mousematt

DarkElve: your wish is my command. I have added a poll to this thread. Please vote in this poll. I'll be interested to see what Widget wins.

What widget style is your default desktop? Please participate in this poll and then join MandrakeMag's Discussion About The Defaultt Mandrakelinux Desktop How can we make every user's first impression of a Mandrake KDE desktop even better? What do we need to add, remove, change, resize, recolor or rename? I am collecting data from this thread and preparing a single proposal document for the Mandrakesoft Interface team to consider. I need your input!

artic: I like where galaxy3 is going: although it does look a lot like the crux theme for Gnome. How does it look with the Galaxy widget set alongside it? I see you've used baghira in all of your mockups.

Here is my latest mockup of a new default Mandrake desktop. I have based this on the excellent suggestions from many on this board and added a little Mandrake identity. To be a bit different from Windows, Mac and SUSE; I have arranged the desktop icons horizontally and followed the GNOME HIG and named applications for their function rather than their application name. I have rearranged the default bookmarks in the filemanager and customised them so that they are more distinctive. In the kicker; I have added a "Productivity Applications" sub-menu and included some of the productivity apps I would consider essential. I have also given them human names rather than application names. In the system tray, I have preloaded SMB4K (the KDE Samba Networking Tool): this allows for dynamic access to windows shares. This will probably be standard in 10.1 anyway. I have also used arctic's excellent Mandrake Galaxy background. Please note: I have hidden the text which reads "Welcome and explore the". This text is a great idea except Mandrakelinux is used in a multitude of languages. This text will make almost no sense to a non-english speaker and will quickly get removed from a french, russian, vietnamese or arabic desktop. I think this wallpaper would be even better if it just said "Mandrakelinux Galaxy" I'd still like to add KControl to the desktop (as Configure Desktop) and use a different window decoration. What do you all think? Is this a reasonable suggestion? What do I need to change? How can I make this more "unique" and more Mandrake??? Forgive the jpeg compression. I like to be nice to those without broadband.

I think this is a bit harsh. Thememdk (Galaxy) is a little less refined than Bluecurve or ThinKeramik but I would not call it unusable. I agree with your other points - and I agree there is a lot of room for improvement; but I actually prefer the understated style of Galaxy: it's very Mandrake - if that makes any sense. In the past ten days or so this thread has reallyt hrown up some fascinating ideas and I am convinced it will continue to do so. I have taken lots of notes and will present my first mock-up based on this thread tomorrow evening (AWST). I welcome your comments them. Please keep the excellent work. Mandrakesoft watch this space.

What is better about the classic galaxy layout when it is compared to Galaxy II. What needs to be improved and why? Thanks for the wallpaper btw.

I don't think it is possible arctic - without changing KDE itself. My own pager has preview disabled and does not display workspace names or numbers: but it still isn't flat like GNOME or XFCE. I'm not sure it is possible. Expect a new design for my Mandrake business desktop later this evening. *Back to study*

Absolutely right. This is why MandrakeMag started this thread and why a lot of people seem to be so passionate about it. There's a big discussion about Galaxy and what it means for Mandrakesoft. Did anyone know that it was designed by Everaldo? The creator of the Crystal iconset? I did some googling and found this original version of the Mandrake Galaxy concept. It clearly shows what Mandrakesoft originally wanted. What does everybody think? Is the current desktop there yet? Everaldo's Original Galaxy Concept Piece

*Looks at DarkElve's and artic's new mockups - compares to Mandrake's original...* Now we're really getting somewhere - more importantly - we are justifying these changes step by step. Arctic could I please have a copy of your Galaxy Wallpaper; I'd like to base my next business desktop design example on your current set up.

Why Kate on the desktop? I thought for most professionals it was little more than a basic text editor - that could be used by a select few as an IDE. Great ideas though!

Have you considered installing X.org from the 10.1 beta or from Cooker. It is effectively a development beyond XFree86 4.4 and will be included in 10.1

You can also install Firefox 0.9.3 via URPMI. If you surf to http://mandrakemag.tux.com.au/ you'll find a step-by-step tutorial in the current issue. It's all there. Forgive the plug, consider the suggestion :-)

Browsing: Opera 7.54 and Firefox 0.9.3 Email: Kontact and Thunderbird (for MandrakeMag stuff)

You need to post your screenshots in the Art and Design section and link them back to this thread.

This thread should not denegrate into GNOME vs KDE simply because we are talking about reconfiguring Mandrake's default desktop. Mandrake is a KDE distro by default. Their default desktop is KDE. Our challenge is to suggest practical ways the default KDE desktop can be improved. To that end: what apps should be included on a default desktop? I'll comment on this myself shortly. Do all the OpenOffice apps belong or just writer etc?

