Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[foser <foser@foser.dyn.warande.net>]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 00:22, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> Hello, Here are some thoughts about desktop. Feel free to react, but please, if
> you can, think about it long enough to post your comments all at once in a
> comprehensive manner, so that we can easily summ up and take everything in
> account. Note that we don't want to resolve every little problem here, but have
> a set of directions, tasks and ideas
> 
> 
> * What is desktop :
> desktop would be the project responsible of the desktop part of gentoo Linux,
> without making global decision, like : should we build a special product for
> desktop, should we have a modified install, should we restrict some possibility
> to default...

Thanks for bringing this up again, since this was brought up months ago
with the creation of the toplevel structure. Although at the time it
wasn't deemed important enough to be formed at the spot.

I'm all for a toplevel structure to coordinate the desktop efforts,
although the interference in the projects themselves should be kept to a
minimum. I see it mostly as a layer to communicate with other teams.

> * The gentoo things that would be handeld by the desktop project :
> X, KDE, gnome, other desktop environment (wmaker, rox, xfce...)
> *dm (xdm, kdm, gdm, ...)

To sum it up : everything non-console.

> menu system (use gentoo menu system, or get the debian one)

This is part of possible 'tasks' (see down), the whole discussion
concerning this is still to be started as far as i am concerned.

> * The tasks :
> - maintain the project component

obvious

> - decide general guidelines to be applied on the desktop project components
> (do we want DE unification and how much, look and feel, menu entries, default
> desktop, gentoo control center integration in DE...)

I think the other posts in this thread reflect the general and also my
sentiments on this perfectly fine. We should keep it as vanilla as
possible, users know how to work from there.

> - write guidelines to be more (free)desktop compliant, to be used by the whole
> gentoo devs for their packages.

We shouldn't be compliant, we should push upstream developers to be or
work on their packages being compliant. Us providing some hackish layer
of compliance is a recipe for disaster. It is fighting symptoms, while
you should be attacking the problem by its root. I don't see our already
heavily pressured teams do all sorts of compliance work.

And no, just hiring a few more people is no solution if you want to have
the same quality/involvement.

> - have a little research and development task to suggest integration of new
> things in gentoo, that will make the desktop experience better (f.ex. bootsplash, new
> DE, new GUIs (karamba like, ...)) 

I'd rather make a plea for focus on the important and most used desktop
aspects, like having rock stable builds for the major DE's and their
major components. Every day there will be new, cool 'n nifty stuff that
everybody likes to use, but in the end those are gimmicks and an ever
expanding the tree will degrade overall quality. It's already a day job
to keep up with current upstream development and since few people here
can work on Gentoo full time, it will be choice between quality and
quantity at times. I know what to choose.

If we want to profile ourselves as a serious stable desktop distro, it
is important to stay focused : a desktop that can be instantly used with
the latest in productive applications.

> desktop may need some other part/project, like some usefull packages (menu),
> configuration tools, unique control center... That's why we might begin with a
> representation of what would the perfect desktop product be, and see if we have
> everything we need in gentoo. If not, then we might suggest the creation of
> additional projects, or inclusion of needed component.

There is no perfect desktop which you can mold into an ebuild. Gentoo
already provides the perfect desktop, because users can choose exactly
what they want from their desktop.

- foser


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