Debian on the Desktop - plans for Lenny?
Hi,
I'm a new (though fairly knowledgeable) Debian user and possibly a prospective developer. Anyway, though I do like Debian a lot, one thing is obvious - it lags somewhat behind as a desktop (or laptop) distribution as compared to many other distributions (notably Ubuntu, which is of course based on Debian).
Anyway, I'm curious - what are the plans for Lenny to help bridge this gap? I have heard the DPL's statements about "making Debian sexy", and I'm wondering what the plans are and how I can get involved. A few particular areas of interest for me are:
* Making laptop frequency scaling/suspend/etc work "out of the box" when Laptop task is installed
* Installing all (free) codecs that are commonly used by default in the Desktop task (FAAC is one that comes to mind as one that could be added, as it is in main now)
* Simplifying debian-installer for new users (this could include by streamlining the steps as well as having an Ubuntu-like 1-CD live installer)
* De-uglifying the default fonts - currently, many applications in Debian use poor-quality fonts or even *bitmap fonts*.
* Simplify installation of out-of-tree kernel modules, possibly by adapting Ubuntu's Restricted Manager to work with m-a. Non-free drivers would *only* be displayed if non-free is in the sources.list.
Anyway, I'm curious to hear what's going on with respect to Debian on the desktop. I understand that there are things Debian can't do (i.e. include non-free or illegal software), but I feel Debian has a great deal of potential as a stable desktop distribution. I want to help out as I can, and I'd prefer to do so with Debian due to it's open development process and non-profit status.
Tim
P.S. Thanks to all the Debian developers for the great work so far...
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