I ran the full-upgrade to Etiona from Flidas (keeping in mind this was a
fresh install of Flidas). So far, it seems to be working fine. A few bits of
feedback:
Things I like:
* Still loving the lightweight Mate desktop. It flies on Bishop (a decade old
netbook with after-market SSD and 2GB RAM), yet still offers a reasonably
full-featured UX.
* language support seems to be fully installed by default, instead of asking
me to add extra packages the first time I go into the Languages applet in the
Control Panel. Same for Personal File Sharing.
* the installer still finds my monitor and set it up flawlessly (as far I
know ;) with no post-install tweaking required.
* I can still ctrl-alt left and right to switch between workspaces, yay!
* dragging (most) windows to the right or left of the screen still
automatically docks them to that half of the screen. Yay!
* Abrowser hasn't crashed on me yet, although I have yet to seriously stress
test it.
Things that could be improved on:
* I can't see any kind of 'system information' in the Control Panel, or
anywhere under system. Where do I find a list of my hardware (eg RAM
detected, 32-bit vs. 64-bit etc)?
* in Add/Remove programs, using the scroll buttons goes ridiculously slow,
but using the mouse to push the scroll bars up and down goes ridiculously
fast. Going up and down with the arrow buttons works more smoothly.
* I can't find Jami in Add/Remove programs, not under that name, or under the
old "Ring" name. I can't find SyncThing there either. Both are available
using sudo apt install from a terminal.
* I see both Eye of Mate and Viewnior under graphics, even though they both
seem to do the same task. Isn't it redundant to have both?
* I see there's no obvious passphrase manager. So users may still see the
built-in password manager in Abrowser as being implicitly endorsed for
storing website passwords. I already opened a thread to discuss this.
* Transmission still doesn't dock to half the screen when I drag it against
the left or right hand side.
* The Sync feature in ABrowser still uses the Firefox branding. Does this
even work? Does it use Mozilla's servers? Is this something we're comfortable
with implicitly endorsing?
* Goggle appears to be the default search engine in ABrowser. Wouldn't it be
better to use something like DuckDuckGo or Ecosia or a Searx instance or
something?
* Would it be viable to run a Searx instance at search.trisquel.info to be
the default search option in Abrowser? Or search.fsf.org, then it could be
the default search in IceCat too.
* I'm not convinced Pidgin is the best choice for default chat app. It's
never recommended as an XMPP or IRC client by regular users of those
networks. I don't think anyone who isn't a retro IM geek is still using any
of the legacy nonfree networks it provides connections to.
Menu Suggestions:
* I've often though it would be useful to have 'About Trisquel' under
'System', giving the Trisquel version and a link to a page with more
information about that version. The 'About Mate' pop-up could be triggered
from a button on the 'About Trisquel' page.
* The number of LibreOffice entries in the "Office" category in the start
menu is overwhelming. Wouldn't it be better to have a single entry under
"Office" for LibreOffice, which opens up a submenu containing its various
tools?
* The "Accessories" category in the start menu has a confusing number of
items. It seems a bit unclear why some things are launched from there, some
from "Other", and some from System.
* Some of the items in "Accessories" arguably belong in "Office" (eg Plume,
Atril, the calculator), in which there would be more room if you followed the
suggestion above about LibreOffice.
* I suggest reserving "Accessories" for things like Terminal, Caja, Engrampa,
System Monitor, and Screenshot, that users use to carry out tasks, rather
than to tweak the system. The rest probably belong somewhere under System (eg
Character Map, Onboard, Passwords and Keys).
* I would suggest replacing "Other" with a menu for "Accessibility", which
can hold the Screen Magnifier, Orca screen reader, etc.
That's more than enough for now. I'd do some more playing around tomorrow.
