issues with warty final

[Steven Van Impe]

I decided to give Ubuntu another try since it looks promising and is now
final. I encounter the following issues after using the system about 10
minutes:

* There is still a 'Not yet implemented' part in the partitioner that
asks you to go back and correct your settings. Regular users will
probably think that there is a problem and will go back trying to
correct something that isn't even wrong (getting stuck in an infinite
loop). Putting 'Not yet implemented' on the screen is not a solution
since non-technical users won't even know what implemented means.

* The 'Download updates from internet' part isn't really clear to me.
Since the final release is just out, there shouldn't be much updates,
but I still see messages scrolling by about Gnomes doing the Samba with
Pythons (assuming I'm Joe User) for about 10-15 minutes. If I skip this
part (assuming I do not have an internet connection) stuff goes wrong
and once I even got dropped in a console.

* After bootup the keyboard isn't set to the correct layout (I chose
Belgian layout at setup but got stuck with US English).

* Using the Keyboard tool in preferences, I deleted US English, got a
weird error about XKB, ignored it and added Belgian, which solved the
problem.

* GDM keeps on using US English, perhaps this could be solved by logging
in as gdm and changing the keyboard by hand ? I guess this will go away
by itself if the keyboard layout chosen during install is used as the
default for all users, including gdm.

* Application names in the Applications menu aren't really pretty. I
would definity propose to just use a description instead of a name and a
description (so 'Media Player' instead of' Totem Media Player').
Conflicts shouldn't arise since we need but one app for each task
anyway. If it were me, I'd get ALL specific names out of the entire
desktop since they're just one more thing (25 more things?) users need
to learn in order to use their system (you could still keep them as
nicknames in the about panel for example).

* Is 'About Ubuntu' an application ? Then why is it in the Applications
menu ? Not that I can tell of a better place right away, but
Applications->About Ubuntu just feels weird.

* Computer\Disks points to Computer (not just disks but network
locations as well).

* There are two terribly complicated mixers in Volume Control (one for
OSS, one for ALSA). I know Volume Control is getting a makeover, but
please make sure that there is but one mixer for each soundcard.

* Totem is terribly broken: playlist didn't really work, visualisations
didn't work (and screen got stuck), and I got crazy errors when loading
video files: loading a file called
'Futurama.S01E01.Space.Pilot.3000.DVDRip.DivX.PROPER-LOL' resulted in
Totem trying to load something by the name of 'Lol, Lol, 75, 75, Lol,
Lol'.

* Since Totem with GStreamer backend isn't fully functional anyway (and
users will have to install totem-xine to play files - Joe User probably
never heard of Vorbis or Theora), why not drop it completely: if it's
installed by default, Joe User will assume it works and won't understand
that installing the same program again makes a difference.

* Having the settings right underneath the computer locations feels a
bit weird as well.


Well, hope this helps.

I see lots of great things happening for Ubuntu, but to be honest, I
wouldn't consider this (or any other distribution I've used so far)
truly usable for non-geeks.


Steven