Great point Gowator: choice is wonderful. Although, in a lot of cases choice is ignored. I'd love to do a blind test: take 20 people and show them 20 out of the box desktops excluding XP and OS X. Which one do you think they'd pick? Does Mandrake compete well with Lycoris, Xandros, Linspire, Red Hat or SUSE? What do you think SUSE does thats better than Mandrake? What's different?

Trawling the web for other default examples. This one is a little different - its from ION Linux - a rework of Xandros sold exclusively by Element Computer. ION Linux Default Desktop What do you all think? Strengths and Weaknesses everyone!

The big question is: should this folder be here by default? Is an obvious "tmp" directory an example of good interface design and user friendliness? Or is it an ugly reminder of what's under the hood? In a better default desktop - is this folder here?

The multimedia icon in kicker is for a media player of some form. On my desktop its for XMMS. But it could point to Juk, Amarok, KsCD or Noatun. A lot of people seem to play CDs at the accounting firm where I work :)

Galaxies for Mandrake Galaxy : exactly! :-) That was the idea, this isn't a final suggestion... I am trying to find a lower key example. We, individuals, have licensing issues for that wallpaper. However, in a reasonable world, Mandrakesoft could license something similar or develop something in-house. I get the feeling many an artist would be very happy for some free publicity from a major distro like Mandrakelinux. I doubt Greg Martin would appreciate it though: he works for Microsoft :-) I also think its a good idea to make the desktop icon labels larger and bold. My own informal studies of desktop computers and senior citizens suggest bolder is better...

There are some great ideas in this thread I've just uploaded my first mock-up of a revised desktop. I've followed a number of arctic and DarkElve's suggestions. It's available for viewing here I've changed the toolbar layout in konqueror so it is more intuitive and less cluttered. I'm still using the Galaxy Square decoration. I agree the Plastik design is very user friendly: but Xandros, Lycoris and Linspire (development edition) all agree too! A Mandrake desktop needs to be unique as well as exceptional IMHO. I have used an "out of this world" desktop rather than a more normal plain blue default. SUSE and Microsoft both ship desktops with pictures of green fields and mountain streams. I think desktops need to be more than just blue... this might be a good way to be "different". Let's keep this thread going... some great ideas certainly live here.

My first contribution to the default desktop thread.

Excellent point. If I can think of a way to show both the right click and the Mandrake menu at once... I'll happilly change the pic.

I post this thread and go out to dinner... it's amazing what can happen in a few hours. This is my first contribution - of many - to this discussion. Three of my gripes about this default setup: (1) All of the icons seem way too small - the desktop icons seem friendlier at 48 pixels and the kicker panel is reasonably hard to read at this size. (2) The default konqueror setup has two very ugly components. The first is the very out of place Konqueror "activity indicator" that looks tacky when compared to the low key, "native" versions in Fedora Core and Xandros. (3) Why does the home folder have to have the tmp directory in it? Does this folder seem necessary - and whats to tell a user that removing it is not a good idea? Also, wouldn't it be wise to add a few more folders in the Home directory: say Downloads, Pictures, Music etc... Keep this great thread going... and read MandrakeMag :-)

MandrakeMag's discussion about the Mandrake Default Desktop To coincide with Mandrakesoft's ergonomics and usability survey, MandrakeMag encourages the Mandrakelinux community to discuss Mandrakelinux 10.0 and its "out-of-the-box" KDE desktop experience. :D First impressions matter. As Mandrakelinux marches towards the home, university and corporate desktop, it is important to take the time and make sure it looks and feels suitable for all users. Whilst most home desktop users appear to change their desktop wallpaper as often as their socks - a lot of corporations, schools and universities seem to stick with what comes straight out-of-the-box. My own institution - Murdoch University - in West Australia operates a number of Red Hat laboratories; all with stock-standard RedHat 9 Bluecurve desktops Please consider the default, blue, out-of-the-box, Mandrakelinux KDE desktop. If you've forgotten what it looks like then click here. Is it the most attractive or user friendly desktop you've ever seen? How could it be improved? What do you think needs changing, resizing or renaming? I'm starting this thread because I'd like to see what other people think of the default desktop experience. I encourage everyone on this board and all MandrakeMag subscribers to take part in this thread. I then plan to collect the comments from this thread and prepare a single document for the Mandrakesoft Interface team to consider. How can we make every user's first impression of a Mandrake KDE desktop even better? What do we need to add, remove, change, resize, recolor or rename? Share your thoughts please