[Desktop 13.04-Topic] Having a smart ubuntu desktop

[Didier Roche]

Le 19/10/2012 10:51, Matthew Paul Thomas a écrit :
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> Hi Didier
Hey Matthew,
> Naming this proposal "a smart ubuntu desktop" is poisoning the well.
> It implies that rejecting the proposal would necessarily be dumb. The
> name also would be unclear to someone looking at a UDS schedule.
>
> Instead I suggest calling it something descriptive, like "Fewer
> default apps, on-demand installs".
noted, however, I want also to emphasize that the proposal will enable 
to have a first setup more adapted to our users, as it will ease the 
integration with webapps, so the title you proposed don't cover that. 
Any other idea?

>
> Didier Roche wrote on 18/10/12 10:10:
>> ...
>>
>> 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.
>>
>> 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
> In 12.10, to reduce clutter in the menu bar, the messaging menu is
> hidden by default. It appears only once you have set up an account in
> a messaging application. Personally, I think that is smarter.
>
> Do you think showing the messaging menu by default would be a
> reasonable price to pay for the reduced image footprint from not
> installing Thunderbird by default?
This is a possibility, another one is that when you type "mail, email…" 
in the dash, you have this tool asking for your email address appearing 
there.

>> - 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).
> What would the checkbox do?

Telling something like "I want a local client" to override the use of 
webapps and download thunderbird, even if you have a gmail/yahoo as you 
email address provider.
>
>> This is just a field example, we can expand to document editing,
>> and a lot of other areas.
> The proposal might be clearer if you gave more than one specific
> example. There is no document-editing equivalent to the messaging menu.

I'll try to work on some proposal for UDS with document editing.
>
>> There is already some integration of this for other parts of the
>> stack (like double clicking on an odt when you don't have
>> libreoffice installed), we can make sure all our desktop have this
>> kind of tweaks, and try to make a sharper, more adaptive image to
>> our finale users, without having lots of post-install applications
>> to remove.
>>
>> ...
> I'd like productivity applications in Ubuntu Software Center to have
> metadata for the kinds of documents they can handle. Then if you tried
> to open a document that you didn't have an application for, USC could
> show you appropriate applications to choose from.

yeah, we already have some of this in GNOME, so I think it worth to see 
how we can have this packagekit metadata flowing through the Ubuntu 
Software Center.

Thanks,
Didier