How about a user-driven (KDE-) preferences package repository?

[Kenneth Wimer]

Hi,

While I understand the idea and your desire for such I think that really 
groking any information out of this is pretty much impossible as it would not 
reflect the wishes and needs of our target audience. No matter how much work 
you put into it, uploading such information would still be something for 
people who are more technically based (that is a nice way to say geeks :p) 
not to mention that it would not reflect the needs of people who are new to 
kubuntu.

--
Ken

On Tuesday 23 October 2007 13:15:57 Daniel Arnold wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I -as a long-time KDE user- highly customize the GUI of my own KDE
> installation everytime I install my favourite Linux distribution (currently
> Kubuntu of course ;-) as I honestly can't remember a Linux distribution
> that had default preferences I liked (but thanks to the power of KDE this
> never was a big problem for me).
>
> However I am aware that creating default preferences that make everybody
> happy is a very hard if not impossible task. As well how can a package
> manager read a users mind if the user doesn't tell him which setting (s)he
> prefers? On the other hand how can a large group of users tell package
> maintainers which preferences are choosen by a large majority of them?
>
> Bug tracking systems like Bugzilla are not suited for collecting and
> evaluating such a kind of collaborative feedback (beside the usability
> nightmare). Ok there is the Ubuntu hardware database, which gives the user
> and the mainatiner an easy tool for collecting and evaluating actually used
> hardware and hardware issues. As well there is the favourite software
> feedback option in Adept but again this does not cover user preferences.
>
> So how about a repository of packages that contain preferences choosen by
> users? For example my preference would be in a package
> called "kde-settings-daniel" or something like that. Everyone could then
> browse the repository and just install other people settings, modifying
> them and re-uploading them under their name. In the end you have a lot of
> different user preference profiles you could analyse statistically and I am
> sure in the course of improving each other preferences there will be some
> favourite settings created by a dozen of people (or something in that order
> of magnitude).
>
> Of course there will be need for some caution as you can easily reveal some
> private data to others if you don't take care but I am sure this can be
> solved by some assisting software and an automated serverside double check
> at upload.
>
> What do you think about it?
>
> Cheers, Arnomane