I've been thinking recently that though the screenshot section sounds like a good idea, it seems rather repetitive. After all, almost every distro uses ether Gnome or KDE by default, so the interfaces look just about the same across distros, except for default themes. I was thinking that it might be a good idea to include screenshots for various GUI applications. I bet that a lot of people would like a chance to look at screenshots of various programs before installing them, without the need to hunt down the project home page, hoping that the site includes screenshots. Since this could be a rather large undertaking due to the number of Linux apps available, perhaps the screenshot section could be incorporated to the main site login, so that members could post the screenshots themselves. Anyways, that is my idea. Tell me what you think.

IMHO the main benefit of LQ Screenshots is not only to provide people with an idea of finished product, but also to provide the reader with a preview of the installation process for each distro. To me that is a seriously cool, and can be really helpful to someone who is installing Linux for the very first time. If nothing else, it at least gives them an idea of what to expect.

You of course are correct that almost all distros use KDE or Gnome, but I'm not sure I see the practicality of trying to maintain a similar set of shots for apps. After all, virtually all apps will either be installed by the distro's default application manager (eg, YaST, rpm, apt-get, and so forth) or by the typical 5 step tango (tar, cd, configure, make, make install) and thus the shots would probably be largely indistinguishable from one another. Just my 2 cents

While I like the screenshot section for various reasons I do feel like it good be better organized. There are several methods I feel like would be viable alternatives or at the least other options to pick from besides date and name.

Option A) A family tree style like found in the wiki list of distributions.

Option B) By icon? Perhaps have an icon for each distribution thats clickable for the screenshots. I realize this is probably not a very good idea and doesn't really fit with the LQ style.

Option C) Being able to break the alphabetical list into pages might be nice. The list there is after all long enough I have to scroll the page to see all of it.

Option D) A distribution search box. Where you can search the name of the distribution you want. The box of course would only search through the list of distributions with screen shots (if that wasn't already obvious).

We do have plans to offer application screenshots and accept user contributed content in a future release of LQ screenshots. The site does have a search function, but we do need to expose it better. Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming.


Search for Ubuntu - http://shots.linuxquestions.org/index.php?os=ubuntu

--jeremy

so wouldn't this actually be a genuine benefit for tags? if each screenshot had tagged on it not only the os, but any app worth officially saying was running on it, i.e. not just minimized or overly obscured, then that would implicitly provide that functionality without having to split off os from apps

Hadn't thought of tags in this context, put it's certainly plausible. I'd still see the ability to have individual applications as beneficial though.

--jeremy