Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-factory (485 mails)

[C <smaug42@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 14:48, Vincent Untz wrote:
> > > All this because someone thought that gnome users would be confused if
> > > touchpad tap worked in the installer and no longer worked once Gnome
> > > was up and running (it's off by default in Gnome, and Gnome provides
> > > easy GUI to turn it on/off.. .KDE4 does not). :-(
> > >
> > > Sigh.
> >
> > Yes, that's what we call consistency in user experience.
>
> Just to clarify: I'm not being ironic here. The tap-to-click setting
> should be the same everywhere by default. It might seem like a little
> detail, but that matters a lot in the impression people get.
>
> I happen to agree that disabled by default makes more sense for many
> users, btw.
>
> (sorry for not being more explicit in my first mail)


But.. isn't that backwards?  You're saying it's a consistent user
experience for a user to come from another OS (be it WIndows, OSX etc)
where touchpad tap is enabled by default... to one where it's now
disabled?. That's not a consistent user experience at all.  The only
thing consistent is that KDE4 now follows Gnome's non-standard
default.

Every single new-to-Linux user (regardless of selecting KDE4 or Gnome
as their DE) I help with openSUSE, who uses it on a laptop has asked
me what was wrong with their touchpad after installing openSUSE, and
then when I told it it was disabled to make it consistent... they
immediately want to know how to turn it back on.

New users, and users used to using the other major OSes expect this
behavior form the touchpad... and are left wondering what went
wrong.... especially since KDE4 does not provide a GUI toggle to
re-enable the expected behavior.

You're right, a lot matters in the little details, and this is one of
those details that has bitten me several times.

Personally I'm on the fence whether I want it enabled or not.  i can
use it either way... but I think we set the default the wrong way in
this case.... and I also think that not including kcm_touchpad in the
default install is a bit of an ooops.

C.
-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx