Rethink the add-ons section of the installed list
For me, the add-ons section of the installed list looks like this:
I think we have to question the appropriateness, intelligibility and usefulness of this section. Most users will look at it and run away. If they do engage with it, they are liable to cause some serious issues.
The problems:
- It's really hard for non-technical users to understand what the runtimes are.
- This isn't helped by the names and descriptions of the runtimes being varying degrees of bad. "Freedesktop Platform: Shared libraries" is a particularly fine example.
- We show the default theme? This also has a terrible description: "Adwaita widget theme matching the GNOME adwaita theme". Thanks.
- The user can remove any of the runtimes.
- There's a confirmation dialog when you do this. This has a very standard description ("if you remove this, you'll have to install it again to use it"), which fails to mention what a runtime is or what will actually happen if you remove it.
- The runtimes, themes and input methods all have the same icon, which doesn't help someone to understand what they are.
- 40% of the list is the default set of input methods, which you can't remove.
My initial reaction to the list is: why are we even showing this stuff?