KDE descktop recommendations

[wmcn]

These are more or less my wife's suggestions.

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I'd make the explorer better, I find it annoying.

Get rid of Mozilla and use mozilla firebird and providel the advert + pop up filters by default.
Get rid of the lousy kde mail readers, use mozilla thunderbird

Have some kind of general firewalling application there,

Reduce the klutter on the "start menu"

Make the panel icons better.

Have a kind of "Knoppix Update" on the "start menu" that runs apt-get

[gowator]

I think this just shows the problem with a live distro,
You can feed some of the people some of the time but ????

My personal opinion (for what its worth)
Mozilla is too heavy, firebird and thunderbird are better BUT Opera is faster and lighter !!
Konqueror, (what I think you call explorer) is a web browser too and its actually VERY GOOD.

I think kmail rocks as a simple mail client.

Konqueror is very configurable and you can make it behave as you like, one place to look is under the profiles....

klutter on the start menu for me is games!!! but lots will disagree. The problem is that unless you are using a particular item its clutter BUT lots of people might want that item. Take Mozilla - someone might be using knoppix to view web pages actually in Mozilla they are developing.

Fundamentally its really what you make it,
Are you running from Cd only or with a persistant home directory or HDD install ???
(FNAC are doing a great deal on verbatim USB2 64MB dongles at the moment, perhaps that will answer your needs)

Anyway, once you have apersiatant home you can configure it how you like, if your stuck then lots of people here will help

Take the default keyboard for example, thats just the way it is....you can't please everyone so you have to make a choice, if no other reason exists then why not german???

In actual fact the language support is great in knoppix...
Even from a 'English boot' its only two clicks to get a French keyboard!!!

[towjamb]

I'd make the explorer better, I find it annoying.

Not sure how to make Konquorer better -- it rocks already. I think you mean 'make it like Explorer', for Windows converts. Then you would alienate all the Konquorer loyalists for the sake on a few who resist change or are afraid to learn (been there.) Seriously, Konqueror is quite configurable and you could almost make it act like Explorer but without all the bugs.

Get rid of Mozilla and use mozilla firebird and providel the advert + pop up filters by default.
Get rid of the lousy kde mail readers, use mozilla thunderbird

Fair enough. I'm sure the space would be more useful. However, GTK apps just don't look as good.

Have some kind of general firewalling application there,

Guarddog and Firestarter are GUI apps for firewalling. I'll second that.

Reduce the klutter on the "start menu"

The 'Klutter' is really a KDE issue. Personally, I think it's way more logical than, say, WinXP's multi-tier labyrinth of hell, but that's my opinion. 3.2 should be cleaner.

Make the panel icons better.

Not sure what you mean by better. Crystal SVG is pretty much the standard in the KDE world.

Have a kind of "Knoppix Update" on the "start menu" that runs apt-get

Kpackage is in the system menu, but. I suppose, not as obvious as a 'Knoppix update' button.
I'm not sure what you expect from this distro, but I think it's more of a demo/system rescue disk so lacks some polish in exchange for functionality. Perhaps your wife may better be served with LindowsLive or MandrakeMove. Have you tried Mepis, PCLinuxOS, Morphix ... it's all about choice.
For me, Knoppix was a quick and easy way to get a Debian install that was easy and worked right out of the box. I also use it as a rescue disk and to show-off to friends. I think it's just great the way it is.