Re: choosing software applications
Gavin McCullagh wrote:
Hi,
this is very likely a touchy subject but I think it's worth pointing out
and seeing what people think. This is a suggestion and I guess not
everyone will like it.
Yes, We've been there - had the discussion, and nothing was settled.
Yes - I think it's time to take the discussion once more.
I have recently installed Ubuntu Linux on several machines and given it to
others. It's a very nice, clean, free desktop. Several people have
mentioned and I myself have noticed one very effective aspect of the
design. That is the lack of choice by default.
...
For this reason, the menus are clear and brief. In large non-technical
networks it is a very common practice to choose every application for the
user and remove all else. This makes support much easier.
True. This is as far as I know also the policy behind the default setup
in Gnome - By default you cant customize much.
One of the points made by this article
http://osdir.com/Article4389.phtml
which I agree with is that ordinary, non-technical users do not want choice
(not initially anyway). It simply causes confusion. The technical person
should make the (initial) choice for them. If there are several hundred
such users in a school, it will simplify everything greatly if everyone
uses one office suite. On top of that, they need to be guaranteed file
interoperability which KWord and OOo Writer don't make obvious (by
defaulting to different formats).
Whats worse, is that now, in sarge KWord actually are able to read .doc
files, and that means that by clicking on them in the File-browser, now
KWord would open, but on an old Skolelinux installation, OOWriter would
open. But even though KWord are able to open the .doc-files, doesn't
mean that it can handle the files :)
In a skolelinux school, I think that means skolelinux making the choice.
That means making a choice of application for each task and disappearing
the others. There are at least two means to achieve this:
- remove the other applications.
- don't put them in the menus or toolbars.
This could still lead to confusing result, like with KWord and OOWriter
both handling .doc -documents.
I favour the former because:
- it saves cdrom and disk space and speeds up the installer
- if a school admin chooses to use an alternative, it should get
installed and linked into the menus automatically
Yes, and this is good, since the CD is already packged, and it's
difficult to get more apps onto the CD.
Of course I don't mean not to package (or necessarily support) the other
apps, but just to omit them from the default install. The main debian
archive is usually the package source anyway.
Now the hard part. We would need to choose the applications, drop the
others and configure the desktop environment to advertise the choices. I
see no reason to have KOffice *and* ooWriter. In fact I have seen this
cause confusion. I also see no reason to have Konqueror and Mozilla;
gnumeric, kspread and ooCalc. If we're talking about more specialist apps
like astronomy then this is not so important but I would vote for one
office suite, one browser, one email client.
Actually - I see a reason to have both Konqueror and Mozilla
Konqueror is a filebrowser, Mozilla is a webbrowser.
We could have used Firefox instead, but we included Mozilla (suite) in
1.0 because that was the only that was availible for woody. Later I have
repackaged a newer version for Skolelinux then the one in woody, and
could have done the same with firefox, but I did not.
Making the choices may cause arguments. The desktop environment config may
not be a trivial amount of work either but I believe both would be truly
beneficial to the users of Skolelinux.
Any comments?
We have one problem, and that is the already installed base.
A lot of schools, espesially in the lower grades, finds a nonbloated
WordProcessor like KWord better suited for the kids. But now , with the
new KWord, I find that it is moving in the bloatware direction. So Maybe
it's the right time for leaving KOffice out, and focusing on OOo ?
--
Finn-Arne Johansen, faj@bzz.no
http://bzz.no
tlf: 37254514 / 92640070
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