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List:       kfm-devel
Subject:    Using KDE in corporate environment - Queries and suggestions
From:       biswapesh.chattopadhyay () bt ! com
Date:       2001-03-12 17:37:25
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Hi all

First, sorry for the cross-post. I wanted to write a generic feedback and
since it touches upon quite a few things, I was not sure where to post, so
I'm playing it safe. Please feel free to correct me if I'm abusing the
list(s).

A bit of background. I'm using KDE (2.1 final) in a Linux Mandrake 7.2 /
WinNT 4.0 SP 6 (Corporate standard :-()  dual boot system. My company has
standardized on Netware for file/print, Outlook/Exchange for mails, IE/NS4.x
as browser, etc. My PC is a PIII 600 with 256 MB RAM and 10 GB Harddisk.

First of all, great job ! I'm amazed at the level of polish KDE2 shows right
now and the pace at which it seems to be maturing (I upgraded from 1.99
supplied with LM 7.2 -> 2.0.1 -> 2.1 beta2 -> 2.1 final). Count me in as
another perfectly happy user.

Now for the points (in no particular order)

1. Fonts. This is probably distribution-specific but is it possible to have
a kde-fonts package which will select the best-of-breed of the available
free fonts and fine-tune the desktop themes based on these ? It makes a
major impact on the 'feel' of the desktop. I imported my Windows fonts and
set the theme to a mostly Verdana based one and the improvement is really
remarkable. Also, in this respect, does anyone have any idea regarding the
license of MS fonts ? Are they redistributable ? I thought the downloadable
core web fonts were ? Another idea might be fo check if the user has a
'Windows/fonts' or 'WINNT/fonts' directory while starting KDE for the first
time and automatically importing them.

2. SMB browsing. Again, this is probably distribution specific as well but
why isn't kio_lan built by default ? I'm still unable to get SAMBA browsing
to work with Konqueror inspite of the (much appreciated) help from AlexX,
probably because there is no LISA support (?). The bothersome thing is that
the error message is not very expilcit (asks me to configure LAN Browsing
which I've already done !). It would be nice to have a menu in the Control
Center called 'Check Installation' which would tell you about the missing
pieces, preferably with hints on how to resolve it (for example, a typical
output might look like:

a) Missing OpenSSL - You won't be able to use https sites
b) Missing kio_lan/kio_smb - You won't be able to browse network
neighbourhood
c) Unable to locate Netscape Plugins - Flash probably won't work
d) Unable to locate JRE - Java won't work
)

Basically, somewhat like what KDevelop shows the first time you run it. It
might solve 90% of people's problems.

Also, it might be helpful if the ioslaves could be downloaded independently
(for the common architecture-OS combinations, say Linux-glibc). It would
become easier for people to get the missing ones.

3. Printing. There doesn't seem to be a straight-forward way to get printing
to work, and be consistent across applications. Also, there doesn't seem to
be any plan for integrating netware printing (netware is pretty common in
corporate environments for file and print services). Talking of netware, it
might be an idea to wrap the netware functions like login, getting shares,
sending print requests etc as an option. It should be trivial since the
command line client already exists (the ncpfs RPM is avaibale for linux at
least, and probably for other OS's as well I guess. Also, is there any plan
to support sending print requests to Netware shares in the upcoming new
printing architecture ? It woould be nice if one could enter something like
'Enter command line for sending requests where '%s' is the file name, so I
could write something like:
'nprint -S XXX -U XXX -P xxx %s' and all KDE apps will use that as default.

4. Netscape Plugins. OK, this is probably just a silly bug-report but I
might as well add it here. Netscape plugins (specfically, shockwave) doesn't
work in Konqueror. It works perfectly from Netscape. And yes, I've checked
for lesstif install, deleted all plugins from the config and re-run 'Scan'
just to make sure and more-or-less done everything written in the
documentation. I've also upgraded to the latest shockwave/flash plugin from
Macromedia. Does anyone have a working installation with 2.1 + Flash ? In
this context, to add to point (2), it would be nice if the Control Center
had a 'Test' menu which would test whether the stuff that depend on external
dependencies actually work or not, even if the dependencies exist. Is this
non-trivial ?

5. Java. There are two points really. First, there is a really nice
Konqueror-JAVA FAQ on the Konqueror web site. Strangely, I didn't seem to
find it in my KDE Help. It might be a good idea to compile these HOWTO's
into a kde-help package and offer it as an optional add-on. Secondly, quite
a few Java2 applets still don't work (just browsing through Sun's Java2
example applets should be a good demonstration of the fact). It might be a
good idea to add some of these pages as part of a test-suite for java. Does
such a thing already exist ? If so, I can add a few pages to it if someone
is interested.

6. Mail. OK, this is a lame one since probably you can't do anything abouut
it, but has anyone had any success talking Exchange's proprietory protocol
through ANY mail client ? This is the one major thing that forces me to
switch back into NT every two hours or so. Also, how difficult would it be
to get KMail to access mails automatically from the standard internet mail
systems like Yahoo & Hotmail ? It would really be a killer feature ! It
would need some tricky scripting and of course, someone would have to
actively maintain the stuff so that changes in the website are incorporated
but it might be worth the effort if the current KMail architecture supports
it.

That's all I can think of for now. I hope I haven't raised any hackles. The
only thing I want to add is that I am very keen on getting Linux + KDE to be
a *real* substitute for NT in a corporate framework and though I'm not a C++
coder, I'll be more than happy to do my bit (testing, documentation, etc.)
if someone is interested in going for any of the above.

Thanks and regards.
Biswa.

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