Icons, hiding FS and the desktop

[Stefan Nobis <snobis usa net>]

What about the following idea:

The user in most cases want´s only his programs and his data. The data 
is mostly contained in his home directory. So why not make the desktop 
a representation of the users home?

The dot files and dirs should be hidden, but every other dir and data
file should show up on the desktop as a folder or file. This way gnome 
will be very near a document centric work environment.

What about the programs? There should be a little tool which scans the 
whole filesystem for any executables. Then the tools looks in its
database for known programs. This ones will get a special icon and
will automagically placed on the desktop. All other programs may be
shown in a list (with as much or as less information possible) where
the user can look for programs not found in the database.

This way the user gets all his programs and data without ever thinking 
about direcotrys, /bin, /usr or the like.

Every folder the user creates on his desktop will be located in his
homedir, program icons on the desktop are some sort of info-file (like 
the amiga .info files or the KDE .kdelnk files) which says gnome which 
executable to start, what icon to show and the like. These should be
hidden files (like .program.gnomelnk), so the user will only see the
programs icon.

I think this is better than an extra .directory tree cause it is
better controlled what will be located where (not from the users point 
of view, he should not be aware of this, but from the sysadmins point
of view). Also a new user have not to first link everythink to his
desktop (and locate this everything first in the directory structure)
but when he installs gnome and starts it, he at once will see
everything which is in his home (and maybe also all in the database
known programs located in a special programs folder on this new
desktop from where the user can move them where he wants them to be).

This way the desktop will be very easy to use. With some good
installation scripts this will also for the home user, who in most
cases is his own sysadmin, easy to use, the hole thing will be very
transparent and i think even easy to uninstall (just kill all the
.*.gnomelnk or the like files).

Then add something like the amiga datatypes (which should use the unix 
magic numers) and you´ll have an nearly perfect environment (IMHO).

BTW: I´m a teacher for computer beginners here in germany in an
institution called "Volkshochschule" where the normal people go to
learn something about computers. And from this point of view i think
the above mentioned features will be very helpful for this kind of
people. For the advanced users and sysadmins there are still gmc, the
console etc. and they will for the not-sysadmin-work also benefit from 
this kind of desktop (i think).

-- 
Until the next mail...,
Stefan.