I tend to agree with everything mentioned...

Having come from a "Windows" World, the menu in Knoppix, was, daunting, more of an astonishment. WOW, look at all the programs, kinda thing...

But, as I began to "get used to" Knoppix, I tend to only "hang around" a few programs. I use KWrite pretty much for "notepad", KWord for "serious" M$ Word stuff, Xine for media - mostly DVD playing, and a mixture of Audacity and ReZound for audio playback and recording. Mozilla for web-surfing, and KMail for email. KDiskFree and Info Center for system information, and GKrellM for monitoring system specifics, thats it folks, all the rest is just "clutter".

I have to admit, I run Gimp a few times, but mostly, I learn something new about a program, and decide if I am going to "assimilate" the program into my "normal" usage, or I just know its there if I ever need it again. I don't go around just "clicking" a program to see what it does, so the adventure of "what does that do?" doesn't appeal to me, especially if it doesn't "say" what it does, in the "extended" text, or is a "cryptic" acronym.

Thankfully, in my "newness" of this new OS, most of the programs I would need, or were looking for, had those "extended" text information, and the rest, are simply "uncharted territory" still.

For most people, they are coming from Windows, and seeing this interface, and program naming convention, with new eyes. They know what they want to run, but have no clue the name of it. The "extended" text helps in this transition. These people are looking for a program that does this, like KUser123 said, I want to use a Media Player. Having Xine in the Multimedia catagory, and even under the Video section, is good, but if they don't know what the name is, they won't "see" it. The focus in the menus are more geared to people who "know" the names first, and what they do, if it is provided in parenthesis, lastly. For someone in Windows, the program name was immaterial, what it does, is foremost important. Lastly, the "reverse" of the displayed menu entries would also assist these people in learning the "program" and the translation to the new OS. (as in the example provided by KUser123, k3b, first concern what it does, then what its name is, not the reverse, would help "someone" find the program they need to do this, and then begin to help them learn that k3b is used for this.)

This brings up a "peeve" I have always had with "Computer Language" online documentation... They have a search engine for finding your help, but it only works if you know what the function is called. In most cases, you don't know what the function is called, you know what function it is supposed to do, not what its called. i.e. "I want a function that gives me the ASCII value of a character?" -=- You don't know what the function name is, thats what you need to look for the function, in essence, the search is backwords, you need the description of the function to find the name of the function, and the engine is geared toward you knowing what the name is, but not what it does. I think the Knoppix "menus" are the same way... You need to find the "function" first, and the name second...

Just my two schillings worth,
Ms. Cuddles