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Debian Desktop Subproject Launched
Posted by
Hemos
on Thu Oct 24, 2002 08:28 AM
from the go-apt-get-go dept.
from the go-apt-get-go dept.
MrOutlander writes "The Debian Project is now officially addressing its usability on the desktop with the launch of the Debian Desktop subproject. Great to see usability being recognized as a very important part of debian. Other than the sometimes daunting install process, Debian is one of the best linux distributions."
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Debian Desktop Subproject Launched
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Debian = good server? (Score:1)
Isnt Linux Customizable? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Isnt Linux Customizable? (Score:5, Informative)
The truth is however that each distro exist to offer you even more customizibilty. You have distros like Slack/Gentoo that many like because they don't include many unnecessary packages and the distro offers you much configurability. Many don't like these distros however because they don't have the time to compile(Gentoo)/configure/install everything the good-old-way or that they just want a distro that is a tad more user-friendly. For those you RedHat/Suse and Mandrake that are distros that are based on a binary package system (Gentoo has ports which downloads the source and compiles it). Each of these have their own "touch" as well.
Mandrake offers many patches/programs to make life easier, so Mandrake is a very popular choice for people that are new to Linux.
RedHat doesn't offer as much as Mandrake in the newbie area, and are a bit more strict on what goes into their kernel and distro. So imo RedHat isn't quite as user-friendly as Mandrake.
SuSe I don't know much about, I know that tthey have a configuration utility that has gotten a lot of positive feedback (YaST isn't it?).
So the choice of distro is just a part of the customization. Part of running Linux is choosing the distro that is right for you.
Re:Isnt Linux Customizable? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's look at the following targets: server, corporate desktop, home desktop and embedded.
Server: customizability and security is a Good Thing(tm). You don't need GUI tools, they only make the server less stable. You need to have server software installed.
Corporate desktop: you need GUIs. You don't want server software, but office software. Security is important.
This target conflicts with the server target.
Home desktop: *customizability and security* are not important. The home user simply doesn't care and is lazy. He doesn't want to customize everything, and doesn't want to enter a password to install software.
This conflicts with both server and corporate desktop.
Embedded: you want to have as less stuff as possible because disk space and memory are limited. This conflicts with all of the above.
You see? Totally different targets with totally different needs. And this is just an example, the real world is much, MUCH more complicated. Add a graphical installer and you'll piss off the old school power users or users with old hardware. Don't add a graphical installer and you'll piss of the home user. Add an option and you'll confuse the hell out of newbies. Etc. etc.
You can't have one single distro that fits them all, the situations are too different.
Re:Isnt Linux Customizable? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's actually a case of "too many chefs". No one can agree on what a "great" desktop actually is, since a desktop is so many different things to so many people. The amount of flames I usually receive from people on Slashdot about how feature "X" in environment "X" (or even Windows XP) is stupid and pointless illustrates that well. To one person, it's performance that makes for a great desktop. To another, it's applications. Yet another, eye candy. So far, here's a breakdown of what I've seen:
There are the guys who like to run light with TWM and just use X as a way of having multiple terminals visible at once. I'll bet if there was an option to do this without the overhead of X, they would. As I ocassionally would, myself.
Then there are the folks (like me) who love the eye candy and use X with environments like Gnome or KDE, or just go with a window manager like Enlightenment. These people are the obsessive tweakers who constantly poke and prod and try to get their GUI to be as efficient, customized and sweet looking as possible. To them, the eye-candy/themes, easy customizability and responsiveness of the GUI are what make for a great desktop.
Then there are the utilitarians. They believe that a computer is just a tool. There are also subgroups within this group because some of them want to run light (TWM, FVWM, etc...) and others want an easy to use system that resembles Windows or Macintosh depending on their previous platform (KDE).
Those who use KDE tend to just do the trivial tasks like, browsing the web, working with e-mail, writing docs and balancing their checkbook. They are less concerned about looking cool and more interested in "just working". To them, KDE is the ideal desktop.
The FVWM and TWM crowd that go beyond using X for terms, usually have more specialized needs. They don't need a file manager since they tend to do that from the terminal. They don't need a launcher, since they tend to do that from the terminal too. But they want access to a basic GUI for the apps they run that need it: (GIMP, Mozilla, Netscape, etc...).
There are more groups, but I won't continue. The basic problem is that the desktop is something different for every person. I think the ideal would be an environment that can be as spare as TWM with only xterms/gnome-terms/konsoles, as feature filled as a normal GNOME or KDE environment, and as beautiful as Enlightnment. Upon installation of the environment, the user picks "Thin, Moderate, Full, Custom" and gets what they want. If KDE or GNOME could be made to do this easily and on-the-fly, that would be wonderful.
For instance, if a window manager like Sawfish or KWM could tell it was running with the gnome-panel or kicker, it would revert to a TWM mode. In this mode it would minimize apps to icons on the root window and place a simple right click menu (like TWM's) on the desktop to run a basic set of apps (terms specifically). I think the people who want the lightness of TWM, but maybe like more modern looking widgets and their accompanying functions would really appreciate this.
