[kubuntu-devel] Change the default settings of Kubuntu to improve the first time

[Jonathan Riddell]

Thanks for your suggestions.  Our general philosphies with default settings is:
-working by default, no first run configuration dialogues
-go with upstream's settings unless there's a very good reason
-keep it simple, don't clutter with too many features
-KDE first

>    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

first run configuration dialogues are nasty, how would the user know what to choose?

>      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.

It's a controvertial choice for sure, it fits in with my general KDE
idealism but it has been disappointing in how buggy it can be.

But Firefox has no KDE integration and Chromium isn't supported for
the length of our supported releases.  And since they are not KDE apps
they require a whole load of extra dependencies.

>      Dragon Player

Dragon Player nicely integrates with KDE.  vlc has a really cluttered UI for most users.

>like Kruler, KcolorChooser, KCharSelect
>      and so on.....

Our images are currently full up for our (arbitrary) 1GB size limit, so any new addition means removing something such as a language pack.

Having said that these kdeutils seem like useful additions and should not take up too much space.

>      We want talk about Yakuake

Yakuake is fun but it breaks the normal UI conventions so isn't suitable for default use.

> A calcuator, a converter, and everything can gives
>      a better ideas about what can be done in plasma in a quick and easy way.

We don't like to clutter the desktop or panel (that's a general Ubuntu
philosophy). Adding favourite plasmoids can be easily done by users
and is generally best left up to them since a setup for one user won't
be very useful for another.

>    Activities:

We're behind here and need to review what upstream do in default activities and desktops.  We shouldn't have two desktops by default now with activities.

Having said that I find activities unintuitive, there's no panel pager
to change them and no window animation on switch so if I accidently
press win-tab I just get all my windows disappearing :(

>      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.

First question to ask is why are these not turned on upstream?
There's a danger with default like this that users will active them
accidently and have no ide awhat happened or how to revert (like
pressing win-tab).

>    I guess a second panel on the top of the screen can do most of the job

Ug, we don't want to take up extra screen space better used by applications.

Let the discussion continue.. :)

Jonathan