[Desktop 13.04-Topic] Having a smart ubuntu desktop
Hey everyone, In a world where we are using more and more connected web services doing some of our tasks (web mails, online documentation editing, online music players…) should we imagine having a more adapated image to our users? This will mean reducing our main image footprint by removing some of those tools we install by default: I'm thinking of thunderbird, libreoffice, rhythmbox and other main applications of our desktop for instance. The counter-part would be to make our desktop smarter. I can imagine: - having the messaging menu (or an icon in the launcher, or an icon in the dash) showing, the first time you try to configure your email account, a window asking for your email - based on the answer, either proposing to directly use a web application (with unity integration) for an @gmail.com, @yahoo.com… and other email providers known to have good web integrations. Otherwise, proposing to install thunderbird, ideally opening the account creating setup prefiled with the information already be done. (we can of course imagine a checkbox to override the smart behavior). This is just a field example, we can expand to document editing, and a lot of other areas. There is already some integration of this for other parts of the stack (like double clicking on an odt when you don't have libreoffice installed), we can make sure all our desktop have this kind of tweaks, and try to make a sharper, more adaptive image to our finale users, without having lots of post-install applications to remove. What do you think? Is that a goal worth having? Cheers, Didier -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: [Desktop 13.04-Topic] Having a smart ubuntu desktop
On 12-10-18 04:10 AM, Didier Roche wrote: What do you think? Is that a goal worth having? Absolutely, especially as we are moving into the mobile space, I think we would benefit quite a lot from having a smaller installation footprint, extending the concept of 'lazy-loading' to encompass 'lazy installation', so that programs the user never uses are never installed. -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: [Desktop 13.04-Topic] Having a smart ubuntu desktop
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 10/18/2012 11:10 AM, Didier Roche wrote: Hey everyone, In a world where we are using more and more connected web services doing some of our tasks (web mails, online documentation editing, online music players…) should we imagine having a more adapated image to our users? This will mean reducing our main image footprint by removing some of those tools we install by default: I'm thinking of thunderbird, libreoffice, rhythmbox and other main applications of our desktop for instance. The counter-part would be to make our desktop smarter. I can imagine: - having the messaging menu (or an icon in the launcher, or an icon in the dash) showing, the first time you try to configure your email account, a window asking for your email - based on the answer, either proposing to directly use a web application (with unity integration) for an @gmail.com, @yahoo.com… and other email providers known to have good web integrations. Otherwise, proposing to install thunderbird, ideally opening the account creating setup prefiled with the information already be done. (we can of course imagine a checkbox to override the smart behavior). This is just a field example, we can expand to document editing, and a lot of other areas. There is already some integration of this for other parts of the stack (like double clicking on an odt when you don't have libreoffice installed), we can make sure all our desktop have this kind of tweaks, and try to make a sharper, more adaptive image to our finale users, without having lots of post-install applications to remove. What do you think? Is that a goal worth having? Cheers, Didier Hi, It seems that you're proposing removing applications that differentiate Ubuntu from other platforms without a providing a reason why this wouldn't be catastrophic for users. This would decrease the functionality available to users. Web applications are available from the browser without introducing extra dialogues and components which may confuse users or fail, or changing the distribution significantly by removing a large number of application already in use. The browser is the interface targeted by web application developers, and currently works with all the web applications that you've cited. I can't see a reason to presume that these applications could be used from a assembly of different programs without changing the experience users are accustomed. This would rely on many components which would have to be developed then tested and supported for the life cycle of the web application current user experience and protocols, which are subject to change at any time. Assuming all targeted web applications maintain the same user experience and protocols for the life cycle of an Ubuntu release, making the current components of GNOME such as the launcher able to use web applications with local or remote files would be a huge task. Consider your case of opening an ODT with Google Docs, gnome-vfs would have upload the document to a Google account through whichever method of doing this works right now, then the launcher would have to detect if this succeeded and create a window with only the Docs interface rendered and then the window manager would have to track all new windows spawned from this 'top level' window as being part of the same window group (how would BAMF handle this?) for the Unity launcher, etc. While I can imagine a desktop that did all these things, while maintaining the current set of tools and not requiring a behavioral change for user would be very cool .. I think your idea of how this would work is not good because it would remove nearly all current functionality and be architecturally complex. Please do not remove all existing functionality chasing web application nirvana As an aside, Desktop Team .. why is not possible to add more functionality instead of replacing current functionalities with a new and non overlapping set of new and untested functionalities? Why does each new paradigm introduce SERIOUS (I cannot overstate this) regressions over the last paradigm. Ubuntu no longer runs in a virtual machine because of it's 3D graphics requirements, in 2006 this would have been considered a Very Bad Thing, why is it acceptable now? With regards, Jacob. -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJQgBzQAAoJEFQnq9+M+u0V5gcP/RvEmeVL+aMT0peRe144kBFo WAu8/WtyYSFvQReNjCAcZ8VRi4H/4mWPZo2c8Xauw9G5S3w7JYdwvuTm7FmYF2F5 gqqgOeJuJEpiGaBM3tPUnawjuUR6l+w97rhBd/Nsw57ufDJ+fXccCrPFX9ykDlbG p+qSa50ftA2nHiHUQYWhu7RLYG3POUcp7w68kGW1J/5GzuaYT+hDOs5Bc7C37tYT p7E0VuHrPGGR72iMlStuFG4uiZdWKDBX8li18+tj1OwGaX8RQqp8zgUrUfJvw1g/ UOdKm+phtKPEJMPhHQYL+AEIrGj7vjgtj2nODsrYmHqbqErPqSQ6ZKOyBYyRIHzl d5oxqAiXmTgvb5bht8++U81EOYu+j6yxU5f6RpP191T2gGnjlJe3m5DxWNYRSqPO NdDHvUjRqJNcY0YXJxaPr3D7W8Yrtz+sN7oof96oahtSzsZAPUFBvP4ZENxoVNs8
