On Friday 07 December 2007 14:50, Lukas Ocilka wrote:
The idea is to create a new Pattern Selector in the Installation :)
Why? In what way did the requirements change from not so long ago when we made the current pattern selector (after extensive talks with product and project managers and usability)? And if we want a change there, why not do it at the place where it makes sense: At the dedicated PatternSelector widget that we have for just this purpose?
This Pattern Selector (or rather Software/Task Selector) could replace and unify more dialogs in one:
* Unify with Standard Pattern selector in detailed software selection
Write something different that does less than the existing version and then unify that new different thing with the existing one does not make very much sense to me.
* Unify with Desktop Selection dialog (needs a face-lifting)
I don't see very many things in common with the desktop selection. Unless, of course, we strip all kinds of features from the pattern selector to make it as simplistic as the desktop selection. The pattern selector lets the user choose any number of software patterns. Some of them may have dependencies to other patterns. Some of them may even conflict with other patterns. Dependency resolution is required here. The desktop selection lets the user choose a main (!) desktop. The main purpose of this is to know what display manager (KDM, GDM, XDM, none) to use. The question by itself should not be there in the first place; we all know that the background were mostly to avoid trench wars between the hardcore KDE and GNOME advocats. At this place during installation, there is no reasonable way a (novice) user can answer the question in any informed manner; he has to make a choice mostly based on gut feelings. But since all that is a bit too complicated to confront the user with during installation, we chose to call it "desktop selection". In truth, it's more complicated, and we might want to ask the user differently, maybe like this: Select Desktops [ ] GNOME [ ] KDE Select Graphical Login Manager ( ) GNOME (GDM) ( ) KDE (KDM) ( ) Basic X11 (XDM) ( ) No Graphical Login This would be a lot closer to the truth. In fact, all we ask now is the second question, but many users are not aware of that; it's not at all that obvious. There are a great many users out there who don't even know that a GNOME application will also run on KDE and vice versa (just listen in to the freenode #suse IRC channel). And there are even more who don't know that you can install both major desktops in parallel, even though you have to choose one login manager. If we want any change in the desktop selection (and IMHO it would deserve a change to the better), we should go this way rather than try to unify things that really are different.
* Add new High-level Software/Task Selector that would solve software selection from the user's view: I want to use Internet, Do some office work, Graphics...
That's the idea behind patterns. If our current patterns don't allow users to
do that, we should rethink if the way we use them is right.
CU
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Stefan Hundhammer