Hi everyone, Mandrake Linux 9.0 is SO CLOSE to what most people need to switch from Windows that with a few more improvements, I think I could get a lot of people to switch. I've been considering these ideas since I got 9.0, and I have them below. If you can't tell, I've been thinking about these suggestions for quite awhile -- I hope no one minds the overload of ideas in one e-mail... I just wanted to get them all out before the beta process gets too far along.
[Keywords to perk people's interest: Geramik, Printing, Everaldo, Boot Splash, Sound Fonts, Fonts...] Please note, I offer these (many) suggestions in hopes that some of them might spark inspiration among the developers. I do not do it to complain or rub salt in the "wound" so to speak, after this week's developments. I just think, especially with this week's developments, some of these ideas might be helpful to make 9.1 even more polished (and thus sell more :-)). Go Mandrake! 1.) Geramik: Most of you probably know what Geramik is... its a GTK/GTK2 theme that looks like KDE's Keramik. I know people from both the KDE and GNOME worlds that love how nicely Geramik implements this great interface style. Best of all, KDE users will find Geramik automatically mimicks KDE's colors, so GTK and KDE apps "fit" together. Here is what I propose: if some GTK hacker could just create a little app to modify Geramik's (KDE's, actually) color file, Geramik would be as fully featured for GTK users as for KDE users. Thus KDE users could set their colors and enjoy a matching desktop, and so could GNOME users. If Mandrake set this as the default GTK theme, it could "one-up" Red Hat, whose BlueCurve theme only works so long as you don't change the KDE colors. Once you do, everything looks mismatched. Worse, the GTK theme can't change colors so far as I could tell. In other words, if Mandrake did this, it would truly be the first time there was a unified look for most apps no matter what desktop one uses. This could be really really big, IMO. 2.) It seems to me that Bootsplash would be nicer if the text messages were moved to a smaller full width box on the bottom of the screen and the top part was devoted to a nice logo. If someone could point me to a large Mandrake logo image I could download, I could create a proof of concept so you could see what I mean. I think less emphasis on the "scary" GNU/Linux startup messages would make the desktop seem more polished and friendlier to boot. 3.) I also think making the KDE and GNOME splashscreens match the style of the 9.1 bootsplash would help make everything feel connected. Red Hat has done a very nice job with the KDE/Gnome splashscreens, and Lycoris and Xandros both did nice jobs with the KDE ones. According to the recent interview I did with KDE's Tackat and Everaldo, I understand Everaldo is doing some work for MDK (see http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=190), if so, why not get him to do this? 4.) Beings that I'm not a fan of Red Hat (you'll find that in the review I do of it next week), I hate to keep using them as an example, but oh well. Red Hat 8's installer has a really nice way of selecting packages. It has top level groups like MDK, but rather than having a little "Individual selection" checkbox, it has "More details" buttons next to each major package group. If you click those, you can adjust the packages in that group. 5.) It would be nice if Mandrake could also mention something about ATI's proprietary drivers during the install, just like it use to do for Aureal sound card drivers. Better yet, perhaps a document explaining a bit about them could come up on the first GUI boot. Of course, I'd recommend the same for nVidia too. I don't like proprietary software, but still, it'd be nice to give the interested user some tips. 6.) Speaking of drivers, what about building a tool like FontDrake's font import tool, only it searches the windows drive (when detected) for SoundFonts and then sets them up on AWE/SB Live/SB Audigy cards? Better yet, integrate both FontDrake's import and "SoundFontDrake's" import tools seemlessly into the install so the user is never aware of anything other than that all of his/her fonts are there and the sound card's wavetable works. If this were built into the install, it wouldn't even need a GUI, it could just happen in the background. 7.) How about switching to 100 DPI fonts or at least making that an option during install? Since the majority of the world uses 96 dpi fonts, the 75 dpi default that X uses makes web pages sometimes look strange with the same point size fonts as in Windows. You can remedy this by simply passing "-dpi 100" to the xserver in the kdm/xdm config information. 8.) Ranger packages a nifty little "klegacyconfig" tool. Why not include that so that Mandrake config modules would integrated directly into KControlCenter? That would be really convenient! 9.) I'd like to suggest that Gaim be installed rather than Everybuddy by default. Gaim seems to be much more actively supported, has a slightly (IMO) friendlier interface, and has more functionality. 10.) I had some trouble when installing 9.1 Beta 1 to check whether this was fixed, but 9.0 had some issues that prevented my HP PSC 2210 multifunction device from working. Some of the issues will make all OfficeJets/PSC's somewhat hard to deal with. See my MandrakeClub post for more info: http://www.mandrakeclub.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Splatt_Forum&file=viewtopic&topic=2524&forum=13). Finally, I'd like to bring up some of the suggestions my Associate Editor made in his recent Mandrake 9.0 review at OfB.biz (http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=189)" A.) It'd be nice if diskdrake's size selection granularity was a bit better of if there could be a text entry box next to the slider for partition size. B.) How about creating a seperate package selection group in the Desktop section for core X11/system stuff, rather than rehashing the packages in each of the desktops (KDE, GNOME, other). This would make a lot of sense, and also be good in that newer users wouldn't be intimidated by all of the X11 stuff when they just want to add KTetris to the installation. C.) DrakeFont is a GREAT, STUPENDIOUS tool, but it seems to choke fairly easily without explaination. For example, I have about 250 truetype fonts that I copied from my last Linux installation (also MDK 9.0). However, DrakeFont would freeze on the first part of processing those fonts if I told it to process the directory. Also, it was very counterintutive on how to select an entire directory. D.) Eduardo also noted that Mandrake Update doesn't really provide much feedback when things go wrong. It might be nice if error messages had a "Details" button that would reveal the output urpmi put on the console. He wrote some more comments and reported a few other problems, I encourage anyone interested in an average GNU/Linux user's attempt to install Mandrake to read the article. Please, no flames. Finally, and I'm sure everyone already is planning for this, but I suspect it goes without saying that the success of Mandrake 9.1 is critical to Mandrake's future (or at least, I'd imagine it is, I don't have insider information)... so can I suggest an even tighter watch in the Q&A department? I know many people that didn't have any trouble installing 8.2 (Eduardo Sanchez is one of them) that had little or no success with 9.0. One almost switched to Red Hat, but has decided to hold out for 9.1, since Red Hat just isn't as nice. However, I'd imagine people like him might be more prone to leaving if another release doesn't install. Still, I know a lot of the responsiblity for this falls on the users. So, let me encourage everyone to carry around a large stick to insure you can "convince" your fellow users to test the betas. :-) Anyway, once again, thanks for all you do, Mandrake [employees]! You guys are great, and I hope you don't take these suggestions as anyway minimizing your wonderful work. Best, Tim -- ---------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy R. Butler [EMAIL PROTECTED] Universal Networks http://www.uninet.info Christian Portal and Search Tool: http://www.faithtree.com Enterprise Open Source Journal: http://www.ofb.biz ================================================================
