Fwd: Configurable desktop items for sysadmins

[Bogdan Butnaru <bogdanb gmail com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bogdan Butnaru <bogdanb gmail com>
Date: Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 11:14 AM
Subject: Re: Configurable desktop items for sysadmins
To: Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com>


On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 10:15 AM, Alexander Larsson <alexl redhat com> wrote:
> That said, I know we got a lot of demands for this from some directions.
> I think we need to go back to them and try to understand exactly what
> they want to use this for, and why the current methods of e.g. bookmarks
> and application launching is not good enough for them. Maybe they have
> some interesting usecases that we could solve generically in a better
> way?

I've got exactly two use cases for which such a feature would have been useful:

1) My family (no familiarity with computers)
2) Guest users (no familiarity with Ubuntu)

In both cases, though for different reasons, their way of using the
computer is extremely different from mine. While all that
desktop-as-workspace concept applies well enough to me, it doesn't to
the cases above. Other people usually need to use my computer for
simple things: browse the web, check e-mail or chat a bit, and maybe
read or print a document. For anything more complex, they'd ask me to
do it, and I'd use my own account. Also, such users have no
familiarity with Ubuntu or Linux (e.g., position of menus), and
sometimes even with the concept of menu (e.g., my mom).

For these situations I've often wanted a way to create a “default”
account with a handful of big, commonly-used icons (e.g., a link to
Firefox named just “Internet” in big, friendly letters). For my
parents I had to do it by hand, but it's annoying enough that I can't
do it for more people.

-- Bogdan Butnaru