Re: [Desktop 13.04-Topic] Having a smart ubuntu desktop
On Thu, 2012-10-18 at 11:10 +0200, Didier Roche wrote: In a world where we are using more and more connected web services doing some of our tasks (web mails, online documentation editing, online music players…) should we imagine having a more adapated image to our users? This will mean reducing our main image footprint by removing some of those tools we install by default: I'm thinking of thunderbird, libreoffice, rhythmbox and other main applications of our desktop for instance. What I see is that more people are having data online, but that doesn't necessarily mean using online clients. Or, in many cases the reason they're using the web client is because they don't know that there is a better, more integrated experience available. The counter-part would be to make our desktop smarter. I can imagine: - having the messaging menu (or an icon in the launcher, or an icon in the dash) showing, the first time you try to configure your email account, a window asking for your email - based on the answer, either proposing to directly use a web application (with unity integration) for an @gmail.com, @yahoo.com… and other email providers known to have good web integrations. Otherwise, proposing to install thunderbird, ideally opening the account creating setup prefiled with the information already be done. (we can of course imagine a checkbox to override the smart behavior). So I think that this is an interesting idea, but I'd propose it a little differently. If you, for instance said that you have a Google account we could offer to integrate the GMail website but also offer to set up IMAP to Synchronize e-mail locally. Perhaps another option would be to use the online accounts dialog to show which applications are currently using that account, but also which applications could use that account if they were installed. --Ted signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: [Desktop 13.04-Topic] Having a smart ubuntu desktop
On 18 October 2012 11:58, Ted Gould t...@ubuntu.com wrote: So I think that this is an interesting idea, but I'd propose it a little differently. If you, for instance said that you have a Google account we could offer to integrate the GMail website but also offer to set up IMAP to Synchronize e-mail locally. Perhaps another option would be to use the online accounts dialog to show which applications are currently using that account, but also which applications could use that account if they were installed. GNOME 3.6 introduced an Initial Setup feature (gnome-initial-setup). Judging based on screenshots and descriptions, it sounds like it is a parallel to a lot of what we already do in ubiquity. And I really like that Ubuntu asks all the install questions at one time instead of some before install and some after. However a major feature that it has but we don't is setting up Online Accounts. This would be a cool optional step in the installer as it would give the user something to do while installing that would make their computer more useful out of the box. And with that in mind, Ubuntu One really should be part of Online Accounts, so that I don't have to enter my credentials again when I want to use the cool extra stuff in Software Center. And Online Accounts should integrate with my web browser too so I wouldn't have to enter my password separately when I visit launchpad.net (or similar Ubuntu sites) too? (I admit I haven't used the Ubuntu webapps feature very extensively so maybe webapps already works like that.) Jeremy -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: [Desktop 13.04-Topic] Having a smart ubuntu desktop
Le 18/10/2012 17:58, Ted Gould a écrit : On Thu, 2012-10-18 at 11:10 +0200, Didier Roche wrote: In a world where we are using more and more connected web services doing some of our tasks (web mails, online documentation editing, online music players…) should we imagine having a more adapated image to our users? This will mean reducing our main image footprint by removing some of those tools we install by default: I'm thinking of thunderbird, libreoffice, rhythmbox and other main applications of our desktop for instance. What I see is that more people are having data online, but that doesn't necessarily mean using online clients. Or, in many cases the reason they're using the web client is because they don't know that there is a better, more integrated experience available. The counter-part would be to make our desktop smarter. I can imagine: - having the messaging menu (or an icon in the launcher, or an icon in the dash) showing, the first time you try to configure your email account, a window asking for your email - based on the answer, either proposing to directly use a web application (with unity integration) for an @gmail.com, @yahoo.com… and other email providers known to have good web integrations. Otherwise, proposing to install thunderbird, ideally opening the account creating setup prefiled with the information already be done. (we can of course imagine a checkbox to override the smart behavior). So I think that this is an interesting idea, but I'd propose it a little differently. If you, for instance said that you have a Google account we could offer to integrate the GMail website but also offer to set up IMAP to Synchronize e-mail locally. That's precisely why I've written: (we can of course imagine a checkbox to override the smart behavior). prefiling thunderbird fields based on those (so the user doesn't have to type twice his email) would be awesome if we can get to it ;) Cheers, Didier -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
Re: [Desktop 13.04-Topic] Having a smart ubuntu desktop
On Thu, 2012-10-18 at 18:19 +0200, Didier Roche wrote: That's precisely why I've written: (we can of course imagine a checkbox to override the smart behavior). prefiling thunderbird fields based on those (so the user doesn't have to type twice his email) would be awesome if we can get to it ;) Hmm, I would have said that as we can make it smarter and set up local sync as well ;-) It isn't removing the behavior of being smart, it is extending it to provide more routes. If we continually encourage people to use websites instead of local apps we decrease the stickiness of Ubuntu in general. They might as well be using Chrome OS. --Ted signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
