Dale schreef: > Holly Bostick wrote: > >> 3 (Tough Love): You don't want to get rid of KDE, but there's a >> good chance you don't need all of KDE-- you might consider trimming >> it. > I plan to let my mom use it if I move so I hope I can keep it all.
Now, see, that's where you lose me.... because your mom *may* use the computer if you move, you want to keep every possibility of KDE available for her? What is your mother actually likely to use the computer for, if she in fact does use it (which you don't even know if she will)? If she's never heard of an MP3, and isn't likely to download any, she doesn't *need* amaroK/juK/noatun (kdemultimedia-meta), no matter how nice it is. Kscd (for audio CDs) will be fine. If she doesn't have any DVDs or download films, (k)mplayer and xine and its ilk are a waste of space. Is she really likely to change her wallpaper or window decoration a lot (or ever)? If not, kde-artwork is pretty pointless. Is she likely to administer users or create cron jobs? No? So much for kdeadmin-meta. Has she a digital camera or video camera? A fax? Does she edit graphics files? Take screenshots of her desktop? No? Well then The Gimp and kdegrapics-meta doesn't have to be there either. Does she do a lot of document editing? Of MSWord documents? Does she really need OO.o, or even KWord for this? Might abiword not be sufficient, or even kedit or kate? You see where I'm going with this. I admit that I'm a bit hot on this issue; my bf's mother was recently forced to accept a computer by her other son (hand-me-down). She does not know anything about computers, and in fact doesn't want this one (but everyone is figuring that she "needs" one, and once she gets used to it and sees the capabilities, she'll love it. I'm not so sure myself, but it could go that way, of course). At her recent birthday party, she was complaining that all of her friends and family (who are experienced, "average" users) were giving her advice like "you need to get cable internet", and that sort of thing-- while she's trying to master Windows Solitaire *in order to* *learn how to use the mouse*. We have a printer (hand-me-down) to give her, but what's the rush when she doesn't know what a text file (or a *.doc file) is, or what programs are needed to open or view them-- in fact, she doesn't have any text documents-- much less a need to print said non-existent documents (which if needed she could create in Notepad just as well as OO.o Writer, and probably easier). I'm also hot on this issue because this was always my major complaint about Windows. Microsoft, like any company, wants to create a positive experience for the users of their product, so that the user will continue to buy their product. That's normal. What isn't "normal", imo, is their design philosophy-- that the only (or most successful) way to ensure a positive user experience is to control the user's environment so severely that it only encompasses those areas that Microsoft is guaranteed to deliver a positive experience in. So MSOffice saves files in a proprietary format that MSOffice reads best. Optimization of webpages created in Frontpage (free with MSOffice) display perfectly in IE, and poorly in Mozilla. *.wmv files are beneficial to use due to the compression, but are hard to play in media players that are not WMP. And the list goes on-- though I'm still not sure why the \My * folders (Documents, Media, Music, etc) are placed on the C:\ drive by default when the most common way to "fix" Windows is to reformat and reinstall (thereby deleting your C:\My * files). The reason that I will not use Windows is that *the ability to control* *my environment is an essential part of a positive user experience* for me. Therefore I must object to your efforts to create a positive user experience for your mother by controlling her environment excessively. This position is supported by the fact that you *cannot* provide every single bell-and-whistle available-- you simply don't have the disk space. So for you, if you want to encourage your mother (and the greatest encouragement is a positive user experience), the best way to do that is to customize the PC to her actual needs, rather than trying to cover every possible eventuality of what you *think* she *might* want *someday*. I'd say, strip the system down to the bare minimum of what she's likely to need "daily" (and what the system can reasonably support to run quickly, since a slow computer is not part of a positive user experience), and let her get comfortable with that-- if she then expands her horizons and needs more functionality, she can ask you (mother-son bonding, an added benefit), or she can learn about Gentoo at her own pace and have the thrill of accomplishment just like you've had. Just my 5 Euros, Holly -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list