Re: [Usability] contents of default panel menus

[John Keller <jkeller matchbox fr>]

Alan Horkan wrote:
> My standing recommendation on distributions is that if you have to ask
> then you should probably should be using an easy to use distribution aimed
> at Desktop users.  (i.e. not Debian, Gentoo, or Slackware)
> As Mandrake is more focussed on KDE they dont seem to mess with Gnome very
> much and it seems to be fairly standard but unless you grab Mandrake
> Cooker you could be quite out of date.  Grabbing ISO's of Fedora is a
> fairly easy way to go but again they are like to be a bit behind.  Aside
> from the differences unless you are willing to compile from source Ubuntu
> is likely to be your best bet because it already has Gnome 2.8.

I'd agree. Every distribution is going to have some sort of 
modification, so you (Karim) may as well go with what you have.

I use Mandrake, and I can speak to the fact that it's got a good Gnome 
install. However, it's been tweaked - including the menu system, which 
will have an effect on what you see.

One thing that I noticed, that I don't think anyone else in the thread 
has addressed, is that your subject line is about "default menu panels". 
I can only imagine that a compiled-from-original-source and/or Garnome 
install would have those (no experience with the latter, just my guess).

I'd hazard to say that *every* other install will have some tweaks to 
the default panel arrangements, if only to add icons for the distro's 
system config utilities. Distros that try to keep a semblance of order 
across desktops (cf. Fedora, Mandrake) will probably have done the most, 
arranging the panels so that you have more or less the same arrangement 
in Gnome, KDE, etc.

> Seeing as you already have it running the most practical thing to do would
> be to try and make comments as best you can based on Ubuntu, maybe we need
> to recommend they stick with the defualts or maybe their changes are so
> good we should make them too.

That's a good idea. Nothing like a Gnome-focused distro to do field 
testing of what defaults make sense for the users.

- John