On Sun, 2002-07-07 at 17:36, Martin Mačok wrote: > On Sun, Jul 07, 2002 at 12:14:20PM -0500, SI Reasoning wrote: > > Because each program has its flaws, when a flaw is found it is not > > unusual for someone to try another program. Eventually, one would > > settle on a single program for most use while using another program > > for specific issues/features. I also have no problem making this an > > option that can be turned off/on, however I believe most people > > would want it turned on > > Feel free to implement it :-) but I personally think that time spent > on fixing those flaws which make people switch to alternative > applications is a better spent time than such a smart converter. no doubt that is true, but Mandrake does not write the programs. There are a lot of people looking at Linux, esp at the lower ends of the economic scale (who can really afford windows except for businesses anyway?) However, they are also not very technically inclined. Mandrake is getting closer to being usable by these people but they are still hindered by things beyond their control (which are all of the individual programs in various states of stability/features). Having a central database for most info that could be shared among multiple programs with the same function can save a tremendous amount of time/effort/frustration for desktop users. Even if they spent all of there time on one program getting it just right, only to find that its weakness happens to be in an area they continually use.... they could just try one or several different programs and still have all of their preferences/shortcuts, etc.
The great accomplishment on all of this would be a standardization of the desktop regardless of the plethora of programs and the window manager(?) they are written for (qt, gtk, tk, etc). > > > (like most people prefer the unified menus in Mandrake when > > changing window managers.) > > I think that the motivation behind menudrake was more about to not > write an application entry for each app 37 times explicitely for each > window/session manager, but to write it once and spread the entry over > all of them automatically ... than to ease switching the managers. that is fine, but from a users standpoint... unified menus is one of the major things that has kept me with mandrake. It is hard to switch distros once you are used to having your menus consistant regardless of which window manager you use. I switch window managers all the time depending on needs (I use kde3 when I am at a greater distance from the computer and am more mouse-centric. I use fluxbox when I am nearer my laptop and am more keystroke-centric. I use icewm or fluxbox when I need to get in and out of my account real quick. The same thing goes with the various word processors. I may use kword or abiword if I want to do a quick document, but will use open office for more complex things such as fliers or items to be forwarded to windows users. I use galeon and opera for general web browsing, but often konqueror for specific tasks like ftp or yahoo's baseball popup. Every browser has something I like and some flaw in something I need. I use evolution for most email, contact and calendering specific tasks, but use kmail for sending urls to articles from web browsers and prefer kde3's event alerts (in case evolution is not running). I am not alone in the way I use different programs. Since I am running mandrake as a terminal server I get to watch how others also use it and notice some of the same behavior patterns, esp with web browsers. Since most web sites cater to ie, every linux browser will be hit and miss depending on the site. This is why I believe that unified bookmarks/preferences will help make mandrake much more user friendly on the desktop, and also give you a leg up on all other desktop OS's (including windows.... currently at the office there are huge battles between word and wordperfect users. Wordperfect is very buggy but people refuse to leave it because Word is not setup the way they like it.) > > -- > Martin Mačok http://underground.cz/ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://Xtrmntr.org/ORBman/ -- SI Reasoning [EMAIL PROTECTED] gpg public key ftp://ftp.p-p-i.com/pub/si-mindspring-pubkey.asc "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country.... Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed." -Abraham Lincoln
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