[Usability] GNOME and Hardware Detection

[Sarah Berry <sberry grex cyberspace org>]

Hello THere,

I have come across an issue that I thought you would like to know about as I could resolve it only via using KDE tools, the GNOME versions currently being inadequate, unfortunately.  THis issue pertains to both usability and probably some coding issues around hardware detection.  I will relate the narrative and will be interested in hearing your thoughts on teh matter:

My home computer still relies on dial-up networking, which is still very common in my country.  My laptop's internal winmodem could not be detected by my distribution (Fedora Core)nor was I particularly expectiong it to be.  I therefore decided to try an external USB modem.  I found that, using GNOME, trying to determine which port it was connected to was impossible.  I am sure that there are many shell commands I could have tried but I was more concerned with seeing GNOME's capabilities.  I therefore used KInfoCenter and found that this centralised listing of all system data was quick , convenient and conveyed the information that I needed.

I then used the GNOME networking tool to attempt to configure my modem.  In the dropdown list of ports, no reference to any of the USB drives was made and attempts to type in the port name directly failed.  I thus could not make my modem work.

Using KPPP, again the port was not automatically detected and configured but it was present in the drop down list and I was able to configure my modem and successfully begin SSH'ing and web surfing to my heart's content.

Whilst hardware detection is beyond the scope of this forum, cnetralising all hardware in a infomration program like KInfoCenter is extremely convenient nad provides a wealth of knowledge in a central location.  A dial-up tool that automatically can find and configure modems correctly would greatly streamline set-up for less proficient users (obviously technical hurdles to overcome, though) and a more flexible configuration tool like KPPP would be great.

On an unrelated matter, I think perhaps starting small is the best apporoach for DTP, as epr the current discussion.  Competing with Adobe and Quark may be too ambitious but what about the kind of market that Serif has utilised?  They were a small company but for many years, tehy competed successfully against Microsoft Publisher for home users and that is a gap we need to exploit on the Linux desktop.  We have a superb typesetting engine in TeX to be utilised as well (I am aware of graphical TeX based tools like LyX but this would not be so much like them as a frame-based system).

Also popular with home users in the past have been greeting card creation programs.  These are even more simpliifed DTP but are fine for non-business users such as those wanting to create cards, stationery, certificates and very simple flyers.  There were many produts on the market for this for Windows (including shareware of variable quality.) I am sure the open source community could build a Print Shop pro style tool very readily.  

CHeers,


Sarah