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• Launchpad Entry: about-this-computer

• Packages affected:

Summary

About This Computer should show useful information about your computer, its hardware, installed operating system and desktop environment(s).

Release Note

New with this version of Ubuntu, the "About Ubuntu" and "About Gnome" dialogs have been replaced with a more generic "About This Computer" dialog that shows basic information about your machine along with software versions for Gnome or KDE.

Rationale

The current "About Ubuntu" and "About GNOME" items are not helpful, elegant, or (least importantly) consistent with what people expect from other operating systems. And merely having two menu items gives the impression that Ubuntu is fragmented and disorganized.

Use Cases

• Third-party software often has minimum system requirements, most often involving the operating system version, processor speed, and amount of memory available. Often they also mention a particular amount of disk space, but this is much less important (because people almost always have enough). Occasionally they have other requirements (such as a particular graphics card).
• Tech support for Ubuntu often requires knowing what version of Ubuntu someone is using. People often have trouble scanning text on a computer screen, so embedding the Ubuntu version in lots of other text can be frustrating.
• Tech support for Linux in general often requires knowing what Linux kernel version someone is using, and sometimes requires knowing what version of Gnome or KDE they are using.

Design

• [http://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/aboutgui Comparisons from other graphical environments]

About This Computer (about-window) is a Python script that checks the existence of the environment variable KDE_FULL_SESSION. If it is present, the script will import a Python module that pulls in PyQT and draws the dialog using the QT toolkit. Otherwise, the Python module that utilities PyGTK and Glade will be used.

We will query the following information about the system:

• CPU type and speed, using /proc/cpuinfo
• RAM, using /proc/meminfo, or "free"
• Hard disk size (use the disk / hangs off), using hal via dbus
• Graphics card, also using hal via dbus
• Network card, also using hal via dbus
• Version of Ubuntu, using lsb-release.
• Version of desktop environment -- this is a can of worms, but we are limiting ourselves to querying the version of GNOME, KDE or XFCE. If we find none of them, then do not display anything.
• Version of the Linux kernel, using "uname -r"

Implementation

The dialog box will be designed to look identical if using PyQT or PyGTK, with the only difference being the toolkit used. The icon of the window will be a visually attractive computer icon, with this also being shown prominently on the left hand of the window.

The right hand side of the window will be made up of two sections, with the first being:

CPU: <CPU type> <CPU speed>
Memory: <RAM information>
Hard Disk: <size of the disk / is on>
Graphics Card: <Graphics Card information>
Network Card: <Network Card information>

And the second displaying:

<icon grabbed from the icon theme "start-here"> Ubuntu <Ubuntu version>
(Only displayed if gnome-session exists) <gnome icon> Gnome <Gnome version>
(Only displayed if kded exists) <KDE icon> KDE <KDE version>
(Only displayed if xfce-session exists) <XFCE icon> XCFE <XCFE version>
<tux icon> Linux <kernel version>

A Close button on the bottom right of the window.

All text should be able to be drag and dropped as one large block into IRC, a bug report or a forum post.

Migration

GNOME

An "About This Computer" item on the System menu will replace the "About Ubuntu", and "About Gnome" menu items.

ScottJamesRemnant: what happened to the information in About Ubuntu and About GNOME? How do users get at similar information now?

KDE

An "About This Computer" item will be added to the standard KDE application Help menu which will launch the QT version of the app.

XFCE

An "About This Computer" item will be added to the System menu.

Test/Demo Plan

Check that for common hardware (everything testers can get their hands on and more), that About This Computer correctly detects the Ubuntu version, the processor and the RAM size (with appropriate and correct scaling/rounding), along with the desktop environments that the user has installed.

See Also

• AboutUbuntu

• AboutUbuntuRevisited

CategorySpec