Start-here on the desktop

["Jon Kåre Hellan" <hellan acm org>]

It is terribly late to bring this up, but I think it's time to do something
about Start-here.

The default desktop now contains "Computer", "$user's home", "Trash" and
"Start Here". The idea once upon a time was the we wanted the user to go there
to do initial configuration.

I don't think this suits the new spatial desktop at all.

Start here contains the following:
- Applications, which doesn't mean that at all, but is the way to customize
  menus.
- Desktop Preferences, which is the control center.
- Server settings, empty on my system.
- System settings, ditto.

My system is Debian sid with Gnome built in a prefix and all user
customizations removed. I.e. as close to default as I was able to.

I'm taking these entries in reverse order:
- It makes no sense to have Server settings and System settings when they are
  empty. Even if they weren't empty, I don't see why this would be a natural
  thing for a user to start workin with.
- I don't think we need Desktop Preferences here. We now think we have
  reasonable defaults. Do we really think that the first thing a typical user
  wants to do is to change them? Well, even if it is, Desktop Preferences is
  easy to find in the menus.
- "Applications" is apparently the only way to edit menus. Again, I don't
think
  menu editing is a natural thing for a user to start working with. So start
  here is the wrong place for it. It should probably go with the other desktop
  preferences in the menus. It also needs a name that tells what it actually
  does.

Conclusion: everything but "Applications" should go, "Applications" be moved
to
the control center menus, and "Start here" removed.

This is probably to radical for the 2.6 timeframe. Is there anything else we
could do in the short term?

Regards

Jon Kåre