Idea: easier transition for newcomers from other DEs/OSes

Martin Sourada martin.sourada at seznam.cz
Fri Aug 24 17:15:01 UTC 2007


Hi,

It's all about picking default settings new users wish. Imagine a user
who is coming from Windows to Fedora, but he has no clue how linux
works. It would greatly help him if the linux behaved to some extent
similar to Windows - meaning applications look (themes), window's
buttons layout (in this case same), menu layout, keyboard shortcuts etc.
The same for users coming from Mac OS and for users used to Gnome and
switching to KDE and opposite way. The idea is that user selects what he
wants his desktop resemble, and then the usage of the desktop would be
more intuitive to him.

What would we need for that?
     1. Check out, how much we can set up GNOME/KDE to look and behave
        like other DEs/OSes
     2. If some of the stuff which makes this easier is available, but
        not in fedora, get it into repository
     3. Write a utility that can change the DE's settings to what we
        have found in 1.
     4. Integrate the utility into anaconda or first boot.

The utility should be pretty straightforward - you will have a bunch of
radio buttons captioned Windows 9x, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Mac OS X
(dunno version differences though, might need more radio buttons for
that one), GNOME, KDE (for how it should look like) and a two check
boxes with simple description of GNOME and KDE (in the description
should be noted primarily differences between those to, to ease
selection to one who has no idea what GNOME/KDE is; for what will be
used as 'backend').

Just a though... Your opinions? Is it even desirable? Does it make
sense?

Martin
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