Re: Application/System Tools vs System/Administration

[Elijah Newren <newren gmail com>]

On 7/9/05, Owen Williams <ywwg usa net> wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-07-08 at 14:04 -0700, Alex Graveley wrote:
> 
> > People who know or care what these capplets do are such a small,
> > hyper-advanced set of users that I think asking them to install a
> > separate package is not a large request.
> >
> > -Alex
> 
> The problem is, if an advanced user installs a new system, they will
> never be explicitly "asked" to install a separate package.  Those
> features will simply not be there, and the user might assume that they
> have been removed, much like it appeared to many users that nautilus
> browse mode was removed.  Sometimes it's not clear that advanced
> features still exist, but are hidden or require separate packages.

And if they don't care enough to find out, then they get so
disadvantaged that they end up using what everyone else does.  Oh the
tragedy.  ;-)

> (And I think a separate crack set is a good idea because there's so much
> arguing about what features, that no one has even used, are good or not.
> Too many ideas get shot down before they are ever implimented.)

I like this idea.  It's similar to something Havoc proposed in
bugzilla[1] (though he was thinking more in terms of settings that
only some Unix users like whereas this proposal may cover other
settings as well).  I think the main reason that gTweakUI and any
other apps aren't that big or well known yet is that we have so much
crack in our interface still that there really isn't that big of a
need for them to exist.  If we remove the extra stuff (e.g. all the
stuff Alex proposed), these extra programs like gTweakUI will start
flourishing as they become useful to a greater number of people, and
thus many more know about them, leading those people to be able to
enjoy perhaps even more crack than they do now.  Also, we get the
benefit of removing a lot of extra junk from the UI that only a small
percentage of people use (though yes that includes me).  Those extra
options just scare people away[2] since we have too many options, but
they can also cause confusion[3].

Cheers,
Elijah


[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154614#c3

[2] A simple example: my wife makes me do even small configuration
tasks because she says that all the preferences are too big and
confusing--this includes the main gnome preferences menu, as well as
settings for mozilla, firefox, and open office; luckily I don't have
worry about apps with fewer preferences and settings such as AbiWord.

[3] See http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154614 for an
example of one of those options we should get rid of that has caused
all kinds of confusion.