Move/drop "System Settings" entry to me menu or Dash

[Matteo Pagliazzi]

Binary package hint: unity

I think that it's a serious usability bug.

People open the "shoutdown menu" for restarting it, changing user they don't do this for opening the "control panel" also users who open the "shutdown menu" to shutdown the computer, click on the "control panel" instead, because it is in the last position

The dash or the me menu are more appropriate i think

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: unity 3.6.4-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-5.32-generic 2.6.38-rc6
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-5-generic i686
Architecture: i386
CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,snap,gnomecompat,move,mousepoll,resize,place,vpswitch,regex,wall,session,animation,workarounds,expo,ezoom,staticswitcher,fade,scale,unityshell]
Date: Tue Mar 15 09:40:11 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20110107)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=it_IT:it:en_GB:en
 LANG=it_IT.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2011-02-26 (16 days ago)

[shishimaru (shishimaru)]

Seriously, it's comfortless for me.
Control Panel has got many options, right? And every single user has his own settings. So... why we don't put Control Panel in the MeMenu? Ubuntu One should, too.

[Matteo Pagliazzi (paglia)]

Ubuntu One already has a link in the MeMenu

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

Some of the items in the Settings are per-user, others are for the whole
system. We'll review the breakdown of the indicator menus for Oneiric,
please weigh in on this at UDS!

Mark

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Matteo: the argument for the Session menu is that it is the most persistent and consistent. It will "always be there" and equally so under Unity and Unity 2D/Metacity (see bug #727823 "Enable Gnome-Control-Center in Unity, and add "System Settings" link to the session indicator menu")

I certainly think that it the "Control Centre" entry (which will be renamed "System Settings", see bug #733234) could be moved to a different position higher-up on the menu. Perhaps you'd be willing to make some mockups, moving it to either the top, or between "Switch from $User..." and "Log out...".

[turnick (turnickdbz)]

I agree with you.

[Mark Shuttleworth (sabdfl)]

This can be wontfix for natty but open for oneiric.

Mark

[Matteo Pagliazzi (paglia)]

even if you can not change it for natty I think that as a matter of usability would be useful to restore the "stop" item in last position

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

OMG Ubuntu complains about this change too [1]: "What has user preferences got to do with logging out/shutting down?"

You didn't found a better place for the "System Settings" entry than the session menu and have not enough time to get it right in natty? Therefore it's ok to keep the "System Settings" entry in the session menu as workaround in natty? "The session menu is always there" is not an argument for putting something session-unrelated in there. Please drop the "System Settings" entry from the session menu and find a better place in oneiric.

[1] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/03/unity/

[Robert Chalmas (robert-chalmas)]

Please consider making this "System Settings" entry easy to remove if the administrator don't want it.
This central place for configuration may be fine for a home user but is for sure a nuisance for many admins wanting to avoid that the users (especially in a school environment) play with all settings and generate a big mess. In my service, we spent a lot of time to remove all unwanted shortcuts from the System menu, so this new option, allowing to bypass our restrictions, is highly unwanted for us, especially if it's located at a place where nobody can miss it !

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Robert, all you need to do is rm /usr/share/indicators/session/applications/gnomecc.desktop It's just a symlink anyway.

[Oier Mees (oier)]

I totally agree, this is a serious usability bug which should be fixed ASAP for Natty. It is the last place where a user would expect it to be, any other place would be better that that. So please take into account the opinion of the users, in order Natty to rock!

[Robert Chalmas (robert-chalmas)]

 Many thanks Jeremy for your answer. Your solution is working perfectly.

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

Can the "System Settings" entry moved up from the last entry in natty? Having "System Settings" as last entry is the worst case scenario. It could be put somewhere in between. For example between locking the srceen and guest session.

[Marcello Miccoli (marcello-miccoli)]

I totally agree with Benjamin's comment above. The "System Setting" entry should be moved from the last place in the list, though I think the best place should be as first in the listing.

There is a logical order that is broken with "System Setting" being the last entry. The list goes from "the least invasive computer usability option" (just lock the screen), to "the most invasive", do a complete shutdown of the computer. Being "system setting" something even less invasive than locking the screen, I would put it first in the list.

[Spike Burch (spikeb)]

This is a serious usability bug that has been confirmed as such by canonical's own user testing. This should NOT be marked as wontfix for natty! A temporary fix that is better than the current implementation is trivial.

[Oier Mees (oier)]

Any news from UDS or ayatana-design on this issue for Oneiric? Should I propose my branch, which moves it to the Me-menu, for merging?