Re: New Tasks (was: Re: Where are tasks now and how are they handled?)
> > ## I am still not sure about splitting "desktop" to GNOME and KDE
>
> It doubt it will happen. It contradicts one of the fundamental tenets of
> tasks. OTOH aptitude lets one select the curent desktop task and then go
> in and remove the kde or most of the gnome stuff.
People usually want KDE or GNOME, not both. Tasks are to get to my
destination quicker; selecting twice as many packages as i need, and
then removing half of them is not more useful than just installing the
"gnome" or "kde" metapackages in apt-get.
There really should be "kde" and "gnome" tasks, which should contain
additional applications (for example galeon is not yet part of gnome
itself (at least galeon2 is not yet included in gnome2! But it will
come, since the gnome2 people already asked and the galeon2 people of
course want to - the critical part is if mozilla-gtk2 will get
mainstream useable...), and therefore probably not in the gnome
metapackage; but it definitely should go into the gnome task.
Also xmms should go into the gnome task, until rythmbox is ready.
And there are probably similar cases for KDE. Which i don't use.
> > - K.I.S.S. X environment
>
> This is probably best served by the existing X Window System task +
> letting people choose their window manager, either as they could in
Letting people choose is the wrong way for KISS. KISS means "simple" and
"stupid", choosing conflicts: to these concepts.
KISS probably should mean: xdm (kdm and gdm are more complex, already
too complex for KISS imho: language selection and session selection...)
icewm is a nice, simple WM (wmaker is too complex for KISS - what are
is wharf etc.) some filemanager like nautilus and a simple webbrowser
and simple mail clients such as balsa - evolution is too complex again.
> > - Multimedia system
>
> Isn't multimedia a standard part of a desktop environment these days?
No. Desktop usually has Video and Audio playback, but no editing.
Multimedia should include stuff such as Sound Trackers, Video Editing
apps, 3D Modellers and Animation software. Independant of the Desktop
Environment you use.
So if you want KDE for multimedia you choose KDE+Multimedia and also get
all Multimedia apps from Gnome.
> > - Base Internet client (Console)
> > - Base Internet Client (X11)
>
> These might just make sense as a combined task.
No, i think they were good this way. For my severs (i sometimes work on
remotely) i would probably choose the first, for desktops i don't know
console-freak do use i would select the second task only. Then probably
add or remove some of course.
> Note that I recently added an office environment task (mostly the
> gnome-office metapackage, at least until/if openoffice gets into the
> distro).
For the benefit of the user i also like having three Office tasks:
Office: Openoffice Suite (Best Cross-Plattform compatibility)
Office: Gnome Office Suite
Office: KDE Office Suite
Where the first should be default.
There it would also be helpful to have two-task-combinations:
Like if the user select the Office and KDE Tasks "koffice" gets
installed; selecting "Office and Gnome" gives you the gnome-office
metapackage, and selecting "Office and KDE" will install koffice.
I think we should start doing such a thing with the UI, imho.
Tasks is for getting quick to a useable core system, if you don't have
time to tweak your package selection.
We probably should design a nice GUI for this (doesn't need to work ;)
just to get a "feeling" of how one wants to choose.
The task selection actually is kind of a "yes/no" checklist.
So one could make it like this:
Do you want to use the computer for
... server tasks (such as web serving)?
... desktop use (graphical user environments)?
... development (computer programming)?
And only when the user selected "server tasks" ask
Do you need it for
... web serving using Apache
... web serving using Roxen challenger
... big news sites
... mail serving
... directory services (LDAP)
... print services
And when he selected "desktop use" ask him
... office use (like document processing)?
... web surfing (browsing, mail, news)?
... multimedia (audio and video)?
... games?
... remote administration tools (LDAP client etc.)?
... windows emulation?
(some could be combined to "home use", but that is a bit too generic)
and so on.
Greetings,
Erich
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