[Panel-devel] The future desktop and the usability

[Francisco Joaquín Rodríguez Prados]

First I would like to wave hello to everybody on this list and
introduce myself. My name is Fran Rodríguez, and I'm finishing my
degree in informatics in Darmstadt, Germany. I have been using Kubuntu
since a pair of months, and I discovered the KDE world just a little
time before using this distribution (SuSE running a Window Maker
desktop before).

On the sencond place I would like to apologize, because I don't know
if this is the right place to drop this lines which came to my mind
when I knew about the Plasma project. It seemed to be the right place,
though (as Plasma claims to reinvent the desktop) - but there you go,
anyway.

Lately I have been a little bit concerned about the usability. In
fact, this excitement I feel about KDE right now comes from the
direction that KDE is taking. I have read the KDE design guidelines
and I have observed rising projects like Plasma, and I really like the
plans for the future. It seems that now someone is thinking in the
user, in the interface between machine and human; that someone is
trying to remove that old stereotype that the linux projects are all
complicated and unusable. I think redesigning the desktop concept is a
big step towards an uniform operative system, and that's why I think a
project like plasma is so important.

I have some doubts (or suggestions, it depends on how many lines have
been already written about this) concerning two points of the desktop:
the KDE menu and the system notifications.

Concerning the KDE menu, I have always thought it is way too crowd and
untidy. No matter how you try to order it, it will keep on being
complicated, anyway (it seems the Kubuntu guys reduced the number of
subfolders, but I still find hard to find Amarok sometimes). Then I
saw the application launcher that comes with Baghira, and I was simply
stunned. I had never worked with a Mac, so I had never seen a
search-oriented launcher. The question is, will this application
launcher replace the Kmenu?