[belenix-dev] First mail: Add Sabayon like live-help to BeleniX Desktop

[Anil Gulecha]

Very cool enhancements. My thoughts inline.

On 3/18/08, Ananth Shrinivas <ananth.shrinivas at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Any other desktop enhancements people have in mind?
> >
> >
>
> * TastyMenu [1] as a replacement for the KDE Menu in the default panel
> configuration. I have already committed the spec file into SFE.

It looks good, but how intuitive is it. The Current menu will be very
familiar to Windows users. If you've used it, can you you coment hom
how it has made things easy for you?

>   (Tried KBFX too - but found it way too buggy - crashes kicker every once
> in a while)
>
> * Managed to port ksmoothdock [2] too. But it looks slightly unpolished to
> me. Any second opinions ?
>
I like it. I think we should use this for that fresh new look.

> * The wonderful KDM as the Login Manager - Moinak already has the SMF
> manifests ready I think.
>
> * Modify Firefox widgets to look like KDE widgets [3]

Yes! Another area we _need_ to improve is the default fonts. They
plain suck, atleast in firefox.I'm not sure if this involves adding
new fonts, or changing settings somewhere.

>
> Other possibilities:
>
> * Apply some uniform theming to major KDE apps like Kopete, Amarok, K3B, ...
> ?
>
> * BeleniX themed KSplash, KDM and background logos ?
Yes!
>
> * I tend to use -B graphics=console for the graphical genunix boot. Needs
> zero boot-archive changes (only grub changes). Maybe we could try setting
> this as the default GRUB entry and also have a non-graphical entry for
> debugging failures ?
>
Yes! But Belenix prompts a couple of times during bootup.. can the
graphical bootup handle this?

Another enhancement I've been talking about with Moiank is how we can
remove user interaction with (a majority of) users during bootup.

*Grub can be set to a 3 second timeout, defaulting to first entry.
*Keyboard selects US-English by default, with 3 second timeout for the user.
*Desktop goes to KDE, 3 second timeout.
*3 second timeout to enter the x configuration menu.

Thus a user only has to pop in the CD and boot off it, go have a cuppa
coffee, and return to a full fledged desktop.

> All said and done, the one application I really miss on my current SXDE/KDE
> laptop is a Network Manager (including wireless networks) that is better
> than Inetmenu. The NWAM project plans to integrate an admin GUI in b90 but
> thats GTK+ and unless gnome-settings-daemon is running, GNOME apps look like
> ugly bitches on KDE.

KDE has its own network manager, but the last i checked, it complained
"distro unknown", and asked me to select from a list of linux distros.
Anyone know if we can add belenix to it?

Anil