Re: Advocacy report [part 2]

[Eric Windisch <southpark nni com>]

> Now I just copied these files/dirs from .gnome to the skel setup

I only recently learned about skel, i could have used that when i setup
my
family's accounts.

> . mounting/unmounting - yes this old chestnut is still with us. In a way
> the automounting on double click of the floppy icon makes this worse
> because users are unaware that they've even mounted the floppy so don't
> relaise they have to unmount it after use. I've had a little play with
> autofs but so far have been unable to make it work. Any tips or advice
> would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> I did wonder if it would be possible for gmc to unount the drive as soon
> as the last window on the floppy was closed?

With code tweaks, anything is possible. But if someone wants to mount
the
floppy and write it it from another application (say Wordperfect), this
could
be messy.

> Perhaps putting a umount /mnt/floppy in the PostSession of gdm (or in
> .logout) might prevent the next user from having (initial) problems? Just
> had these ideas and haven't had a chance to try.

Probally... just make sure if you do this that you disable text
consoles..
it would be a sin if someone log'ed out of the gui and was still in a
console, 
and their data was lost/damaged.  Also, .logout might be run when a
xterm is 
closed so that might not be a good idea, test it first :)

> . middle mouse click to copy has caused problems - to be honest I've
> forgotten what windows does so I'm not sure why - people seemed to think
> that left drag and drop a file should create a copy NOT move it.

Thats why I always used keyboard short-cuts when I was a windows user,
because
everything else was ass-backwards. The behavior you show is a windows
"feature", even worse is when you drag an executable a "link" (windows
links
are much like the desktop icons in gnome, not real symbolic links)

> Another
> factor is that it isn't abvious what is the 'middle' mouse button. For
> instance some of the mice are Genius Netmouse pro's and with those the
> little button on the side ('under the thumb') acts as the middle mouse
> button. On a two button mouse you have to use both buttons together, and
> on a wheel mouse the wheel is the middle button (which isn't obvious even
> though the wheel is in the middle). It would be nice if this were (easily)
> configurable - or is it and I am being ignorant?

This is X-server dependant.. note however; that you should instead
invest 
in some cheap, bi-handed mice.  As I am left-handed, I can personally
tell 
you that a righty-mouse in the left hand is very painful.

Unless you teach the users how to use the mice, i don't see how the
software 
can teach them? Perhaps you want 2 button functionality on 3button mice?
Just 
set emu3buttons in XF86Config.

> . This isn't a problem with gnome but an observation. It's curious how the
> it's fairly easy to spot windows users on these machines. They've all got
> 17in monitors and are running at 1280x1024 or 1182x864. Windows users
> *tend* to run everything full screen one at a time, where as people with
> previous unix experience tend to have more than one thing on screen at a
> time. This might also have something to do with typical home computer
> monitor size. Someone aked me if it is possibel to switch the resolution
> to 800x600 because web pages are nicer in that resolution - I was
> momentarily stunned ;-) I noticed someone has written a resolution
> switching applet which I might investigate.

It wouldn't compile for me but basicly it takes all current modes in
your
current bitdepth and lets you change them via a menu.. basicly does what 
alt-ctrl-[-] and alt-ctrl-[+] do, but from the panel.


> Rightnow I'm writing an FAQ for the students using the new machines and so
> far the questions all relate to using the floppy but I can post new
> questions (and my answers) to the list if folks are interested.
> 
> Paul
> 
> --
>         FAQ: Frequently-Asked Questions at http://www.gnome.org/gnomefaq
>          To unsubscribe: mail gnome-list-request@gnome.org with
>                        "unsubscribe" as the Subject.


I run Gnome in a family environment and it works very nicely for me..
and it 
seems that in a school environment it works just as great.

Btw, unfortunatly the only time I saw linux being used by a school
(offically)
they were running KDE. Perhaps, because it was an international
conference 
and KDE is just much better at linguistics (I have compared.. from a
non-english view point kde is much better.. it renames the desktop icons
and 
"start" menu entries to the other language)




-- 
Eric Windisch