The ability to switch between Thin, Moderate, Full and Custom, on the fly would be great too. A laptop user could just toggle to Full mode when plugged in and toggle to Light (TWM-like) mode when on battery.
Suspendable X session would be nice too... You suspend the X session and go to runlevel 3 to do deep work that needs all the horsepower it can get. Or you suspend and get back to XDM/GDM/KDM and log in as a different user to do other tasks. (Great for a multiuser machine at home or work) Then you resume your X session with all apps running. This would be kind of interdependent on both the environment and X.
Whatever the case, I think the "Desktop Distro" that will win dominance would be the distro that addresses these issues and does it in a simple way for "Joe User" as well as more complex ways for "Joe Power User" and "J03 G33k G0d".
one of the best linux distributions? (Score:5, Funny)
In other news:
-Lemonade is one of the best beverages
-Pink is the best color
-Pi is the best number
Required Reading... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Required Reading... (Score:4, Interesting)
As someone who's used OS8, OS9, Linux, and all the video variants, let me tell you that OS8 comes pretty damn close to being *golden*. Apple spent a lot of time making OS7-9 pleasant and easy to use and it shows.
Re:Required Reading... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Yes. Yes. People..read this line and chant it.
And in the process, they could also team up with the 'Debian Graphical Installer' group (see this [slashdot.org]
Re:Required Reading... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Required Reading... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not interested in interfacing with a fabled race of dwarflike creatures, I'm interested in interfacing through a GUI to a UNIX or UNIX-like system.
Re:Required Reading... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or for that matter, windows. KDE has its faults, to be sure, but Konq provides better integration than even Windows. In Windows, I can only see folders on the left pane in explorer. In Konquerer, I can at my option see files, and view all kinds of content, from HTML to text to postscript, in the right hand pane. I can rubberband a bunch of files in ftp and drag them to the desktop. The control center includes system management (to some degree), whereas in windows, you use a completely separate app, MMC. Granted, Windows is carrying along legacy cruft, and would probably make every control panel a MMC snap-in nowadays, but they don't even provide an adaptor.
The user experience on windows is pretty disjointed too. But I don't think Unix (it's more than Linux, folks) exactly has further to go than Windows. It's just broken in different places.
Re:Required Reading... (Score:5, Funny)
Blasphemy!
Re:Required Reading... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't worry about that. If Debian dares to mimic Aqua as a theme for their Deskstop, Apple will sue them over look and feel. Jobs is good at that. However, the HIG provided free of charge online will be a good guide for Debian to enhance the usability of their KDE and GNOME desktops for the novice users.
Start Here: (Score:5, Informative)
http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/ut1_repor
I read this about a year ago. It does an *excellent* job of pointing out many of the inconsistencies and gotchas in any given linux desktop situation.
Also (Score:5, Informative)
Daunting? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Daunting? (Score:4, Informative)
It took me a while to figure out the exact driver for my sparcstation, and in the end, i had to open the box and do a search on google to know.
This new incentive to push debian into the desktop is "a good thing". Even if it doesnt turn out perfect, it's still a step in the right direction.
Re:Daunting? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do people freeze up when they are given a telegraph key to communicate?
Brand-X's difficult to use installer is no more difficult that any other distribution's difficult to use installer.
This is the whole crux of the problem in Human interface. Programmers are NOT good designers of human interfaces. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines said it best. (Back in 1984!) The general sentiment that Apple expressed was this: We, slashdotters, are willing to put up with the most abysmal interfaces, and have done so for so long that we no longer are even capable recognizing a bad interface.
In the 1800's there were widespread predictions that eventually there would be a telegraph on every desk!
But what happened was that a more natural way of communicating (better human interface) came along and appeared on every desk instead.
System Management for User (Score:4, Insightful)
We will try to ensure that software is configured for the most common desktop use. For instance, the regular user account added by default during installation should have permission to play audio and video, print, and manage the system through sudo.
I think giving the root privileges to the user using sudo is a security risk. It will be very easy to wreak a havoc on the system, once you break into the user account.
Co-ordination please (Score:5, Insightful)
The OSS community can make a desktop that is better than XP. In fact, all of the bits of the puzzle are already there, it's just that they are in different distributions! (Xandros, SUSE, RedHat, Lindows, Debian...)
When Linux has a reasonable foothold in the desktop market, then go ahead, fight away. But until that day, please share and co-operate. For motivation, imagine Bill Gates giggling to himself and muttering "what a bunch of losers". Works for me.
Re:Co-ordination please (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it depends what you want. If you are happy with Linux having less than 1% of the desktop market, then fine. But there are many people like myself who believe that the world would be a better place if OSS software were much more widely used. And that means the desktop. So, yes, at least from my perspective, Microsoft is the enemy, or if you'd prefer, the competition.
And no, Sun, the BSDs and Apple are not really the competition because they don't own 95% of the marketplace.
Plus, cooperation between Linux distros is somewhat implicit.
