On Friday 02 September 2005 21:56, nordi wrote:
> I tried this with the following programs that are started by default,
> but unnecessary on _my_ system: kinternet, sshd, klipper, smpppd,
> susewatcher. On a freshly booted system, memory usage went down from
> 87.8 to 82.7 megabytes. This means I can save 5.1MB of RAM.
>
> So I think we should have a small tool
> that asks the user a few questions about his system and
> disables/uninstalls the programs in question.

Regarding klipper, susewatcher, and kinternet. Having them started by default 
makes it easier to access them for novice users. They see for example the 
connection icon in their system tray and if they click it can modify their 
internet connection or get a graph of the transfer speed. If they close the 
app they get questioned if the app should start automatically next time the 
user logs in. Now on the other side, if you disable them by default, it's 
much more difficult for a novice user to access them, if they don't know 
about the application a priori. Thus from a usability point of view I think 
the opt-out is here better than the opt-in.

Also I don't think it's a good thing to ask the user a lot of questions during 
installation. I am a big fan of reducing the number of questions during 
installation as much as possible. Ubuntu gets much praise for their 
installation because they try hard not to ask questions during installation.

I think your tool is more for novice users, right? More knowledable people can 
choose to not install unneeded stuff at all or disable it with ease.

How about an other solution for apps in KDE's kicker (like kinternet, klipper, 
susewatcher)? If the users doesn't use, i.e. clicks on, the app for some time 
he gets asked (via passive popup) if the application should be disabled 
because apparently he doesn't use it? Of course this doesn't help with 
unneeded daemons. It's probably a very common task to disable all unneeded 
daemons after installation. Here a small tool which guides the user through 
the task could be very handy.

Another issue regarding daemons. I think it would be a good policy that all 
daemons which get installed after the initial installation of the system 
should be disabled by default. Always.

Cheers,
Andreas

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