Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 15:21, foser wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 14:52, dams@×××.fr wrote:
> > Maybe add a vanilla flags, that can be unset. When unset, the DE are
> > preconfigured and gentoo touched.
> > The pb is that you want vanilla, but you want also some core feature like
> > centralized menu system, which is not compatible. So either we decide not
> > to include such features, or to have a flag.
>
> I'm quite against this, there should be one Gentoo to rule them all. I'm
> not against adding some extra patches, as long as they add clear
> functionality we can maintain (this is most important). No need for
> flags for vanilla and not so vanilla.
>
> The menu system is a difficult one i know, but in reality there are few
> people who use more than one DE. We cater the masses well at the moment,
> those who want to work with a different look 'n feel every day should be
> able to handle the downsides.

The menu system is not about having the same menu in all windowmanagers as 
much as it is about having every application added to the menu of whatever 
windowmanager you are using. Independent of what kind of toolkit the 
application uses. A vanilla useflag would function like currently the foreign 
package flag does for the kdeadmin ebuild. That flag enables the compilation 
of a package manager that is standard but currently does not work well with 
gentoo (it being not an rpm based system).

For the menu system it might be necessary to patch some windowmanagers to be 
able to use our menu's while keeping some compatibility with a situation 
where the menu manager is not installed. Those changes are normally small and 
localised, but generally change some part of the plumbing of such a program 
while keeping generally the same behaviour. If you want to hack with a 
windowmanager yourself those changes might be confusing and hence the 
"vanilla" flag.

<cut>

> We provide the power to work with the desktop as intended upstream. The
> GNOME Desktop is an idea as a whole, we provide it as it is. And for say
> corporate users you could say they could easily adapt their installs to
> their needs, without the necessity to hack out all sorts of distro
> specific stuff. Or for granny's email machine (installed by her
> son-in-law) she just get what she needs and not all sorts of extra cruft
> (no granny doesn't need no CD burn tools or LDAP support in her mailer).
>
> > I think a perfect corporate desktop would :
> >
> > - be cheap
> > - be installable by not so good technical guys quickly
> > - be useable at soon as it is installed
>
> 'emerge gnome' and maybe in the future (but we lack time as it is)
> 'emerge gnome-office' and off you go. I suppose KDE could create similar
> meta ebuilds.
>

The idea is not to create some monstrous gentoo-specific monstrosity as redhat 
does with kde. It is just small changes to make sure that everything "just 
works". For example take a look to 
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=14872

Which is an enhancement I wrote so that things like kmail gpg support is easy 
to install, just as all kinds of IME's (for our asian friends)


> > Now if the guy has to configure each workstation, it's not very
> > convenient...
>
> Humm, that wouldn't be a bright guy. It would be better to work from one
> 'image' machine in a workstation situation. I don't really see how you
> mean configuration beyond that. User configuration is ok by default
> mostly (at least for GNOME) and it is up to them to alter it to their
> preference.

Gnome's configuration does not include a menu system with all installed X 
applications

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@g.o
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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