Linux Lite 2.4 Beta Released

[Valtam]

Having gone through the install process several times now, I thought I'd make some notes, and for what they're worth these are those:-

1)  There appears to be a problem with keyboard settings, which I think was there in 2.2. Despite automatically recognising English(UK) to be correct during the install process, that setting did not persist. Use of the keyboard and investigation of the keyboard settings showed it to be English(US), which of course is all wrong for the UK, so had to set manually.

2)  A related issue was Language Support. Again the language was set to English(US) and had to be set manually using the drag and drop facility. When I pushed the 'Apply System Wide' the application actually crashed. So I loaded it up again and selected the just as important part 'Regional Formats'.
IMHO this should actually be in the main settings menu, not in a fairly obscure tab of a separate application. This is a good example of what is important to the user. If it is wrong, which it was, again English(US), when say an existing spread sheet is loaded up, it will inherit the wrong regional formats. Even worse, cells will not be changed retrospectively after the system regional formats are corrected. Thus it's very important to the user to get these thing correct from the onset, which could be better ensured by making the setting more prominent in the main settings.

3) 'Network Connections' appeared twice n the whisker menu, and the 'Restart Network Shares Server' was missing.
Normally I set up the network shares manually, but decided to use the 'Network Share Settings' from  the whisker menu. It appears that this merely allows the edit of the /etc/samba/smb.conf file.
The parameters are the same as I normally use, except I add
name resolve order = bcast host
after the specific workgroup entry, which helps on a network with Windows machines, and always make the netbios name unique, as long as it begins with alpha, is alpha numeric only, and is less than 15 characters. Actually 18 but best to be safe.

What 'Network Share Setting' doesn't do (but could) is
a) create the share directory /home/username/share, and set permissions.
b) add the user to /etc/smbusers ie. <username> = “<username>”
c) give the smbuser a password, with sudo smbpasswd -a username

4) One final point, which is really more of a suggestion. I believe it would be best for new users to have the default style of Raleigh in the appearance settings. Although very similar to the present default it has the arrows on the vertical scroll bars which would enhance initial user experience. For the seasoned user it is of course just a couple of clicks to change.

BTW looking forward to the version update facility, which will make life a lot easier.

Best Regards
Colin

Thank you for your feedback, to address your points:

1) Keyboard settings - Has been brought up many times, in many posts. We're yet to find a solution.

2) Language Support - This is related to point 1. Therefore we provide a comprehensive tutorial in the Help Manual.

3) Network Connections - This is deliberate, it's default home is the Settings Menu, it was also inserted into the Internet menu to help newbies intuitively find any settings related to controlling their Internet access.

4) Default style of Raleigh - Unlikely to change to this. We have a 'look' that we've used for a long time, this is one of the features that gives LL it's identity, a way to recognise it. Think of it like BP going from using green and yellow in their logo to pink and orange.

Thanks for putting 2.4 Beta through it's paces