Talk:YaST/Development/UI Future

From openSUSE

Hello,

Good idea to open this page. Some essential though, for the beginning: It's essential to keep the ncurse UI with complete functionality. openSUSE is probably the only distribution giving an intelligent complete interface, very pleasant through ssh and low bandwith connection.

second, YaST is two parts: first time install and system configuration. help is important at install time, but _on paper_ we _must_ keep YaST small to be able to install on oldfashionned hardware with minimal ram (for example). 10 years old computers are today perfectly usable and used even in our countries by money disabled people, very interested by the freeness of Linux.

third, I personnally think the way YaST is showing the config at install time is must better than the way it shows it at system config time. I speak of the summary page with all the components in a window with links (and the "change" box at bottom)

fourth, the YaST control center is un-consistent at least for the network devices. Why are them separated from the other hardware?

fith, the most ennoying YaST lack is the systematic failing of network detect for the printers. I think I have never seen YaST detect an existing printer on my Linux+Windows net (I have from one to three printers available, depending on the period), and the wording is very difficult to understand (I know of "samba" protocol, not about the others)

thanks jdd 05:08, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

I remember when they did changes to YAST in 10.1 and it created a living nightmare for users. I for sure hope this time any changes are thoroughly tested before making any changes. I had a lot of email exchanges with Andreas back then. When things work right do not fix them. One has to remember auto configs do not work for everyone and while ease of use is nice it could also lead to major headaches. They took a workable program manager and completely made it a living hell. I do admit YAST is drab and has no eye candy but eye candy does not get the job done. What I am getting at is do we want resource hogs or a YAST that slows down because we want to see colors and eye candy. Presently i am testing some of the errors I see using YAST. What I would love to see in YAST or somewhere is a kill for programs that are running like on SLED where I can click on MyComputer and it brings up what is running or in sleep without me going through all sorts of steps in SuSe. As far as printers that is a CUPS function and you should be able to config network printers there. I running a Canon PIXMA on network with no problem even using a network scanner but I had to go off SuSe to get the set up and drivers.