[gentoo-dev] desktop

[gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

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...

* The gentoo things that would be handeld by the desktop project :
X, KDE, gnome, other desktop environment (wmaker, rox, xfce...)
*dm (xdm, kdm, gdm, ...)
menu system (use gentoo menu system, or get the debian one)

* The tasks :
- maintain the project component
- 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...)
- write guidelines to be more (free)desktop compliant, to be used by the whole
gentoo devs for their packages.
- 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, ...)) 


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.

-- 
dams

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Spider]

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begin  quote
On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 00:22:51 +0200
dams@idm.fr wrote:


> * 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...

I'm quite against this turn of development as it will split our meager
develpomentteam even further and direct resources at maintaining two
trees in paralell. Even if one is just "desktop cludge" to make the
DesktopDistribution work, it would require Time and Development.

As a general thread, we could well develop a meta system to create one
(or more)  generic desktop setup's (I guess we'd at least need two, one
for KDE and one for Gnome, or people would never shut up. )


Preparing a desktop distribution would require a lot of planning though,
and is something that should be -VERY- carefully planned and documented
before proceeding. 


> * The tasks :
This is where it becomes interesting. Who will do such discussion?
The management team? The users? The Developers? 



> 
> 
> 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. 


Thats a slippery slope to follow since it very much depends on the
purpouse of the desktop (corporate desktops may well -not- include a
webbrowser) 


//Spider

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Brett I. Holcomb]

I'm afraid I have to agree with Spider.  As a user I really don't see what 
good this will do for us.  If I want to use a desktop I install it (I happen 
to use xfce) and then I set it up they way I want with my icons, taskbars, 
panels, whatever.  Same if I decided to use KDE (which I do on another 
machine).  I decide what gets put on the desktop, panel, etc.  

To me it is a total waste of effort/resources to develop a "Standard" desktop 
because there is no such thing.  Every company, every individual (including 
individuals in a company) has a different idea of what the desktop should be. 
  Every place I've been the first thing a user does is change his desktop to 
suit him - I do it to!

It also doesn't seem to fit the Gentoo philosopy - if I want xfce or KDE, or 
Gnome I want it as it comes from them so I can make my changes - I don't want 
some team's idea of what the ideal desktop should be!



On Wednesday 27 August 2003 18:58, you wrote:
> begin  quote
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 00:22:51 +0200
>
> dams@idm.fr wrote:
> > * 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...
>
> I'm quite against this turn of development as it will split our meager
> develpomentteam even further and direct resources at maintaining two
> trees in paralell. Even if one is just "desktop cludge" to make the
> DesktopDistribution work, it would require Time and Development.
>
> As a general thread, we could well develop a meta system to create one
> (or more)  generic desktop setup's (I guess we'd at least need two, one
> for KDE and one for Gnome, or people would never shut up. )
>
>
> Preparing a desktop distribution would require a lot of planning though,
> and is something that should be -VERY- carefully planned and documented
> before proceeding.
>
> > * The tasks :
>
> This is where it becomes interesting. Who will do such discussion?
> The management team? The users? The Developers?
>
> > 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.
>
> Thats a slippery slope to follow since it very much depends on the
> purpouse of the desktop (corporate desktops may well -not- include a
> webbrowser)
>
>
> //Spider

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Jon Portnoy]

[snip]
> 
> It also doesn't seem to fit the Gentoo philosopy - if I want xfce or KDE, or 
> Gnome I want it as it comes from them so I can make my changes - I don't want 
> some team's idea of what the ideal desktop should be!
> 

I've heard a lot of people say the same thing - that when they install a 
desktop, they want the default, not a distribution-customized setup.

-- 
Jon Portnoy
avenj/irc.freenode.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Cedric Veilleux]

On August 27, 2003 08:47 pm, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> I've heard a lot of people say the same thing - that when they install a
> desktop, they want the default, not a distribution-customized setup.

Couldn't agree more.. Coming from a redhat and mandrake world, when I first 
installed a desktop on my gentoo system, a while ago, I was so pleased by the 
way it looked compared to the customized KDE / gnone installation on some 
other distro..

