[SUCS Devel] SUCS desktop defaults

[Graham Cole]

Hey everyone,

Just been playing with Sabayon (http://www.gnome.org/projects/ 
sabayon/) with a view to making nice defaults for some things on SUCS  
machines. Just wondering if anyone had any suggestions for things  
which ought to be automatically done to new users' desktops, or if  
anyone would like to help.

Useful customisations I can think of:

1. Pretty wallpaper image
	I'm envisaging a nice picture of something SUCS/Swansea related with  
a SUCS logo somewhere in it. I'd appreciate someone making something  
suitable (frosty: did you get anywhere with this?)

2. Helpful desktop icons
	I've made icons for opening the SUCS homepage, help pages,  
connecting to Milliways (via a script to SSH to silver first) and the  
SUCS forum. I find the Fedora Applications menu really terrible for  
finding any of the things which users typically want, so perhaps a  
couple of icons for things like web browser, e-mail client, IM would  
be useful too... Which equals a lot of icons on the desktop. There  
must be an elegant way to solve the mess..?

3. Configure instant messenger to connect to SUCS XMPP(/Jabber)  
server by default
	This is very do-able, though it will probably require writing a  
script to generate an accounts.xml for Pidgin to be run at user  
signup time. I'm going to ask the Sabayon people if this kind of  
customisation figures in their grand plan.
	
4. Configure e-mail client to connect to SUCS/Uni IMAP accounts
	Thunderbird? Evolution? I can't say I have a clue about how either  
work, but bunging a username and some connection details in somewhere  
sounds possible and desirable.


That's about all I can think of right now. I obviously want to get  
this sorted out in time for all the newbies in September, so if  
anyone has any thoughts I'd appreciate them nowish :-)

- Graham