Re: [desktop] why kde and gnome's menu situation sucks
On 10/22/2002 8:09 PM, Joel Baker at lucifer@lightbearer.com wrote:
> Stipulating that a shallow menu is preferable (since otherwise, this
> situation doesn't exist), is there any reason not to simply make this call
> x-terminal-emulator? Or at least some other alternatives-based attempt at
> letting folks configure it locally? (If you want user-level, presumably
> you're already beating on your own config files...)
>
Ach. This gets into one of the great conundrums that will face Debian
Desktop - simplicity versus flexibility/configurability/power. It is very
hard to have both at the same time in many instances.
If simplicity is the goal, then Debian Desktop is going to have to select a
set of choices in the menu which will mean making choices for users -
period. Invariably, those choices are going to irritate some users.
Happily, the power users will be able to easily override Debian Desktop's
default selections and use something of their own. Meanwhile, Debian
Desktop has to be careful in choosing the default menu hierarchy, so that
newbies are best served.
Remember, the motto of DD is "Software Which Just Works". Right out of the
box - no fiddling and no fuss - it just works. Heh - a somewhat radical
idea for Debian ;-)
Cheers,
Luke Seubert
P.S. No offense intended by all this to old time Debian developers and
users. However, in the end, I suspect that many such folk will probably not
choose to install Debian Desktop when it is completed, because it will
override their already highly customized systems. That's OK. (Well, so long
as folks at least test it a little bit first and offer suggestions and bug
reports ;-) Debian Desktop I suspect will be oriented much more towards
pure desktop users and Linux newbies - a new market niche for Debian.
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