Then I discovered that this was actually the default desktop :)


Although, I must say that some work needs to be done in the desktop area.. A 
working menu system would be great... Adding missing menu entries just after 
merging an application is a pain, especially since non-techies often consider 
an application to be installed if they see the icon, and not-installed when 
they don't..


juste mes 2 cennes :)

--
Cedric

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Riyad Kalla]

+1

Jon Portnoy wrote:

> [snip]
> 
>>It also doesn't seem to fit the Gentoo philosopy - if I want xfce or KDE, or 
>>Gnome I want it as it comes from them so I can make my changes - I don't want 
>>some team's idea of what the ideal desktop should be!
>>
> 
> 
> I've heard a lot of people say the same thing - that when they install a 
> desktop, they want the default, not a distribution-customized setup.
> 


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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Stuart Herbert]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 1:47 am, Jon Portnoy wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > It also doesn't seem to fit the Gentoo philosopy - if I want xfce or KDE,
> > or Gnome I want it as it comes from them so I can make my changes - I
> > don't want some team's idea of what the ideal desktop should be!
>
> I've heard a lot of people say the same thing - that when they install a
> desktop, they want the default, not a distribution-customized setup.

Well said.  I for one hope that the desktop project takes this on board.

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
Stuart Herbert                                              stuart@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer                                       http://www.gentoo.org/
Beta packages for download            http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/packages/
Come and meet me in March 2004                 http://www.phparch.com/cruise/

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

Spider <spider@gentoo.org> said:

> begin  quote
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 00:22:51 +0200
> dams@idm.fr wrote:
>
>
>> * 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...
>
> I'm quite against this turn of development as it will split our meager
> develpomentteam even further and direct resources at maintaining two
> trees in paralell. Even if one is just "desktop cludge" to make the
> DesktopDistribution work, it would require Time and Development.

Maybe I badly expressed myself, I meant that desktop won't build a
special product for desktop, won't ask if we should have a modified install, or
if we restrict some possibility to default...

>
> As a general thread, we could well develop a meta system to create one
> (or more)  generic desktop setup's (I guess we'd at least need two, one
> for KDE and one for Gnome, or people would never shut up. )
>
>
> Preparing a desktop distribution would require a lot of planning though,
> and is something that should be -VERY- carefully planned and documented
> before proceeding.

I don't want dektop to handle a complete desktop distribution, it's out of
scope. Desktop should focus on each desktop component, see how we should
configure it, make it evolve.

The first question is : do we want to have a vanilla desktop environement, or a
gentoo touch in them ?

If we want vanilla DE, then nothing need to be done :) Only maintain the
stuffs, but no config, no tuning...

>
>
>> * The tasks :
> This is where it becomes interesting. Who will do such discussion?
> The management team? The users? The Developers?

desktop guidelines are initiated by management team, discussed and finalized by
desktop devs, and approved by upper management structure.

things are maintained by desktop devs conforming to the desktop guidelines.

>
>
>
>> 
>> 
>> 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. 
>
>
> Thats a slippery slope to follow since it very much depends on the
> purpouse of the desktop (corporate desktops may well -not- include a
> webbrowser) 

I see everything as optional, because you are not obliged to install a web
browser. But if we think this or this web browser is attractive for a desktop
use, we might want to include it.

-- 
dams

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 10:08, dams@gentoo.org wrote:
> Spider <spider@gentoo.org> said:
> > begin  quote
> > On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 00:22:51 +0200
> >
> > dams@idm.fr wrote:
> >> * 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...
> >
> > I'm quite against this turn of development as it will split our meager
> > develpomentteam even further and direct resources at maintaining two
> > trees in paralell. Even if one is just "desktop cludge" to make the
> > DesktopDistribution work, it would require Time and Development.
>
> Maybe I badly expressed myself, I meant that desktop won't build a
> special product for desktop, won't ask if we should have a modified
> install, or if we restrict some possibility to default...
>

Let me say this about what I view as the responsibilities of -desktop. It has 
two main responsibilities, the first one is to manage all current desktop 
packages (delegated to the appropriate subprojects).

