Change the default settings of Kubuntu to improve the first time user experience

[AG Alex]

Hi everyone, I'm a new member with few years of experience using 
Kubuntu..., please be patient with my English, I'm still working on it....
I'm writing to talk about *Users First Experience improvement in 
Kubuntu*, which is not the best we can do at moment especially for First 
Time Users, in my opinion of course.

The current default configuration of Kubuntu (until 12.10) seems to be 
targeting just experienced users, which once installed a new system 
doesn't have any problem to build its own environment around its needs, 
but they wouldn't have any problem to do it even with a much more full 
functionality default configuration, while for a new user of Kubuntu it 
will be impossible even to simply imagine the powerful of the KDE 
environment with current default settings.

So why don't we change the target of the default settings to aim the 
Newbbie needs instead of experienced users, they can anyway customize 
and set up everything they need in few steps. I mean, a bit of 
"sacrifice" for experienced user could become something really helpful 
for New Users.
Even much better of course would be to gives, if possible, a choice 
during the installation process to set the Environment in few different 
ways, one could be"Minimal Basic Functionality" (for experienced Users), 
other could be "Fully Functionality Mode" (to show the real power of 
KDE) , other again could be a kind of "Learning Mode" where in my 
opinion Activities can become very helpful, and so on.....
But I'm not a developer and maybe it's impossible to do it, or maybe it 
will be possible just having a much more centralized configuration 
system, where would be really nice to have a set of tools to export and 
share any aspect of any single part of of the DE configuration (but 
maybe in other post we can talk about it).


Talking about *New Default Settings optimized for first time Users*, 
involves of course few different aspects like default packages 
installed, default desktop environment include plasma and plasmoids, and 
than default activities where to show many different aspect of KDE 
functionality combined with the best applications of Kubuntu repositories.

*Default Packages:*
In my opinion there are few change to do on default installed packages, 
simply because some application are not ready yet to be used, or in some 
other case, very useful tool are not installed by default.

*/Applications:/*

    *Rekonq*, is not ready yet and I cannot see any good reason to use a
    "not ready yet software" as a default application, especially
    because we are talking about the *Default Tool to Access the Web*,
    which is a 90% daily use of computer for most of the people out there.
    I know, there is an installer launcher of Firefox and it's really
    simple to use, but in my opinion after hours of installation in some
    case, is really disarming do another installation and write password
    , simply to surfing the web in a  reasonable way, isn't ? I mean,
    there are few great software out there, are open source, stable,
    powerful, already on repository, every day more used......, why
    don't use one of it by default.  Are we sure the best solution is to
    propose a not ready yet software to do the job ?, even because in my
    case it means to have any link clicked in Thunderbird opened in
    Rekonq , even if I change the default browser on system settings to
    use chromium (it seems to works just if is already opened).

    *Dragon Player*, is a good player but maybe there are some other
    great software like vlc already in repositories, which can gives to
    the users a much more complete and powerful solution to play with
    multimedia contents, and I'm pretty sure vlc is one of the first
    installation "extra" once complete the Kubuntu one, for many users.

    Talking about *Utility*, there are few nice utility right on the
    repository that could be installed by default, and for utility like
    Ksnapshot already installed would be much better to use a launcher
    on some panel, where would be nice as well to have some software to
    screencast the desktop, or even nice tools and some time essentials
    (depending on your job type), like Kruler, KcolorChooser,
    KCharSelect and so on..... I mean they are really small and so
    essential tools in some cases that really makes the difference.

    We want talk about*Yakuake* ?, I think there isn't better way to
    always have as much konsole instances as you need in a practice and
    nice way, and for new people, would be the easiest way possible to
    access the konsole when asking support on IRC and someone of us will
    say "..ok just pass those commands on the konsole.." just pressing
    F12 in the default Yakuake installation.

*/Plasmoids:/*

    There are many good and useful plasmoids on repository, which can be
    very handy to gives a much more complete idea of what actually can
    be done in Plasma. Just to mention few of them *Quick Access* should
    be much more used on default desktop in my opinion, pointing for
    example on Document, Images, Videos, Music and Download folders,
    using few instances of it. Another interesting plasmoid to show
    could be *translatoid* , which is a really useful tool when
    multilanguage contents is your daily works. A calcuator, a
    converter, and everything can gives a better ideas about what can be
    done in plasma in a quick and easy way.

*/Activities:/*

    Actitivities presets should be based only on application already
    installed by default, and to have some basic example of content in
    some cases can be much more comfortable to immediately understand
    the purpose of an activity.
    Activities presets with example contents, can be used as well for a
    kind of teaching purpose, well I guess some basic note or even few
    html pages to explain something visualized in plasmoids like Web
    Browser, next to the applications you want to teach opened with
    example already loaded, would be easier for anyone willing to learn
    any kind of knowledge. /
    / 

/*Functionality:
*/

    I fill really comfortable with some "extra functionality" enabled
    like rolling up and down a window just within the mouse wheel, can
    be very useful if you used to work with a lot of opened tasks.
    Talking about buttons on the window decorations I use a lot the
    button to "keep Above Others", and I'm quite sure most of the new
    user not even knows it can be done, instead once is there it's
    really easy to understand how and when to use it.
    Another fancy and some time useful features that can be enabled by
    default is the ability to change the transparency of a window just
    pressing ALT and rolling the mouse wheel.

I guess a second panel on the top of the screen can do most of the job 
I'm talking about if well equipped with plasmoid and applications 
launcher, and would be very easy to remove for the people don't like or 
don't need it, you don't think so ?.
And if using *Activities* even the*top panel* (with plasmoids and 
launcher) *could be combined* with opened applications and desktop 
plasmoids for any Activities , would even be funny to create Activities 
to do tasks complete of documentation, example and so on....., nicely 
managed with plasmoids in a kind of "tematic top panel".

To gives you an idea about how I'm used to work in Kubuntu, here an 
example of my current desktop 
<http://www.alexgrafic.it/images/examples/myDesk.jpg> , which maybe is 
to much customized respect the default one 
<http://www.alexgrafic.it/images/examples/defaultDesk.jpg>, but maybe 
something in between could be the right solution for the default 
configuration of Kubuntu.

Well, I think to be my first post on this mailing list I already wrote 
too much, but hopefully I could make you understand why I consider so 
important the first impact arriving on a completely new Operating 
System, especially if the system we are talking about has a lot of great 
and useful features to be showed.
I hope so because the current default settings of Kubuntu does not 
express so much of the KDE + Ubuntu combination potentiality, like 
instead should be in my opinion.

I hope I haven't bored you, and that do you agree with some of my idea 
to improve the first Kubuntu experience, and if so , we can talk about 
it as deeply as we needs.

Thanks for reading me, and much more for the amazing work you always did 
keeping Kubuntu alive....

Alex
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