lubuntu-desktop team mailing list archive

[Leszek Lesner <leszek.lesner@xxxxxx>]

Hi,

As I now have some time off. I thought about some of the concepts of Lubuntu Lucid. 
One that keeps bothering me somehow (as a programmer) is that we only included tools that are already avaiable for all the other distributions and aren't very Lubuntu specific. 
I don't know if its the policy here to create just another LXDE distribution or if we intend to create a fantastic distribution. (hmm... maybe a 'User Needs' page would be nice to have in the wiki, with goals we want to achieve or going to work on) 
IMHO we need custom optimized Lubuntu tools to make Lubuntu as near as perfect as we can. 

Another topic:
As I am a student and I had the chance to take a testdrive on a brandnew eyetracking system I tested some (short had only 30 min time to test) visual concepts of the LXDE / Lubuntu Desktop(Alpha 2, Preview 2) and figured out the following.
First of all functionality: 
1. Test:  "Change your background" 
Result: The student (obviously had experience with windows) right clicked the desktop and found the desktop settings item and clicked on it. A new preference window appeared telling him something about Interfaces. He was confused and thought he made something wrong and closed the window. 
Now he started searching in the menu and immediately found the Preferences submenu. He clicked on Appearance. 
The Appearence Preference Panel opened up. He stared a few seconds on it and searched a tab or way how he can change the wallpaper. After 3 minutes he gave up. I gave him the notice to try looking at the first tool he opened up a little bit more. He closed the app -> right click on the desktop -> Desktop Settings. 
Then after a few seconds of searching (eyetracking showed the 'scanning of the GUI' and focusing on the tab bar) he found the desktop tab and a few seconds later he was able to set a new wallpaper. 

2. Test: "Insert a USB Stick (Pendrive) and open up a mp3 file"
Result: The student inserted the usb stick and was waiting and staring on the desktop. After about 40 seconds (noting happened) he looked at the usb stick if the led was on and its running. Then he started to look in the menu under "System Tools". He didn't find what he was searching for. He moved up to the Accessories submenu and didn't find what he was looking for either. Then he started searching in the other submenus(one by one). He closed the menu. I gave him the advice to try opening up the filemanager. He went to the menu and did go to the System Tools submenu. He clicked on the PCManFM Filemanager link. (Took him a few seconds though to realize that PCManFM was the filemanager). The filemanager window opened up. 
He scanned the filemanager window (as he opened it for the first time). After a few seconds he found the left bookmarkspane and clicked (doubleclicked) the usb stick which had a common label ("USB_STICK"). He doubleclicked the mp3 file and smplayer opened up and played back the mp3 file. 

Students-Feedback: (shortened) 
- confused finding the background changer 
- right click -> desktop settings should open up the Desktop Tab in the preferences window
- the preferences are not clearly structured 
- usb sticks should be opened automatically or at least the system needs to give me(the user) a feedback if the stick was recognized or not
- Its confusing and annoying that you need to go to a submenu and open up the filemanager to access the usb drive. (After I explained him, that its also possible to simply doubleclick the my documents folder icon on the desktop -> ) Its not obvious enough. 
- The design looks like 1990. The black taskbar is ugly. The menu icon (LXDE Menu) looks ugly.
- But the system feels snappy (I am not quite sure either Pentium 4 or Celeron, 2 Ghz, 512 MB RAM) 

The main question I asked at the end of the short interview and testing was: "Would you consider using this system on your PC or netbook". 
The answer: "On the PC rather not. I would perhaps test it on my netbook besides my already preconfigured OS"

So all in all a very interesting testdrive I guess.
The student is studying informatics just like me. 

IMHO we still have something to do to make the desktop user friendly. First changing the few simple bugs, like right click menu on the desktop and desktop settings are linking to the wrong tab in the pcmanfm preferences. 
The harder "to fix" problems are the preferences and the usb stick. 
I have a few suggestions: 
First the preferences. I created a tool (originally for ZevenOS) that acts like a control center for preferences. I could change some of the code to fit to the lxde/lubuntu desktop if you want to(If I can, I still don't know if it needs to be uploaded to the ubuntu repo, and if I can make it in the freeze time). 
Here is a screenshot: http://www.ubuntu-pics.de/bild/42436/magi_SApftg.png
I think its good to have a centralised preference app for those people who are searching for a setting.
Ok now to the "USB Problem". There are two possible solutions. 
The hardway rewrite thunar-volman or the gnome-volume-manager to use pcmanfm. (don't know if its possible; wasn't it the reason pcman started libfm ?)
The easierway write a udev rule for usb sticks. This one could make a sound (plugin and plugout) and open up pcmanfm and mount the stick. ( I have a udev rule for zevenos that plays back a sound when plugging in and out a usb stick) 
Plan B IMHO is pcmanfm2. But I highly doubt it that it will be production ready until freeze of Lubuntu. 
I am pretty sure that the theme/look problem of Lubuntu will be fixed as we have very good suggestions in the artwork categorie for lucid. 


So thats all (wow a really long mail here). 
I hope this suggestions are useful. 

As we have Carneval here in Cologne (Germany) I needed to get this mail out before partying. 
Have fun and Kölle Alaaf  ;)