The second one is to research (yes research) how the gentoo desktop experience 
can be improved. That includes things like the menusystem. Some sensible 
session system (resp. for starting a windowmanager, which is currently quite 
nonstandard and depending on the display manager (not windowmanager)) and I'm 
sure there will be enough other things.

That research leads sometimes to proposed changes. Each of these changes will 
be judged according to a.o. how easy it is to implement them, how standard 
they are, whether they conform to the gentoo way, etc.

The general idea being that if it is possible everything should just work 
after the emerge command has been completed. This also might involve changing 
default configuration files to work with the way things are installed in 
gentoo (like specifying the correct location of programs). This does however 
not mean that just anything can be changed in the default configurations. 
Look and feel should be as standard as possible. (for example k3b should just 
work out of the box and know allready where cdrecord is installed, etc.)

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> said:

> On Thursday 28 August 2003 10:08, dams@gentoo.org wrote:
>> Spider <spider@gentoo.org> said:
>> > begin  quote
>> > On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 00:22:51 +0200
>> >
>> > dams@idm.fr wrote:
>> >> * 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...
>> >
>> > I'm quite against this turn of development as it will split our meager
>> > develpomentteam even further and direct resources at maintaining two
>> > trees in paralell. Even if one is just "desktop cludge" to make the
>> > DesktopDistribution work, it would require Time and Development.
>>
>> Maybe I badly expressed myself, I meant that desktop won't build a
>> special product for desktop, won't ask if we should have a modified
>> install, or if we restrict some possibility to default...
>>
>
> Let me say this about what I view as the responsibilities of -desktop. It has 
> two main responsibilities, the first one is to manage all current desktop 
> packages (delegated to the appropriate subprojects).
>
> The second one is to research (yes research) how the gentoo desktop experience 
> can be improved. That includes things like the menusystem. Some sensible 
> session system (resp. for starting a windowmanager, which is currently quite 
> nonstandard and depending on the display manager (not windowmanager)) and I'm 
> sure there will be enough other things.

The problem is that the conclusion will tend to tune/modify the DE, and it
seems that people here don't want that, they want vanilla DE. For ex., menu
system is the first improvment I think of, but it has a big impact on the
look&feel of the DE. If we don't want DE tuned, then we cannot use debian like
menu system.


>
> That research leads sometimes to proposed changes. Each of these changes will 
> be judged according to a.o. how easy it is to implement them, how standard 
> they are, whether they conform to the gentoo way, etc.

This can be done if we have decided before if we want or not have a gentoo
desktop touch. I don't think it is now decided.

>
> The general idea being that if it is possible everything should just work 
> after the emerge command has been completed. This also might involve changing 
> default configuration files to work with the way things are installed in 
> gentoo (like specifying the correct location of programs). This does however 
> not mean that just anything can be changed in the default configurations. 
> Look and feel should be as standard as possible. (for example k3b should just 
> work out of the box and know allready where cdrecord is installed, etc.)

The last example is not a desktop issue for me. It's the maintainer to do this,
and to ask the cdrecord maintainer informations, if he needs it.


-- 
dams

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 12:51, dams@idm.fr wrote:
>
> The problem is that the conclusion will tend to tune/modify the DE, and it
> seems that people here don't want that, they want vanilla DE. For ex., menu
> system is the first improvment I think of, but it has a big impact on the
> look&feel of the DE. If we don't want DE tuned, then we cannot use debian
> like menu system.

That is true, there might be some custom parts in the DE's. I those cases I 
think we should have some "vanilla" useflag that turns of 
customizations/hacks that are gentoo-specific and are safe to turn of
>
> > That research leads sometimes to proposed changes. Each of these changes
> > will be judged according to a.o. how easy it is to implement them, how
> > standard they are, whether they conform to the gentoo way, etc.
>
> This can be done if we have decided before if we want or not have a gentoo
> desktop touch. I don't think it is now decided.
>

I for one would like the possibility of automated menus. But I feel such a 
system needs to be respectfull of what the wm developers use. This would mean 
that some user visible changes (like different locations of files) need both 
be made optional and need to be documented.


