Monday, September 14, 2009

KDE Showcase

This week there is the openSUSE Conference in Nuremberg. There is a lot of activity planned, and as there will be quite some people there from both the KDE and openSUSE communities, I thought it would be a good idea to use that opportunity to work on a project I always wanted to spend some time on: Creating a KDE Showcase.

The idea is to create a live system, which shows KDE as it's meant to be. Based on openSUSE, but with plain upstream KDE packages, augmented with some demo data and configuration, this system can be used to show KDE at trade shows, be given to users as a teaser, provide a reference for press people looking at KDE, and lot of other cases, where you want to show KDE in all its glory.

A couple of years ago I made a screenshot for a contest showing KDE 3.1.5 in action:


This screenshot was a success, and won me a price., Now, five years later, I would like to do it again with current technology. Not only doing a screenshot, but a whole live system, and of course with the latest KDE 4.3.1.

We'll have a small team at the conference, which will work on creating KDE Showcase. If you would like to join the fun, there is a session on Thursday afternoon as part of the unconference. Or just contact me directly. Ideas and other input are more than welcome. We'll collect what we are doing at the KDE Showcase wiki page.

5 comments:

  1. KDE sure has come a long way in 5 years. I would suggest the following:

    In general:
    - Focus on ease of use, features hardly impress anymore
    - Do not clutter the interface with lots of windows and plasmoids. Really don't

    Highlight the following:
    - the panel's flexibility (mine only covers part of the title bar of the windows)
    - Dolphin interface with split pane, scalable previews and breadcrumb navigation
    - KDE settings window (very uniform and clear)
    - Multiple desktops (limited number: 3 makes sense)
    - Web / social features
    - Limited number of applications (Kontact, Amarok, ...)

    Do NOT do any of the following
    - stick virtual post-its all over the desktop (do not do that in real life either)
    - Use a skin with a lot of transparancy or darkness.
    - Try and explain Nepomuk (although I love the idea, it is too abstract now IMHO)

    Good luck.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Could you make some kind of a "showcase" plasmoid? That would benefit all future KDE users. Like a start menu with some 5-10 nice features. Clicking them would start a short video:
    - add plasmoids
    - use multiple dektops
    - launch applications
    - install applications
    - use desktop effects
    - get help
    - contact other users / friends
    - ...

    [One important highlight is missing in the previous post: presenting windows and applications with Kwin]

    ReplyDelete
  3. Compile nepomuk-kde from playground and start showing off the peopletag in your photos...

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think stephan binner is doing this. Get in contact with him

    ReplyDelete
  5. @josericardo I am in contact with Stephan. It's a bit different what he is doing. We do share most of the infrastructure, though.

    ReplyDelete

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