Re: ubuntu's shutdown screen

[Alan Horkan <horkana maths tcd ie>]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2007, Martin Meyer wrote:

> Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2007 10:43:01 -0400
> From: Martin Meyer <elreydetodo gmail com>
> To: Frederic Peters <fpeters 0d be>
> Cc: desktop-devel-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: ubuntu's shutdown screen
>
> To clarify, I am *not* running Ubuntu on at least one of my systems
> (Gentoo), that's the reason I knew it wasn't the gnome default. Isn't
> it just an applet that Ubuntu uses though? Could that be made
> available as an extra package to install?
>
> That eye candy example look cool. It'd be interesting to have
> something like that, but I'd settle for a unified system first. Who
> maintains the logout and shutdown screens anyway? I have no idea what
> project they come from.
>
> As far as rational, it seems to me that most users only want one place
> to go when they plan to leave gnome: a logout screen. I understand
> that they perform different functions (one seems to interface with
> gnome-session and the other with gdm?) but users (like me) don't care
> which software is being contacted. They just get annoyed when they
> just want to logout and realize that they only put the icon for
> shutdown on their panel.
>
> I can see a reason for leaving the two independent dialogs there
> because you don't always want users to be able to shutdown (i.e. on a

There was a recent discussion on the usability mailing list where a
systems adminstrator wanted to remove the Shutdown button so that his
users would not shutdown during an upgrade (or otherwise interfere with
background processes) or in the simpler case choose Shutdown when Logout
was the more appropriate choice.  There are certainly reasonable case to
hide the Shutdown button in multi user sytems, or at least relegate it to
the GDM login screen.

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/usability/2007-March/msg00040.html

> server), but when gnome is used on a desktop it seems like a good idea
> to combine the two. Maybe leave the logout dialog in place and change
> the shutdown to combine logout options as well? That way the shutdown
> applet could be subject to lockdown rules and become unavailable if
> the sysadmin didn't want it there.

Keep in mind a determined user can find many ways to shutdown (or
otherwise forcibly reset a machine that is causing problems)  and systems
adminstrators must fully understand "lockdown" is something of an
overstatement.  Having suffered attempts at lockdown in a Microsoft
enviroment I'm deeply concerned about the usability implications of
inappropriate attemps at lockdown, or unintentionally allowing systems
adminstrators to setup a very hostile enviroment for users.  Conversely
having provided technical support I fully understand the need to move
certain things out of the way so user do not trip on them, but bolting
everything the floor is not necessarily the right answer.  (Please forgive
the over extended analogies.)

-- 
Alan