> > The general idea being that if it is possible everything should just work
> > after the emerge command has been completed. This also might involve
> > changing default configuration files to work with the way things are
> > installed in gentoo (like specifying the correct location of programs).
> > This does however not mean that just anything can be changed in the
> > default configurations. Look and feel should be as standard as possible.
> > (for example k3b should just work out of the box and know allready where
> > cdrecord is installed, etc.)
>
> The last example is not a desktop issue for me. It's the maintainer to do
> this, and to ask the cdrecord maintainer informations, if he needs it.

No, you're right (except that k3b falls under the resp. of -desktop), but the 
general issue might be more prominent.

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> said:

> On Thursday 28 August 2003 12:51, dams@idm.fr wrote:
>>
>> The problem is that the conclusion will tend to tune/modify the DE, and it
>> seems that people here don't want that, they want vanilla DE. For ex., menu
>> system is the first improvment I think of, but it has a big impact on the
>> look&feel of the DE. If we don't want DE tuned, then we cannot use debian
>> like menu system.
>
> That is true, there might be some custom parts in the DE's. I those cases I 
> think we should have some "vanilla" useflag that turns of 
> customizations/hacks that are gentoo-specific and are safe to turn of

That's feasable, but may add some maintainance overloading

>>
>> > That research leads sometimes to proposed changes. Each of these changes
>> > will be judged according to a.o. how easy it is to implement them, how
>> > standard they are, whether they conform to the gentoo way, etc.
>>
>> This can be done if we have decided before if we want or not have a gentoo
>> desktop touch. I don't think it is now decided.
>>
>
> I for one would like the possibility of automated menus. But I feel such a 
> system needs to be respectfull of what the wm developers use. This would mean 
> that some user visible changes (like different locations of files) need both 
> be made optional and need to be documented.

I totally agree on that. We don't want to goo too deep in technical/feature
description. We could say : if the vanilla flag is not set, then by default we
have a centralized menu, respectfull of each DE.

>
>
>> > The general idea being that if it is possible everything should just work
>> > after the emerge command has been completed. This also might involve
>> > changing default configuration files to work with the way things are
>> > installed in gentoo (like specifying the correct location of programs).
>> > This does however not mean that just anything can be changed in the
>> > default configurations. Look and feel should be as standard as possible.
>> > (for example k3b should just work out of the box and know allready where
>> > cdrecord is installed, etc.)
>>
>> The last example is not a desktop issue for me. It's the maintainer to do
>> this, and to ask the cdrecord maintainer informations, if he needs it.
>
> No, you're right (except that k3b falls under the resp. of -desktop), but the 
> general issue might be more prominent.

yeah

-- 
dams

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Mike Frysinger]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 07:28, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> said:
> > On Thursday 28 August 2003 12:51, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> >> The problem is that the conclusion will tend to tune/modify the DE, and
> >> it seems that people here don't want that, they want vanilla DE. For
> >> ex., menu system is the first improvment I think of, but it has a big
> >> impact on the look&feel of the DE. If we don't want DE tuned, then we
> >> cannot use debian like menu system.
> >
> > That is true, there might be some custom parts in the DE's. I those cases
> > I think we should have some "vanilla" useflag that turns of
> > customizations/hacks that are gentoo-specific and are safe to turn of
>
> That's feasable, but may add some maintainance overloading

not really ... any code you add just put 'if [ ! `use vanilla` ] ; then' 
around ...
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8732
-mike

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Luke-Jr]

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IMO, the USE flag should be needed to enable customizations, not to disable 
them. 'vanilla' should be the default with '-*'

On Thursday 28 August 2003 01:37 pm, Mike Frysinger wrote:
> On Thursday 28 August 2003 07:28, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> > Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> said:
> > > On Thursday 28 August 2003 12:51, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> > >> The problem is that the conclusion will tend to tune/modify the DE,
> > >> and it seems that people here don't want that, they want vanilla DE.
> > >> For ex., menu system is the first improvment I think of, but it has a
> > >> big impact on the look&feel of the DE. If we don't want DE tuned, then
> > >> we cannot use debian like menu system.
> > >
> > > That is true, there might be some custom parts in the DE's. I those
> > > cases I think we should have some "vanilla" useflag that turns of
> > > customizations/hacks that are gentoo-specific and are safe to turn of
> >
> > That's feasable, but may add some maintainance overloading
>
> not really ... any code you add just put 'if [ ! `use vanilla` ] ; then'
> around ...
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8732
> -mike

- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[foser]

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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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

foser <foser@foser.dyn.warande.net> said:


[...]

