I recently installed Ubuntu on my parents laptop. We tried with a LiveCD first to make sure things were working (like synaptics touchpad, wifi, etc), and was glad to see that they did. What follows is a numbered list of random thoughts and observations from their first days of using GNOME. Please note that I have made little effort to "clean up" the notes, cross-link them with bug reports or research them to any degree. I was planning on using them to write a little article that I could send to OSnews, newsforge or whatever, but haven't found the time for it yet, and so I thought I'd share it with you guys. Who knows what could happen? :-) Please note that this is not a criticism of GNOME or Ubuntu, and that I'm not demanding any answers or solutions to these problems. Also note that my parents are still using GNOME and have no intention of switching. None of these observations are "show stoppers" of any sort. I mention this because when I approached the Ubuntu Forums for a solution to #7, I got two replies saying my dad should either go back to Windows or "just learn Evolution" instead of the two other options which wouldn't have insulted me: 1) Not answering at all, 2) Helping me find a solution to it. Anyway, much hype about nothing, here is the list: 1. Middleclick-drag bookmarks from "Places" to Desktop does nothing, as opposed to middleclick-dragging things in nautilus. 2. Right-clicking on the pathbar elements in Nautilus does not give a context menu for the selected path element. 3. Wants to see a slideshow of his images; 3 applications (f-spot, eog, gthumb). F-spot crashes. None of them support pausing a slideshow (that we have found). None of them support going forwards/backwards through the images using the left/right mouse buttons or the mousewheel during a slideshow. If you open EOG from the menu, it starts as a very small window with only the menubar and the toolbar buttons New and Open showing (regardless of the state you closed it in). He still has not decided which program to use for viewing slideshows, but noted that Windows had a way of viewing folders containing images just like EOG works (so it would be sort of like embedding EOG instead of the Nautilus icon view when navigating into a folder with only images), and said he misses this. After some testing, we found that gThumbs "Fullscreen mode" support next/previous with the mouse buttons (although it's the left button and the middle/scrollwheel button and not the right button, which his builtin laptop mousepad does not have, so he can't go backwards unless he has connected a mouse), but this mode does not change image automatically after X seconds. 4. Wants to move the Top Panel to the bottom. Clicks it and drags but gets no visual indication that he's dragging anything. 5. Finds the Trash applet after more than a few minutes of searching (it's very small and positioned in the exact position where your eyes scan last; bottom right. Moreover, a blue square - which is what it looks like to my dad if he's not wearing his glasses - doesn't really scream "trash bin", not helping his search.) Tries to drag a file to it to delete. The dragged icon touches the applet, but his cursor is not over it (still hovers just above the panel), releases and the icon is just moved to the bottom of the desktop instead of deleted. 6. Wants to change the Font. Goes to System->User Settings->Fonts, sees the 4 boxes (does not recognize them as buttons) with "Sans" in them, clicks the "Details" button, "Go to Font folder", browses the fonts, finds one he likes, tries to drag it to the "boxes" without success. 7. Rightclicks on a picture, "Send To" uses Evolution. He wants to be able to select X images, Send To->Email Recipient and it should open a Thunderbird (his default e-mail client) Compose window with the images attached. 8. Categorizes his picture collection in folders. "Home", "Vacation Italy 2003", etc. Rightclicks on one, finds Properties and wants to set an image from each folder as its customized icon. He clicks the button in Properties and is presented with "/usr/share/pixmaps" every time. He clicks "Browse..." and is presented with "/usr/share" every time. They should both remember the previous location, and there should be a button that takes you to /usr/share/pixmaps (Default Location, whatever) instead. Anyway, clicks Browse and is presented with the default Open dialog where the 10% of the left side of it (rendering the Places sidebar useless) positioned outside the screen. He moves it in a bit, clicks his "Images" bookmark and is presented with a list of images with no preview. Since he is choosing an image to use for icon, this is very unfortunate, and he begins a process of elimination; "Was it that one? No." Each elimination forces him to redo all the steps mentioned above since he must close everything down to the Properties dialog to be able to see which image it is he selected. 9. Prior to letting him use the computer, I installed smeg to customize the Applications menu, removing alot of silly applications that he will never use. Later, he finds smeg himself, and tries to remove the following items: * Places-> Desktop, Computer, Network, Connect to Server * The entire System menu. But finds that it's not possible, for unknown reasons. 10. Wants to get a slideshow of his images as screensaver. Goes to System->User Settings->Screensaver, sees a HUGE list of screensavers and tries to locate "Slideshow" in it. It doesn't exist. The search is made even harder by the fact that the list doesn't support finding by typing. A box pops up when you write, but nothing happens. He eventually finds that he can settle for the "Spotlight" SS. He picks it and clicks "Settings...", but is unable to find anywhere how to specify which image(s) to use. He asks me and I point him to the "Advanced" tab. He goes there, finds the "Choose Random Image" checkbox and clicks Browse, only to be presented with some type of Open dialog he has never seen before (and also without preview). 