gnome-control-center

[Timo Jyrinki]

2009/2/23 Alexander Sack <asac at ubuntu.com>:
>> I find access to the various settings applications to be rather tedious
>> and indirect through the gnome-control-center, so I prefer the way that
>> Ubuntu does it (simply with the menus).

Me too, although I understand also that some assume
gnome-control-center-like behavior (because of Windows etc.) so it
might be more familiar. Somehow I don't feel it's easy to navigate
anyway, it's not too polished / thought out.

> In control center, the grouping by topics is nice for users to at
> least narrow down the list they look harder at. (e.g. Internet & Net,
> etc.).

This is done in the menus by Fedora and I prefer it (multiple
sub-menus with descriptive titles, the same as in
gnome-control-center) to the current too-long list of Preferences in
Ubuntu.

> (Seems like the control center entries could deserve some polishing
> and maybe removing things that are not really used frequently could
> help to improve it).

I think mostly what would be needed is the combining of some utils
which has been discussed for a long time (somehow unable to find the
most recent page about in the wiki now). It's just that no-one has
started doing it or discussing it (enough) in GNOME.

Like: Keyboard & Shortcuts (& SCIM), Screen Saver & Power Management
(or Screen Saver & Appearance), Removable Drives and Media & Palm
Devices (->Removable Devices and Media?). Network Configuration &
Network Proxy. Some of that is considerable work that would involve
rethinking the grouping, and eg. SCIM is not even part of GNOME.

-Timo