Re: [desktop] why kde and gnome's menu situation sucks
On 10/23/2002 12:02 PM, Colin Walters at walters@verbum.org wrote:
> What I think we will do eventually is add a single "novice" or "expert"
> prompt to debian-installer, towards the end. I am quite aware that user
> levels are considered bad from a UI standpoint, but I see it as the only
> way to temporarily bridge the gap between Debian's traditional technical
> audience and the audience Debian Desktop is targetting.
>
Perhaps a slight alternative, building upon your idea. How about, instead
of "novice" and "expert" choices available early in the install process,
offerig choices like: "Server", "Science & Engineering Workstation",
"Cluster Node", "Desktop", "Thin Client", etc. And of course, there must
always be available the choice of "Custom", or "Expert".
Various commercial Linux distros offer choices like this, and tailor what
packages are installed based upon the usage intended for the computer. I am
sure that more usage classes than I suggested above could be added, maybe
with sub-classes - Mail Server, Print Server, File Server, etc. if that is
what folks want to do.
Anyway, that is just an idea I wanted to toss out. Brainstorm or flame as
you see fit :-)
> It will likely affect a large number of things: the default debconf
> priority and the menu layout being the two major things I can think of
> off the top of my head. For novices, the default GNOME and KDE menus
> would be carefully constructed to present only those applications which
> would be best suited for novices. We'll let the people on the separate
> GNOME and KDE teams decide what those are.
>
If the people in the Gnome and KDE and other GUI teams want to help out with
making those choices, I am all for it. However, if they are too busy
packaging to be bothered with this sort of thing, it will be up to the
Debian Desktop volunteers to step in and narrow down the myriad choices to
the best-of-breed few suitable for a simple desktop.
> Experts will get the
> full-blown Debian menu, with all ten million X terminal emulators, fifty
> thousand text editors, etc.
>
Yup. There should be some way for a full blown Debian menu to be available
for the masochists who want to drill down through all those submenus to get
to some beloved, obscure program :-) Of course, there should also be a way
to put said program into a "Favorites" folder too.
Cheers,
Luke Seubert
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