded' colour like
ubuntu's brown highlight to have some kind of "aaah it's Kalyxo / DDD"
- button icons enabled to have users recognize a button's function more
quickly
- GtkQTEngine installed and set up by default
- simple non- or non-disturbingly branded desktop background - nothing that
would make people change it immediately. I suggest "default_blue". A small
logo could be added at some corner for example.
- use slightly more current Icons than KDE does by default. Either the final
Crystal SVG or mix some Nuvola in like Munjoy does (see screenshots).
- Nice, readable and non-blurry fonts. SuSE and Ubuntu have Bitstream Vera
Sans by default and it looks very good at 10 point with anti-aliasing. Don't
know if this is standard on Debian as well at the moment.
Basic Configuration
-------------------
- clean kicker layout - normal height, not too much big icons that won't be
used.
Have "home" and "konsole" as well as "show_desktop" as big icons and all the
others that would be used often as smaller QuickLaunch Icons.
- usefull if not necessary utilities like klipper and kmix started by default
- one thing I hope _not_ to see in DDD / Kalyxo that seems to be 'in' these
days is changing all the names of standard applications like KMail, KWrite,
Kaffeine and so on to "E-Mail Viewer", "Text Editor" and "Video Player" so
that they can be recognized by new users without knowing their names.
The problem with that: Some distribtions do it in a way that you can not
revert back to their real names and have a usable K-Menu again.
It's desireably to have new users realize that kaffeine is a video player and
so on, but please only change the K-Menu to show "Descriton (Name)" instead
of "Name".
- I think as a default two virtual desktops would be enough - to really use
them I suggest to only show the applications of the current virtual desktop
in kicker's taskbar
- Only have a "hide kicker" button at the right, none at the left where the
K-Menu is, so you can click the lowest left corner of the screen to activate
the K-Menu
- have maximized windows show no border (and use Plastik Windeco) so that you
can click the upper right corner of the screen to close a window
- this might be just as controverial as double-click vs. single-click but I
think double clicking a windows title-bar should maximize instead of shade.
I think it's a more commonly used function and should be available easily.
Non-Standard Applications
-------------------------
- QT'ified OpenOffice.org that respects the currently selected KDE style
- kaffeine as media player and it's konqueror plugin set up
- smb4k for easy and reliable access to smb shares
- amaroK as the default audio player
- akregator as RSS feed reader
- if it's ready something like Kapture for graphical package managment.
Kynaptic should be ok at first too.
- not too much software bloat - one application for a certain task not a
collection of those - though there might be very reasonable exceptions
- something kalyxo as a debian(-like) project maybe can't or won't do: having
stuff like flash plugin, video codecs and java working out of the box on all
supported browsers or players
- Nice set of *default* applications:
Kopete
KMail
akregator
amaroK
kaffeine
- a QT'ified Firefox might be tremendously cool, though I doubt it can be done
without much effort. I wouldn't use it myself, but it's a pretty good
standard browser - Konqueror will do just fine though of course and
personally I'd prefer it.
Configuration Utilities
-----------------------
- good graphical configuration utilities where available that integrate well
with KDE.
KDE 3.3 already comes with great SAMBA / NFS configuration - basic Network
setup is an issue for example - solved by KNetworkConf.
Konqueror & File Types
----------------------
- Konqueror setup is a topic of it's own - for example I'd say that
double-click to activate something would be better, but I've been told
several times that it's easier for people completely new to computers or
coming from something other than Windows to use singe-click - so I'm not sure
what's the best default for everyone - people I talk mostly too do prefer
double-click.
- Konqueror could be set up to have an instance preloaded by default
- detailed / tree view as default or have it show big icons in symbol view -
small icons there don't seem to work that well somehow - especially the word
wrap makes it hard to manage files with small icons in Icon or Symbol View
- opening files in the application they make most sense in by default - not in
a Konqueror preview:
text files -> kwrite
videos -> kaffeine
audio -> amaroK
images -> KuickShow (no preview here to so one can quickly mouse-wheel through
a collection of images)
non-KDE niceties closer to the base system
------------------------------------------
- make i.e. usb sticks that have never before been attached to the system
automount ... ;) in a newly created mount point or something - though with
KDE Volume Manager that could be a KDE issue again
- should be fast. I've been spoiled by Yoper lately and we've discussed that
on the list before.
Debian is already resonably fast, maybe there are some more Kernel patches
like those in Con Kolivas' patchset to improve performance - prelinking by
default might be nice too.
- standard server client packages like nfs and samba client (and server)
installed by default - user's of other systems expect to be able to share
files as well as access shares I think
- cpufreqd or similar CPU throttling working on notebooks out of the box (had
problems with that on some distributions)
- here's the worst point for me at the moment: it should be available now...
or _soon_ not in three or six month
P.S. Yeah, I know most of the extra software is stuff actually packaged by
kalyxo... so I think some of these wishes might not even be too far
fetched :)
Here are screenshots of what I think it should look like:
http://deadhand.com/ddd/suggestions/empty-desktop.png
http://deadhand.com/ddd/suggestions/konqueror.png
http://deadhand.com/ddd/suggestions/applications.png
Comments about the screenshots:
They are done on Munjoy Linux and therefor I could not easily get the fonts
to render the way I want (Bitstream Vera Sans 10 anti-aliased, not blurred
but really sharp as in SuSE 9.1) - therefor it's Helvetica without
Anti-Aliasing I'm using here.
Some Icons are taken from Nuvola instead of Crystal.
I would not ask you to do everything the way *I* think is best of course -
but what still stops me from doing some packages of my own (at least for KDE)
is that there is not _the_ base system I'd like to fully use and support yet
(Debian Unstable is maybe a bit too much of a moving target for me right now)
and that I don't get it what would be necessary to change application default
settings, so that if I isntall this package any user using the software would
have the same (changed) defaults, when they first launch the application.
I could try to help where I can if there is need to with DDD / Kalyxo KDE
integration, though.
Regards,
Christoph
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