Re: [gentoo-dev] Automatic menus?

[James Gibson]

On Fri, 26 Jul 2002, Thomas Beaudry wrote:
> Maybe I could have phrased that a little better.  The message
> I was replying to talked about not wanting it in Gentoo because
> he dislikes it and always shuts it off in Mandrake.
>
> I was just saying that that is selfish, to deny others a feature
> just so he doesn't have to be bothered with a few minutes time
> to get rid of it.
>
> In otherwords, I was responding in the context he created.

I must appologize; In large part my response was targeted at the wording,
even though I was pretty certain that you hadn't meant it that way, and 
I'm sorry to have put you between the sights, so to speak.

I've just seen people who honestly felt that they were doing people a
favour by blindly adding new features that are 'opt-out', when the only
real excuse for that model of improvement is to 'make it easier for the
newbies'; a fact which has the inverse effect of making it harder for the
more discerning users.  e.g. you _can_ disable the majority of the
automation cruft that SuSE installs without breaking their system, but in
general it is more of a pain in the neck than it is worth.

> Of course if a menu ebuild is implemented, it would be an op-in
> just like every other ebuild under Gentoo.  I didn't think it
> was necessary to point out the obvious.  Guess I was wrong.

You will have to excuse me.. I've been overlooking the obvious all day 
long. I think I need to get some more sleep. =)

--James