Comment 22 for bug 54024

I feel that a change like this is one that is likely to aggravate as many people as the existing problem does.As has been shown by the numerous ubuntu users on this bug and its duplicate, whilst new users do expect the windows key to pop-up a start menu many of our existing users would find it irritating. Just saying that users are capable of removing the change isn't an effective argument against their disagreement. The key is already used in compiz for many shortcuts and is also remapped by many users to a variety of tasks, for people who use it in this way making it do something else is sort of a papercut in itself.

The applications menu is by default pretty prominently placed at the top of the screen. There are few distractions from it after a clean install, it has a colourful image next to it and says 'Applications' next to it - I think this is clue enough that this is the 'Start Menu' equivalent. So arguments saying that this would help new users work out what to do given the live cd or a clean install is nonsensical.

Many people have posted on the other bug that the Super_L key is labelled start a lot of the time. I would like to say that as a UK user it does not say 'Start' on many keyboards over here and in fact has a large Windows flag on it.

So the issue boils down to whether the Super_L key is a more effective shortcut key for the menu. Hitting the Super_L key requires the user to move their whole hand down the keyboard to touch type it whereas Alt-F1 simply involves moving the thumb and raising the fourth finger - so in my opinion the existing combo is more convenient - but I'm not a useability expert, either way I don't think the difference is that great. The argument for 'one key is better than two' is not all that convincing and we don't use the F4 key to terminate an application and many common keyboard symbols are implemented as key-combos. Users are very used to this way of working.

A compromise could be a mention of the existing key combo after the initial install or upon a LiveCD boot - another option would be to take advantage of the new notify-osd onscreen messages. Having a tap of the windows key display a one time message on the screen for a short period of time informing the user of the Alt-F1 alternative would not disturb existing users but would effectively inform new users.