Hi everyone, I'm a new member with few years of experience using
Kubuntu..., please be patient with my English, I'm still working on it....
I'm writing to talk about *Users First Experience improvement in
Kubuntu*, which is not the best we can do at moment especially for First
Time Users, in my opinion of course.
The current default configuration of Kubuntu (until 12.10) seems to be
targeting just experienced users, which once installed a new system
doesn't have any problem to build its own environment around its needs,
but they wouldn't have any problem to do it even with a much more full
functionality default configuration, while for a new user of Kubuntu it
will be impossible even to simply imagine the powerful of the KDE
environment with current default settings.
So why don't we change the target of the default settings to aim the
Newbbie needs instead of experienced users, they can anyway customize
and set up everything they need in few steps. I mean, a bit of
"sacrifice" for experienced user could become something really helpful
for New Users.
Even much better of course would be to gives, if possible, a choice
during the installation process to set the Environment in few different
ways, one could be"Minimal Basic Functionality" (for experienced Users),
other could be "Fully Functionality Mode" (to show the real power of
KDE) , other again could be a kind of "Learning Mode" where in my
opinion Activities can become very helpful, and so on.....
But I'm not a developer and maybe it's impossible to do it, or maybe it
will be possible just having a much more centralized configuration
system, where would be really nice to have a set of tools to export and
share any aspect of any single part of of the DE configuration (but
maybe in other post we can talk about it).
Talking about *New Default Settings optimized for first time Users*,
involves of course few different aspects like default packages
installed, default desktop environment include plasma and plasmoids, and
than default activities where to show many different aspect of KDE
functionality combined with the best applications of Kubuntu repositories.
*Default Packages:*
In my opinion there are few change to do on default installed packages,
simply because some application are not ready yet to be used, or in some
other case, very useful tool are not installed by default.
*/Applications:/*
*Rekonq*, is not ready yet and I cannot see any good reason to use a
"not ready yet software" as a default application, especially
because we are talking about the *Default Tool to Access the Web*,
which is a 90% daily use of computer for most of the people out there.
I know, there is an installer launcher of Firefox and it's really
simple to use, but in my opinion after hours of installation in some
case, is really disarming do another installation and write password
, simply to surfing the web in a reasonable way, isn't ? I mean,
there are few great software out there, are open source, stable,
powerful, already on repository, every day more used......, why
don't use one of it by default. Are we sure the best solution is to
propose a not ready yet software to do the job ?, even because in my
case it means to have any link clicked in Thunderbird opened in
Rekonq , even if I change the default browser on system settings to
use chromium (it seems to works just if is already opened).
*Dragon Player*, is a good player but maybe there are some other
great software like vlc already in repositories, which can gives to
the users a much more complete and powerful solution to play with
multimedia contents, and I'm pretty sure vlc is one of the first
installation "extra" once complete the Kubuntu one, for many users.
Talking about *Utility*, there are few nice utility right on the
repository that could be installed by default, and for utility like
Ksnapshot already installed would be much better to use a launcher
on some panel, where would be nice as well to have some software to
screencast the desktop, or even nice tools and some time essentials
(depending on your job type), like Kruler, KcolorChooser,
KCharSelect and so on..... I mean they are really small and so
essential tools in some cases that really makes the difference.
We want talk about*Yakuake* ?, I think there isn't better way to
always have as much konsole instances as you need in a practice and
nice way, and for new people, would be the easiest way possible to
access the konsole when asking support on IRC and someone of us will
say "..ok just pass those commands on the konsole.." just pressing
F12 in the default Yakuake installation.
*/Plasmoids:/*
There are many good and useful plasmoids on repository, which can be
very handy to gives a much more complete idea of what actually can
be done in Plasma. Just to mention few of them *Quick Access* should
be much more used on default desktop in my opinion, pointing for
example on Document, Images, Videos, Music and Download folders,
using few instances of it. Another interesting plasmoid to show
could be *translatoid* , which is a really useful tool when
multilanguage contents is your daily works. A calcuator, a
converter, and everything can gives a better ideas about what can be
done in plasma in a quick and easy way.
*/Activities:/*
Actitivities presets should be based only on application already
installed by default, and to have some basic example of content in
some cases can be much more comfortable to immediately understand
the purpose of an activity.
Activities presets with example contents, can be used as well for a
kind of teaching purpose, well I guess some basic note or even few
html pages to explain something visualized in plasmoids like Web
Browser, next to the applications you want to teach opened with
example already loaded, would be easier for anyone willing to learn
any kind of knowledge. /
/
/*Functionality:
*/
I fill really comfortable with some "extra functionality" enabled
like rolling up and down a window just within the mouse wheel, can
be very useful if you used to work with a lot of opened tasks.
Talking about buttons on the window decorations I use a lot the
button to "keep Above Others", and I'm quite sure most of the new
user not even knows it can be done, instead once is there it's
really easy to understand how and when to use it.
Another fancy and some time useful features that can be enabled by
default is the ability to change the transparency of a window just
pressing ALT and rolling the mouse wheel.
I guess a second panel on the top of the screen can do most of the job
I'm talking about if well equipped with plasmoid and applications
launcher, and would be very easy to remove for the people don't like or
don't need it, you don't think so ?.
And if using *Activities* even the*top panel* (with plasmoids and
launcher) *could be combined* with opened applications and desktop
plasmoids for any Activities , would even be funny to create Activities
to do tasks complete of documentation, example and so on....., nicely
managed with plasmoids in a kind of "tematic top panel".
To gives you an idea about how I'm used to work in Kubuntu, here an
example of my current desktop
<http://www.alexgrafic.it/images/examples/myDesk.jpg> , which maybe is
to much customized respect the default one
<http://www.alexgrafic.it/images/examples/defaultDesk.jpg>, but maybe
something in between could be the right solution for the default
configuration of Kubuntu.
Well, I think to be my first post on this mailing list I already wrote
too much, but hopefully I could make you understand why I consider so
important the first impact arriving on a completely new Operating
System, especially if the system we are talking about has a lot of great
and useful features to be showed.
I hope so because the current default settings of Kubuntu does not
express so much of the KDE + Ubuntu combination potentiality, like
instead should be in my opinion.
I hope I haven't bored you, and that do you agree with some of my idea
to improve the first Kubuntu experience, and if so , we can talk about
it as deeply as we needs.
Thanks for reading me, and much more for the amazing work you always did
keeping Kubuntu alive....
Alex
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