11. Continuing his quest of scanning all his family albums into the computer, he opens the GIMP. After recovering from the sudden boom of windows on his desktop (don't forget the Todays Tip dialog), he identifies the one with a "File" menu and finds import. Not having the slightest idea what "XSane" is, he deems GIMP unable to scan his images and calls me again. I talk him through the same process and tell him that XSane is, in fact, a scanning program. He says "But there is only one option there; 'Device dialog...'". I tell him to click it, and the phone goes silent for a long time. He then tells me "the screen is full of windows, I have no idea what's going on." Seriously, have you tried having GIMP and XSane open at the same time? There should be laws against it. Even if he had been able to identify which was which, and find out what button he should click on (he didn't see any buttons, only widget soup), the overwhelming number of widgets on the screen was just insane. 12. I watch him trying to change the background image on his desktop. When he wants to close it, he suddenly stops and asks me "This X in the corner and this button with X on it that says 'Close', they do the same thing, right?" Then why are there 2 ? 13. He wonders why the light area of a scrollbar is where you drag, seeing as the dark area is both easier to hit (since it's bigger), and also easier to see. We adjust some contrasts and change theme, and it helps. He still thinks it's funny, though. 14. The folder with the most images contains around 400. When he opens it, there is a pause of about 15 seconds where the folder is just white with no files in it (apparently). No indication that it contains any images (except in the statusbar, where it says '400 entries') and no indication that anything is loading (except for the HDD indicator on his computer constantly reading). Then they all suddenly pop up under his nose. 15. OpenOffice.org2 Writer takes AGES to load. He has realised that it does, and goes to get coffee or whatever when starting it. AbiWord is faster (and looks alot nicer), but its MS Word conversion thingy is far from as good as OOo's. 16. After finding the Panel Properties, he adds arrows to both the Top and Bottom Panel, drags the launchers for Firefox, Thunderbird and OOo Writer to the desktop and creates links to his Images and Documents folders on the desktop. He then hides the Top Panel by sliding it to the left. Now he has his common tasks readily available from the desktop. 17. Mom opens Thunderbird to send some e-mails. She minimizes Thunderbird, locates a document and drags it to the trash to delete it. After she has done this, she accidentally clicks again just to the left of the trash, changing to Desktop 4 with the Workspace Switcher. Unable to locate Thunderbird in the window switcher at the bottom, she starts it again, only to be presented with Thunderbirds profile chooser (since it was still running on Desktop 1). When I arrive to fix this problem, I explain the concept of visual desktops to my dad. He graps it, but finds it unusable since he has no way of telling what the windows are by looking at their extremely small boxes in the workspace switcher (the windows are not maximized, so the application icon does not show inside the small boxes). He opens the Workspace Switcher Properties dialog and looks over the options, realising that he can give them names. He names them "Internett", "E-mail" and "Other", and checks the option to show desktop names in the switcher. Closing the dialog, he sees that he has 4, but only needs 3. He rightclicks on the 4th desktop and clicks "Remove from panel". This, of course, removes the entire applet, confusing him again. I add it again and point him to the properties dialog where he can adjust the number of virtual desktops, reducing it to 3. 18. Having all his applications on one desktop, he now starts to drag the windows to the Workspace Switcher to drop them on other desktops. This doesn't work, and I guide him to the context menu at the title bar, and he uses the "Move to another desktop" menu to position Firefox, Thunderbird and OOo Writer on the appropriate desktops. He then asserts that the Window Switcher applet is now useless and removes it. He also removes the Show/Hide Desktop applet. This effectively turns the Workspace Switcher into the Window Switcher. I can't really grasp why he finds this superior to the standard Window Switcher, but he does. 19. Inserting his digital camera, he opens gThumb to import them, only to be presented with an awfull error message containing words such as <http://www.gphoto.org/doc/manual/FAQ.html#FAQ-could-not-claim-USB>. I follow the guidelines on the gphoto page and makes it automatically open gthumb with the import dialog when he inserts his camera. His current images are all named like YYYY-MM-DD_XXXX.JPG, where X is just a counter. gThumb does not (that I could find, at least) support this, and the images retain the absolutely useless names the camera has given them. He is also terribly confused by the "categories" and "film" in gthumb, and does not play well with the mix of folders and categories. I point him to F-Spot, which mainly deals with categories and dates, precisely like he wants it. F-Spot not only crashes the second he tries to do a slideshow, but also fails to import images from the camera. Also, when clicking "Import from camera" he is presented with a dialog with a list containing two entries like this: <camera name> usb: <camera name> usb:001 003 or similar. He picks the first one (which is wrong) because the dialog is so small that the second item does not show unless you resize it, and the import fails. (This particular issue ended with me writing a shell script that I have attached to this e-mail. The script uses zenity to get a Save dialog where you pick a folder to save the images in. All images on the camera are then downloaded to this folder and named YYYY-MM-DD_X.ext, where 'X' is incremental. You can then unplug the camera again.) 20. Finds the "Stretch Icon" option on desktop icons and resizes them so they are approx. 200% (so they are easier to hit). The default Firefox and Thunderbird icons look so crappy it's not even funny, so I download high-resolution PNGs and set them as custom icons. script disclaimer: The attached usbmap.gz script is not the final one; it is the alpha version I hacked up on my workstation without a camera to test it with before e-mailing it to my dad, where I completed it and actually made it work :-) If you would like a working version, I'd be happy to send you one. -- Vidar Braut Haarr "Programmers don't die, they just GOSUB without RETURN."
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