>
> 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.

I totally agree with that, you found the words.

>
>> * 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.

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.

>
>> - 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.

That's a possibility, but that means that, as a linux distribution, we don't
provide additional compliance. If you keep the desktop vanilla, we don't either
provide additional desktop default. That can be what we want. But what will
provide gentoo linux, as desktop, then?


[...]

>> 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.

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

Now if the guy has to configure each workstation, it's not very convenient...

-- 
dams

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[foser]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 14:52, dams@idm.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 proposed implementation i have seen i dislike for several reasons,
but mostly because of the reasons i stated down here in my last mail
(compliance part). I think other possible solutions may be a lot more
workable and should be investigated first. But these are details, this
isn't the place to discuss this.

> >> - 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.
> 
> That's a possibility, but that means that, as a linux distribution, we don't
> provide additional compliance. If you keep the desktop vanilla, we don't either
> provide additional desktop default. That can be what we want. But what will
> provide gentoo linux, as desktop, then?

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.

> 
> 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.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Stuart Herbert]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 2:21 pm, foser wrote:
> 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.

Any box shared by two or more people really needs a solution to the menu 
system problem.

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
Stuart Herbert                                              stuart@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer                                       http://www.gentoo.org/
Beta packages for download            http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/packages/
Come and meet me in March 2004                 http://www.phparch.com/cruise/

GnuGP key id# F9AFC57C available from http://pgp.mit.edu
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Paul de Vrieze]

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Hash: SHA1

On Thursday 28 August 2003 15:21, foser wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 14:52, dams@idm.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@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Michael Cummings]

Naively stepping into this fray, how does this menu system differ from
genmenu (x11-misc/genmenu) which has in my use generated some rather nice
menus for my not-big-boy wm's (*box, wmaker, etc)?


On Thu, Aug 28, 2003 at 04:00:13PM +0200, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 

-- 


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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[foser]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 16:10, Michael Cummings wrote:
> Naively stepping into this fray, how does this menu system differ from
> genmenu (x11-misc/genmenu) which has in my use generated some rather nice
> menus for my not-big-boy wm's (*box, wmaker, etc)?

Well that is blackboxed the route i would like to go with the 'gentoo
menu' idea. Although i think it's implementation lacks. I think it
should generate a menu from desktop items only, which are located in a
few different places over the years of upstream development by now
converging towards the freedesktop spec.

I wasn't aware this script existed btw.

- foser


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[foser]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 16:00, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> 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).

I know it isn't, but it's one of the uses. I was thinking when i wrote
it i should've explicitly added that it wasn't all this is about, but
thought it unneeded. Wrong again, it was just an example.

I was later on hammering at the fact that the wm's better be adapted by
us than us providing layers of stitchy support on distro level.

> 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

Vanilla flag for what, if it's not good enough for everyone it shouldn't
be needed. Although we are still talking details of 1 proposed project
here with 1 possible implementation in mind. I don't think that is what
this thread was meant to be about.

> 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)

All interesting stuff i know about and i agree with it would be nice to
have implemented. But i react to the initial mail here which implies
much bigger changes. As said i'm not against patching up stuff a little
when functional.

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

I assume these 'X applications' you speak of don't even install desktop
items at all. This could be easily fixed by providing current
freedesktop spec following items.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Spider]

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begin  quote
On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 16:00:13 +0200
Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> wrote:

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

No, and this is in many cases a -good- thing.  Gnome does not -need- to
provide menu entries for xcalc, xmag, xeyes and a lot of other  X
applications.  To include theese on a default menu would go against
guidelines and common sense.  

