[Freedombox-discuss] Some advice on moving Plinth forward?

[James Vasile]

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 11:29:35 +0000, Alistair Davidson <alistair.l.davidson at gmail.com> wrote:
> The big target for routing / privacy has to be zeroconf. The box has to set
> itself up, and only require user intervention if they have an unusual setup
> or they want it. 

Absolutely.

> A very important technique is
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_disclosure , which is the superior
> option to having "expert mode"s and the like.

That's interesting and probably right, although I like the idea of
hiding some options that a user will almost never need to soo.

> 
> I think we should make the decision now to call any service/webapp/plugin
> running on the box an "App". The word annoys the hell out of me but it's
> widely understood.
> 
> App installation and management seems another obvious thing to include in
> early UI; presumably as we proceed this will become more and more
> central.

Yes.  But I don't want users to have to navigate apps so much as add
functionality.  Sure, they'll have access to the entire Debian
repository, but the list of packages they see should be curated and only
include things that have been tweaked to work well with the rest of the
box.  And maybe "apps" is less the focus here than "capabilities".

Excellent thoughts, Alistair, thanks.