Bug 465498

SUMMARY

Spawned off of the Flattened Navigation for System Settings issue - https://invent.kde.org/plasma/systemsettings/-/issues/15#note_610325 - where this request was somewhat off-topic.

KWallet, or as System Settings calls it, "KDE Wallet", is possibly the worst named piece of software in all of KDE. When I hear Wallet in a piece of software, I think deposited money for easy online payments. Quoting @beedellrokejulianlockhart, "For mobile devices, Wallet always refers to where the financial information is stored – usually, solely cards".

KWallet's supporting background role means that it's very unlikely to become a well-known brand name to the wider community, unlike e.g. KDE Connect which is getting more mentions in the press and has a stand-alone Android app associated for better name recognition. Absent brand building opportunities, I think it would make sense for KWallet to lose the branding entirely and take a more utilitarian, less misleading name.

On the abovementioned KDE Invent issue I suggested "Password Service" or "Password Store", @beedellrokejulianlockhart suggested "Credential Manager". Either of those seems like a huge improvement over "KDE Wallet".

Renaming components, binaries and distro package might come with logistical challenges. But that's not even the most important thing anyway.

What can be done right now is to change user interface strings. The "KDE Wallet" KCM could be called "Credential Manager". The checkbox can say "Enable the KDE Credential Manager service" instead of "Enable the KDE wallet subsystem". Instead of "Wallet" as a concept, we can say "Credential Store". Or the whole spiel but with "Password" instead of "Credential" if it seems too high-brow for regular users, I don't know. Any name is fine with me as long as it isn't "Wallet".

Likewise, dialog texts and titles should be renamed in the same fashion. Bugzilla can keep "frameworks-kwallet" as component name but subtitle it with "KDE Credential Manager, a secure and unified container for user passwords" instead of just the latter half. (Heck, this should be done anyway even if sticking with "KDE Wallet", for better searchability.) And so on.


STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Open System Settings, find the item in (currently) the "Personalization" category
2. Ponder what KDE Wallet might be
3. Get no actual explanation even once you open the settings page

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
KDE Plasma Version: 5.26.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.102.0
Qt Version: 5.15.8

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Having finalized my bug report, I see that bug 225181 was RESOLVED INTENTIONAL in 2013 with barely any arguments by either of the the two people briefly participating. I'll stick to opening a new issue.