Re: [Nautilus-list] Re: URLs fixed, some Eazel removed

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

"Christian Meyer" <chrisime uni de> writes:
> Maybe it can be combined with XIMIANs/GNOMEs Doorman. But it should be
> extended a little bit. I recently installed KDE 2.2 on my laptop. They have
> about the same thing called KPersonalizer. You can adjust KDE for your
> needs/for your CPU (if it can't handle all that eye-candy stuff). Thoughts?

I really don't like the doorman or the kpersonalizer; I don't think
preferences are that interesting, that they should be in your face
before you even use the desktop. The only reason people care about
prefs so much is that customization is pretty much the main exciting
feature of the UNIX desktops right now, and the two desktop projects
are so competitive they are all getting in your face and saying "look
at me!  look at my features!"

Certainly a wizard before you even use the desktop is a crazy place to
put prefs, no one has any basis to make the decisions they're given at
that point...

We should have good defaults, if people are adventurous and don't like
the defaults they can dig out the prefs. But there's no reason anyone
should have to use the prefs. And people should be encouraged to use
the defaults, with nice standard keybindings and behavior, so that
their desktop matches the documentation. Weird nonstandard
look-and-feel is something only advanced users are equipped to cope
with.

Remember that usually people use the desktop after purchasing an
operating system or perhaps after arriving at a new job. Most people
when launching the desktop have not just downloaded KNOME Whiz-Bang
3.3 found on Freshmeat. At least, if we're successful that is/will be
true.

So then they boot up and want to configure a web server or write a
paper or play a specific game, i.e. do useful work or play. They don't
boot up and want to get started deciding which insanely unusable eye
candy will be enabled. ;-) They have the computer for applications,
not for the desktop. They don't know what GNOME or KDE are.

MHO of course.

Anyhow, I don't think we should have a first-login wizard unless we
have questions that really need asking that users really have the
information to answer.

Havoc