[Desktop 13.04-Topic] Having a smart ubuntu desktop

[Ted Gould]

On Thu, 2012-10-18 at 11:10 +0200, Didier Roche wrote:
> In a world where we are using more and more connected web services doing 
> some of our tasks (web mails, online documentation editing, online music 
> players…) should we imagine having a more adapated image to our users? 
> This will mean reducing our main image footprint by removing some of 
> those tools we install by default:
> I'm thinking of thunderbird, libreoffice, rhythmbox and other main 
> applications of our desktop for instance.

What I see is that more people are having data online, but that doesn't
necessarily mean using online clients.  Or, in many cases the reason
they're using the web client is because they don't know that there is a
better, more integrated experience available.

> The counter-part would be to make our desktop smarter. I can imagine:
> - having the messaging menu (or an icon in the launcher, or an icon in 
> the dash) showing, the first time you try to configure your email 
> account, a window asking for your email
> - based on the answer, either proposing to directly use a web 
> application (with unity integration) for an @gmail.com, @yahoo.com… and 
> other email providers known to have good web integrations. Otherwise, 
> proposing to install thunderbird, ideally opening the account creating 
> setup prefiled with the information already be done.
> (we can of course imagine a checkbox to override the "smart" behavior).

So I think that this is an interesting idea, but I'd propose it a little
differently.  If you, for instance said that you have a Google account
we could offer to integrate the GMail website but also offer to set up
IMAP to "Synchronize e-mail locally".

Perhaps another option would be to use the online accounts dialog to
show which applications are currently using that account, but also which
applications could use that account if they were installed.

		--Ted

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