This means that for many such applications a good line of reasoning has
to be added so our default "newbie-friendly" desktop doesn't end looking
like L random User 's desktop did in the year 1997 after 1.5 years of
active installation in windows 95. ie, it would be a clear sodomization
of a good interface. 



However, there are some points coming up otherways in the thread that we
have to bring up front.

1) No major redesigns of the DE's.
This is important, we shan't make all icons look like different versions
of larry, replace all Foot's , K's and other such things with a G', make
the default to include Gentoo Tip of the Day, add Gentoo.org links on
every desktop, make all desktops install Evolution and add it as the
default mailhandler everywhere "because its the best" .

2) We need a consensus and smooth integration of tools. This is the more
important part of a Gentoo desktop.  A cdburner shall work for users in
the 'cdrw' group, and preferrably without running a Druid or Wizard.

3) Multimedia. 
  The various DE's partially integrate their own multimedia
applications, but theese all use common backend libraries.

We need somone/s to dump all quicktime library related bugs, and that
takes care of libmad and other background things (lame, flac, libid3 and
so on)  wherea's the various DE's make sure the end user tools work as
desired.

This is a thankless task that has to be done.
(fex, gstreamer + related is part of the gnome herd, whereas ffmpeg,
xine-lib, lame, libogg, libvorbis, libmad and a lot of other background
things that need to work has to be taken care of. )

4) Menu's
  There's a lot of controversy here.  I want the installation of such a
system  to be a consious act and preferrably kept off per default. 
(genmenu is a good example here. very good even.)

5) extra-DE integration.
  This mainly belongs upstream, as DE's move towards common standards
this is something we can lean back and reap the fruits of.


6) intra-DE modifications
  I'm all for the various DE's implementing or removing features, as
long as its maintainable, and sane.  Adding highstrung pipedreams that
can't be made to work properly is not our thing.  Leave this to
Mandrake, SuSE and RedHat. They are good at it.


7) "Vanilla flag"  
  This shouldn't be necessary. Anything thats intrusive enough to
require something like that needs to be thought over -veeery- carefully
and is a bug per design.

adding an option to remove a broken feature is -wrong- and the
implementor of said patch and flag should be made to read "A discipline
for Software Engineering" by Watts S. Humphrey. And follow the rules
described therein.

8) Extra
What needs to be made work though, is a consistent set of graphics to be
made avaiable, and perhaps default.  Fex, the GRUB loader should have a
graphics design similar to the framebuffer background, as well as the
GDM and KDM + elogin themes.  

This sort of branding is not intrusive on the user (framebuffer
background is the most intrusive one, and should and could well be
disabled by default)


9)  Decisions and communications
All theese things need to be properly discussed and in the open. I was
shocked to find out I suddenly got a manager who thought I was to run my
decisions about including applications to the Gnome desktop by them, as
well as the idea of a single uniformed Gentoo desktop is completely
-appalling- to me.   In this regard the ruling cabal (ie, management)
have flunked completely and their actions ,  and  more
importantly, inactions are to be questioned.  This whole process could
have been dealt with far nicer. 


End rant, 
  Spider




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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Peter Ruskin]

On Thursday 28 Aug 2003 18:44, Spider wrote:
> 6) intra-DE modifications
>   I'm all for the various DE's implementing or removing features, as
> long as its maintainable, and sane.  Adding highstrung pipedreams
> that can't be made to work properly is not our thing.  Leave this to
> Mandrake, SuSE and RedHat. They are good at it.

I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said in this mail, Spider; 
especially point 6.  BTW, dams used to work at Mandrake - it shows.

Peter
-- 
======================================================================
Gentoo:	Portage 2.0.48-r5 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r1)
kernel-2.4.22_pre2-gss i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1600+
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[foser]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 21:14, Peter Ruskin wrote:
> BTW, dams used to work at Mandrake - it shows.

No reason to get personal on a public list, I'm sure Dams -like everyone
else here- is only trying to improve Gentoo even more. Making the
experience even better.

