[Feature Request] New Application Menu Rearrangement

General Discussion
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I have 95 qubes and still counting. Compartmentalizing as much as possible, while still experimenting with it.

Disclaimer

I'm not talking here about faster ways to do things. The goal is different: talking about specific feature and it's functionality

Users know how inconvenient and time-consuming it is to launch programs from the system menu. Can you imagine with 95 qubes how much is needed to start Firefox in some disposable, only to realize that UBlock Origin is not installed, then get back to menu and scrolling forever down to reach the template’s terminal to update/install UBlock, then back to scroll up forever to disposable menu to fire up Firefox again.

The fact helped me to realize simple thing, and an example above hopefully will help you to realize too that:

Users want applications (that’s the name of this package anyway) and not qubes! So why not giving them that?

How? Simply completely opposite than it is now, by organizing classic menu with grouped apps.

So, on a given example (I cant graphically mimic,sorry), this would’ve happen:

Start → Internet → (Browsers) Firefox → tree here to choose qube type: Disps (list of all disps that have Firefox installed), Qube (list of all AppVMs that have Firefox installed), Services (the same), Templates (again mini tree here: Templates, dvm-templates)

And I choose disposable here. Oh, I need to install addon. OK,

Start → utilities → Xfce4-terminal->etc, etc

Wherever new user comes from he expects to see apps in the menu, nothing else. Seeing qubes whose names all looks so similar (what these color are, why the icons differs) was at least extremely confusing for me when switching to Qubes. I guess it’s more or less the same with all the newcomers.

And they say that the first impression is most important.

@ninavizz?

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I have at least 48 qubes, and I am also petitioning the devs to add in this new feature into qubes os 4.1. It is gonna called qubes-grouping.

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Yep. Let’s salting or yaml-ing this:

  1. I want to start internet application Firefox in a disposable qube based on debian
  2. I want to start disposable qube based on debian in order to start Firefox

Which one is more human readable? And more educational for users?

Write down your thought process to achieve above. Isn’t it under 1? And how it is arranged, I naturally think under 1. then forced to act by reversing it like under 2.

And currently to me it looks like from @marmarek’s signature about replies on the top of the thread.

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And, the biggest and - I have to search where Firefox is installed, because it isn’t everywhere! So (sc)rolling, (sc)roling, (sc)roling…

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First if all, try to hit alt+F3 and write firefox. You will see all qubes in which you can run it.

Second, this has been discussed a few times already.

Third, there is already an new App Menu designed by @ninavizz available for testing: New Qubes application menu. It has the possibility to present by apps and by qubes (and much more). See also: When Will Qubes Have The new App Menu?.

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Thanks. I am aware of the topics, I even participated there and this topic is about the new menu and how I see that very menu could be rearranged, not about old Q menu. That is why I tagged Nina.

plus, again scrolling to the desired qube.

I couldn’t manage to find this, at least in the way I propose it. Otherwise, I apologize for noising.

And definitely this is what I can’t see, except via Favorites. So tips on this would be appreciated.

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https://www.qubes-os.org/attachment/survey/tour-jackie.webm

(there were definitely more posts from unman about it, too hard to find)

Not sure what you are talking about. I don’t have a lot of qubes. I use alt+F3 every time I run anything, because it’s so much more convenient, not because it’s faster. It does present you the list of apps as you described, doesn’t it? You don’t need to write the whole word, too. Try to enter “rbr” and you will see Tor Browser as the first option – just enter will be needed to run it.

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Jackie is exactly what I wanted to express here! Thank you so much for pointing me out. No matter how much the one reads, it usually ends with facing that there is more and more to read, the more the one reads.

Regarding ALT+F3, I use it too, but in this topic as I wrote my intention wasn’t to find the ways to quickly, or conveniently access specific application, but to discuss organization of a new application menu.

Your comment on it makes the menu pointless. Let’s then get rid of it. New menu already takes the highest amount of RAM in dom0 when loaded, at least for me.

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