It would be awesome to have a system which would allow all the settings in a single downloadable configuration file, that people can publish along with their screen shots, so that on running the file all resources would automatically get downloaded, and the system would get setup exactly like it is in the screenshot with zero manual intervention.
This file should have the necessary metadata to :
1. download resources where needed - like a wallpaper
2. configure system properties - like panel widths, positions, backgrounds, etc.
3. enforce constraints - e.g if the developer wants to make a configuration valid for only a certain screen resolution, so that it cannot be installed on a different resolution.
The structure of the configuration file could be something like the following :
( XML syntax below: replace [ with < )
[config]
[theme name="ubuntu-default" url="url from where theme can be downloaded if not available on user's machine"/]
[wallpaper url="xxxxxx"/]
[iconset url="xxxxxx"/]
[panel height="24" other properties here ...]
[/config]
A user should be able to download this file and double-click on it (to run it) and get his/her system to look exactly to what they had seen in the screenshot.
