Title: What is missing in the Debian desktop, or why my parents use Kubuntu
Tags: english, debian, multimedia, web
Date: 2011-07-29 08:10

<p>While at Debconf11, I have several times during discussions
mentioned the issues I believe should be improved in Debian for its
desktop to be useful for more people.  The use case for this is my
parents, which are currently running Kubuntu which solve the
issues.</p>

<p>I suspect these four missing features are not very hard to
implement.  After all, they are present in Ubuntu, so if we wanted to
do this in Debian we would have a source.</p>

<ol>

<li><strong>Simple GUI based upgrade of packages.</strong> When there
are new packages available for upgrades, a icon in the KDE status bar
indicate this, and clicking on it will activate the simple upgrade
tool to handle it.  I have no problem guiding both of my parents
through the process over the phone.  If a kernel reboot is required,
this too is indicated by the status bars and the upgrade tool.  Last
time I checked, nothing with the same features was working in KDE in
Debian.</li>

<li><strong>Simple handling of missing Firefox browser
plugins.</strong> When the browser encounter a MIME type it do not
currently have a handler for, it will ask the user if the system
should search for a package that would add support for this MIME type,
and if the user say yes, the APT sources will be searched for packages
advertising the MIME type in their control file (visible in the
Packages file in the APT archive).  If one or more packages are found,
it is a simple click of the mouse to add support for the missing mime
type.  If the package require the user to accept some non-free
license, this is explained to the user.  The entire process make it
more clear to the user why something do not work in the browser, and
make the chances higher for the user to blame the web page authors and
not the browser for any missing features.</li>

<li><strong>Simple handling of missing multimedia codec/format
handlers.</strong> When the media players encounter a format or codec
it is not supporting, a dialog pop up asking the user if the system
should search for a package that would add support for it.  This
happen with things like MP3, Windows Media or H.264.  The selection
and installation procedure is very similar to the Firefox browser
plugin handling.  This is as far as I know implemented using a
gstreamer hook.  The end result is that the user easily get access to
the codecs that are present from the APT archives available, while
explaining more on why a given format is unsupported by Ubuntu.</li>

<li><strong>Better browser handling of some MIME types.</strong> When
displaying a text/plain file in my Debian browser, it will propose to
start emacs to show it.  If I remember correctly, when doing the same
in Kunbutu it show the file as a text file in the browser.  At least I
know Opera will show text files within the browser.  I much prefer the
latter behaviour.</li>

</ol> 

<p>There are other nice features as well, like the simplified suite
upgrader, but given that I am the one mostly doing the dist-upgrade,
it do not matter much.</p>

<p>I really hope we could get these features in place for the next
Debian release.  It would require the coordinated effort of several
maintainers, but would make the end user experience a lot better.</p>