On Fri, Mar 27, 2009 at 04:25:19PM -0400, Daniel Dickinson wrote: > What I really mean is 'a lightweight desktop which will meet the needs/wants > of a strong cross-selection of low income computer users'.
> Let me clarify. I am building computers to give away and am basing > them on Debian. To begin with most users will be Debian Newbies, so > the environment has to work easily enough for when they are getting > started, but what it is really about is using old computers and > refurbishing them, and having a system that will do most of what most > users (who will be low income) will want. this sort of thing is largely how i got involved in free software to the degree that i am. i work at a non-profit organization called freegeek: http://freegeek.org freegeek basically gives out refurbished computers to hundreds of inexperienced computer users, running free software (currently pretty much stock Ubuntu, though once upon a time, Debian). while hardware specs even on refurbished machines at freegeek have actually gotten ridiculous, i'm still very interested in a viable desktop for low-spec machines, as not everybody is so fortunate. though honestly, i'm not really much of a desktop user myself, so it's hard for me to recommend software to users who are very different from myself. i think back to debconf4, working with the debian-nonprofit project, when enrico introduced us to concepts of user oriented design that i found invaluable: http://people.debian.org/~enrico/talks/2004linuxtag/zen-paper.html though i've never really put them to much use... > So we start with a basic XFCE desktop, then add some packages that I > think are missing from a basic desktop install, (e.g. for digital > cameras / mp3 players for the kids, etc), plus a couple of things that > show what they can do that they might not know about. i find XFCE to be a little confusing to many inexperienced or minimally-experienced users (and i say this from watching them try to use it). LXDE looks pretty good to me; it seems to follow more common conventions- if only in the menu/taskbar layout (though i haven't actually watched many people try to use LXDE). > Basically it's a more complete desktop then the 1 CD desktop that > Debian distributes because I am not sure the users will have an > internet connection so the desktop needs to have enough on it > (preferably pre-installed because they are newbies) without installing > from the internet. so, it sounds like you're targeting inexperienced users, running on low-spec hardware, who may not have decent network connectivity, who may/will be low income... might be hard to sort out all those priorities. :) live well, vagrant -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