Except it doesn't seem to be happening that way. If you look at the kernel, there is a great deal of uniformity between distributions basically because there is a single, widely accepted head-penguin who is doing an excellent job (Linus). I'm sure that there are very few people who would argue that it would be great if we had dozens of incompatible kernals. The desktop space however doesn't have a head-penguin and it really shows.
It's possible to have a high level of co-ordination and co-operation as well as freedom and choice.
Maybe it's too much to ask, but . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
At the least, I'd like to see the Debian compiles updated to i586. (That's the equivalent of a Pentium 1, in non-geek speak.) There are still quite a few of those in use.
Updating the targetted processor architecture would give a significant performance boost to Debian. I mean seriously, nobody is going to run KDE or Gnome on a 386 -- it'd take DAYS just to start a program.
It might also be possible to support multiple processor architectures; eg during installation you get a list of i386, i486, i586, and i686 (386, 486, Pentium 1, More Recent Stuff). Then apt would fetch the appropriate package flavor. Of course, this would require non-trivial amounts of storage space, not to mention all the time needed to re-compile everything.
Re:Maybe it's too much to ask, but . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
Optimizing the kernel for a particular CPU model is almost certainly a win (I'm not a kernel hacker and don't know how much of a win); but it seems to me that the costs of producing and storing multiple optimized versions of an "average" app probably outweigh the benefits. And since i386 is the lowest common denominator, Debian may as well just continue building for that.
-Stephen
[1]: if indeed there is such a thing as an "average" app.
Re:Maybe it's too much to ask, but . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
> ls -1
libcrypto.so@
libcrypto.so.0.9.6
libssl.so@
libssl.so.0.9.6
There were experiments doing custom glibcs a while back, but there were bugs and it was backed out. I'd like to see that working though.
Great! (Score:4, Interesting)
As soon as Linux is recognized as a userfriendly, easy-to-use desktop with lots of free (as in beer) software by the average user Windows will get into real problems. Such an opening would generate a *huge* increase in the number of users and thus in the interest in supporting Linux from different companies.
Two points to avoid flaming: 1) I know that Linux is only the kernel, simply sed 's/Linux/Gnu\\Linux/' and be happy, 2) "as in beer" is how the average user will see it, my mother don't care for open source, she wants to use it as a tool!
Wrong focus? (Score:2, Insightful)
-XFree, 4.2 just appeared in unstable
-KDE 3
-Mozilla 1.1
And it's even worse for people using woody without 'proposed-updates' package repository!
The 'testing' distribution is a step in the right direction, but there's a lot more to do that just to focus on Desktop, IMHO.
Re:Wrong focus? (Score:5, Informative)
You also forget that Debian is not a company, but a community. In other words, you cannot dictate what will be done; people will do whatever interests them. It works, it's just that at this point with so many transitions and changes going on, the process has slowed down. Want to sped it up? Fork over some $$$ to a developer. Simple as that.
Re:Wrong focus? (Score:5, Informative)
Debian focusses on whatever the Debian developers care about. One thing Debian developers tend not to care about at all is armchair experts. If you happen to disagree with what we care about, feel free to learn How you can help [debian.org], or to pay for a developer to scratch your particular itch.
We all know that some critical packages are way out of date:
-XFree, 4.2 just appeared in unstable
And excellent prerelease packages have been available from the X Strike Force [debian.org] for months. Not to mention that Debian supports X on 11 architectures [debian.org] rather than just i386.
-KDE 3 Unofficial packages are available; official packages will follow after the gcc transition; see the FAQ [davidpashley.com].
-Mozilla 1.1
Available [debian.org] in unstable and testing, as are recent CVS snapshots.
And it's even worse for people using woody without 'proposed-updates' package repository!
woody is the stable release. Debian takes stability very seriously and the stable release is only updated to fix serious issues (in particular security issues), not to put in new releases of packages. If you want a more up to date system, use testing.
diabian's install is daunting? (Score:1, Offtopic)
I use diabian at home to run my firewall advice. It's an old K5 machine that runs at 100mhz...remember when they bought that other CPU company (what was their name, Ktech?)
I used to play Duke Nukem on it, and my name was K5KICKBUT...
Whoa, I guess I am l33t!
Finally (Score:1)
I Have No Problems. (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally I have no problem with Debian's installer. In fact, it is the best I have seen yet. In a desktop situation you can (with the exception of partitioning a disk and one or two other places) just continually hit [ENTER] and come out with a base Debian install.
Which installer is better?
Debian for the masses... (Score:1)
* If you cannot use vi why the hell are you using linux?
* Text interfaces are the best!
---
Now we have a project going toward a good installer and one to increase usability...
I'd like to know what the pure debianists think about it!
bye
How about making the apt sources... (Score:1, Troll)
Since when is a powerpoint clone part of a window manager?
Ximian Setup Tools (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone...?
Re:Ximian Setup Tools (Score:5, Informative)
Menus (Score:4, Interesting)
there are only two classes of users (Score:2)
The article says "there are only two classes of users: the novice, and the expert"
How about all those novices who think they're experts?
Wow (Score:1)