Experiences with KDE-CVS at LinuxWorldExpo

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Hi,

some of you might be interested to hear a few remarks about our
presentation at LWE in Frankfurt this week.

I'll suppress my temptation to complain about an extremely bad,
incomplete and unstable KDE installation on our presentation boxes.
Most visitors didn't notice it (because we worked around the fact
-- but the people sacrificing their free time to try and show KDE
in the best light were very frustrated...).

Two items will get mentioned in this mail:

  * the need (and "market") for a desktop configuration that
    satisfies the rollout of 1000s of machines within a short
    period

  * the reception which the new default eye-candy icons for the
    upcoming 3.1 release got from the audience.


-----
* 1 *
-----
There were quite some very interesting visitors, representing
government bodies, enterprises, small to medium companies, insurances
and banks, seriously looking into the options to go from MS Windows
to a different OS for their desktops. In some cases this would
mean to deploy literally thousands of machines within a few weeks!

Clearly KDE currently isn't ready for the task. Or, maybe *I* am not.
I know there was (is?) this project group working on a "kiosk" mode.
I am not aware about their latest status. Maybe someone can point
me to a website and name people who are experts in this. But there
clearly was not much expertise on this subject amongst the KDE
developers and KDE power users present in our team at LWE. I think
for anybody who wants the advance of KDE on the Linux/Unix desktop
this is one of the key technologies we need. (It might not be the
most fun to hack on this stuff for most developers).

* KDE needs to have an easy to configure desktop in "kiosk" mode.
* KDE needs to have an interface to draw the user configuration
   for each user from a database (where each single application
   allowed or denied for a user is defined).
* KDE needs utilities which make it easy for an administrator to
   configure, roll out and run 1000 user desktops (a "lost" configuration
   must be restored within a minute or less).
* KDE need at the same time to retain the flexibility to have all
   these 1000 settings different (for different needs).
* KDE needs to be able to serve the same user profile to a users
   wherever he logs in (a different physical machine, but the same
   desktop and user profile).

When 3.1 is out of the door, I will probably make an attempt to
get this issue tackled by a group of people.


-----
* 2 *
-----
Most people immediately liked the new keramik and svg-icon look
and feel. Most were extremely pleased by seeing the "tabbed browsing"
options in konqueror.

However, I made my little "study" about usability. It only included
the icons visible on kicker and of some of the more common apps (if
they are minimized). I let people "play" with the desktop for a few
minutes and asked for their comments. It was a very clear picture
which came out:

* the many blue colors in the icons make them look too similar.
* people didn't like the all-in-blue icon for "home" at all (it
   also turns round if zoomed by 180 degrees which they regard as
   a bug).
* if konsole, konq (web browser), konq (file browser) and kcontrol
   were open at the same time, no-one was able to find their minimized
   icons in the kicker without heavy delay.
* even 5 minutes of "exercising" didn't help -- people often had to
   hoover the mouse over the icons to wait for the tooltips to pop
   up before they decided to click, or they often maximized the wrong
   window
* I asked a few people (from whom I knew are using KDE for years) to
   pen konsole, kcontrol and konqueror. Most did by using minicli and
   typing in the commands. However, when they were asked to maximize
   again they were stunned: they  were all looking for a "black icon"
   for konsole and a "green icon"...

I think this experience clearly shows there is a heavy need to change
these icons back to something more colorful, more distinguished. Nice
art doesn't automatically mean good usability at all. The current
state is a heavy retraction in terms of usability. kicker icons and
the minimized window icons are the most often looked for icons of the
desktop. If these are looking too similar, it only confuses people.
(And it also confuses KDE presentators and creates a very amateurish
impression in front of an audience which witnesses the guy up there
clicking too often on the wrong button...  ;-)

I hope you will consider this and change it before the 3.1 release...

Cheers,
Kurt