openSUSE:KDE ideas
Basics
Branding
- Create/modify splash screens to match SUSE or disable them (Amarok, digiKam, showFoto).
- Branding for Konqueror man page viewer.
Configuration
- Enable subpixel rendering by default https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=677417
- KDE native printer config https://features.opensuse.org/308045
- Default assignments for multimedia keys - play/pause, e-mail, www, favourites, media http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=524734
- Replace "Show Dashboard" widget by "Show Desktop" widget in the panel, I understand, the "Show Desktop" is more useful.
Plasma Netbook
- Add the lock/log out widget to the panel by default, people can't figure out howto logout/shutdown from the netbook shell. (cb400f)
- Add a good selection of default "favourites" (e.g. konsole, dolphin, kontact, systemsettings, firefox, oowriter, amarok, kaffeine). (cb400f)
- Review the default widgets. Knowledge base, OpenDesktop etc. are too KDE-fanboyish, and tend to be annoying because of being useless without authentification. (cb400f)
- Ship Aurélien Gâteau's plasma-widget-menubar. Widget — Required patches for Qt (kmi)
Web Browser
- Use Rekonq as the default web browser. Chakra and Kubuntu 10.10 adopted it with great success.
The feature matrix below focuses mainly on KDE-related features. For a full feature set (incl. supported web technologies) see Comparison of web browsers on Wikipedia.
Pros and Cons of using Rekonq
Pros
- Fully integrated into KDE’s Workspaces (Themes, KWallet, Bookmarks,...)
- Nightly builds (from KDE:/Unstable/Playground) are already rock solid
- Porting Firefox-KDE extension to FF unneeded.
- Faster JavaScript execution than FF [1]
- Fits better into the Netbook edition
- Saves live CD space compared to FF
- Ad Block, Click to execute Flash, and Web Inspector features are built into Rekonq without any need to fiddle with FF Extensions.
Cons
- Konqueror package needs to be split in order to outsource certain Rekonq-required components without installing all of Konqueror
- Make sure QtWebKit’s HTML5 audio and video tags work
- Some web pages are not still well rendered by Webkit engine, some plugins loading may fail in some pages: flash, java...
| Rendering Engine | Uses KDE Theme | Uses KDE's Open/Save Windows | Uses KDE's Notifications | Uses KDE's Bookmarks | Uses KDE's Cookie Manager | Uses KWallet to Save Passwords | |
| Firefox | Gecko | Yes / It does via kcm_gtk wrapper with themes Oxygen-molecule or QtCurve | Yes | Yes | No | No | No / Extension in development [2] [3] |
| Arora | WebKit | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
| Chromium | WebKit | Yes (widgets) / No (window decoration) | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Rekonq | WebKit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Konqueror | KHTML | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Konqueror | WebKit KPart | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Webbrowser media player plugin
Look into shipping a media player plugin by default - kaffeine-mozilla or VLC? MediaPlayerConnectivity? KMPlayer (using Phonon) for Konq? gecko-mediaplayer (implement its D-BUS API in Dragon Player?)?
netscape-plugin for kparts
In case openSUSE does not have a default kparts-capable browser we could add a Kparts Plugin as default. It currently lives in Playground (done by tittiacoke)
PulseAudio
Ship VeroMix (and possibly use) by default [4]
New Packages to Include
- Phonon-vlc + as much of VLC as legally possible (cb400f) (performance discussion on Talk page)
- Kamoso - if the vlc requirements can be fulfilled (cb400f)
- Evaluate KBackup, LuckyBackup (other candidates?) for inclusion in the distro - maybe even default install if possible (cb400f)
- knights - you gotta have a chess game (cb400f)
- soundkonverter 1.0 - New KDE4 replacement of the old KDE3 version.
- kgmailnotifier - A easy and useful tool for people who just use the GMail webmail.
- Preview plugin for ODF files bnc688025
- Calligra
- Apper to replace/succeed KPackageKit?
- Telepathy-kde (first official release in parallel with SC 4.7)
Single Features
- Security Status plasmoid
- Firewall status
- AppArmor notifications
- Anti Virus
- Right click Image file -> Set as Wallpaper
- Samba sharing via right click context menus
- Ask for confirmation when removing FolderView widget - or maybe lock widgets by default - a lot of people seem to remove the folderview widget by accident and can't figure out how to get it back.
- sysinfo:/ and widget raid support
- Create an easy way to create desktop/panel shortcuts for items that don't exist in the KDE menu. KDE bug #170138
- Bring back the KMenu app search text box from openSUSE KDE 3.5
- Bring back Kickoff's ability to do simple math operations
- Disable the screensaver when watching movies on Kaffeine, Flash player, etc
- Make sysinfo:/ to open links to locations on Dolphin, or at least, with Konqueror in File Management view profile.
Packaging Issues
Porting States
Removals
- Maybe remove KsCD from default installation since Amarok and Kaffeine play audio CDs too. (avoid "bloat")
- (−) Neither Amarok nor Kaffeine can manage track names, while KsCD theoretically can. Moreover, Amarok plays CD audio by ripping it, which requires much time and space.
- Maybe remove xsane from default installation, skanlite is also installed. (avoid "bloat")
- Drop NetworkManager-kde4 to avoid confusion with plasmoid-networkmanagement
Important Yet Non-Critical Bugs
- YaST and root user KDE apps don't use Oxygen style https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=656144
Other Teams
- Polish YaST Qt Control Center – e.g. hide or dim modules of non-selected categories, add a bit more space between modules, use a bigger font for module descriptions, etc. (cb400f)