- foser


--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Peter Ruskin]

On Thursday 28 Aug 2003 20:24, foser wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 21:14, Peter Ruskin wrote:
> > BTW, dams used to work at Mandrake - it shows.
>
> No reason to get personal on a public list, I'm sure Dams -like
> everyone else here- is only trying to improve Gentoo even more.
> Making the experience even better.
>
> - foser

Sorry...think I'll stop following this thread - I don't like me when I 
get reactive.

Peter
-- 
======================================================================
Gentoo:	Portage 2.0.48-r5 (default-x86-1.4, gcc-3.2.3, glibc-2.3.2-r1)
kernel-2.4.22_pre2-gss i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1600+
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

Peter Ruskin <aoyu93@dsl.pipex.com> said:

> On Thursday 28 Aug 2003 18:44, Spider wrote:
>> 6) intra-DE modifications
>>   I'm all for the various DE's implementing or removing features, as
>> long as its maintainable, and sane.  Adding highstrung pipedreams
>> that can't be made to work properly is not our thing.  Leave this to
>> Mandrake, SuSE and RedHat. They are good at it.
>
> I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said in this mail, Spider; 
> especially point 6.  BTW, dams used to work at Mandrake - it shows.

it shows... It shows that I applied some of my leader rule : come with a
already built idea, let people be desapointed, let them argue, fight, so that
they defend their point of views, and collect the conclusions.

The only conclusion for now is that we'll do a vanilla DE compliant with gentoo
core, with proper default stuff, working together if installed.

I'm happy with that. I just want to make sure that's what you want : we won't
have gentoo graphical touch, no default background, no gentoo menu by default,
and so on.

On the other hand, I feel like you want something else, but don't know exactly
what. We can continue discussing about that to find it out.

About the mdk and the personnal things : the best way to be better than your
enemy, is to stop hating him.

-- 
dams

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Spider]

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begin  quote
On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:46:34 +0200
dams@idm.fr wrote:


> it shows... It shows that I applied some of my leader rule : come with
> a already built idea, let people be desapointed, let them argue,
> fight, so that they defend their point of views, and collect the
> conclusions.


I should point out that this is also discouraged against because it
fosters an "aggressive culture" and dissent within development teams,
and may also undermine faith, whereas the method of carefully selecting
points one at a time for discussion will work far smoother and with less
irregularities, however may not be as immediate?

//Spider


 


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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[foser]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 23:34, Spider wrote:
> begin  quote
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:46:34 +0200
> dams@idm.fr wrote:
> 
> 
> > it shows... It shows that I applied some of my leader rule : come with
> > a already built idea, let people be desapointed, let them argue,
> > fight, so that they defend their point of views, and collect the
> > conclusions.
> 
> 
> I should point out that this is also discouraged against because it
> fosters an "aggressive culture" and dissent within development teams,
> and may also undermine faith, whereas the method of carefully selecting
> points one at a time for discussion will work far smoother and with less
> irregularities, however may not be as immediate?

And i very much doubt that was your initial intent. If you really had
done that on purpose, you would never have mentioned it. Nice try.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

foser <foser@foser.dyn.warande.net> said:

> On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 23:34, Spider wrote:
>> begin  quote
>> On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:46:34 +0200
>> dams@idm.fr wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> > it shows... It shows that I applied some of my leader rule : come with
>> > a already built idea, let people be desapointed, let them argue,
>> > fight, so that they defend their point of views, and collect the
>> > conclusions.
>> 
>> 
>> I should point out that this is also discouraged against because it
>> fosters an "aggressive culture" and dissent within development teams,
>> and may also undermine faith, whereas the method of carefully selecting
>> points one at a time for discussion will work far smoother and with less
>> irregularities, however may not be as immediate?
>
> And i very much doubt that was your initial intent. If you really had
> done that on purpose, you would never have mentioned it. Nice try.

well, it's still the truth. It's just an habit I have, I'm sorry if you took it too
hard. By explaining it, I want to show that I don't wanna hide anything.

I don't care about shame, or being seen as a newbie.

-- 
dams

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

Spider <spider@gentoo.org> said:

>
> 9)  Decisions and communications
> All theese things need to be properly discussed and in the open. I was
> shocked to find out I suddenly got a manager who thought I was to run my
> decisions about including applications to the Gnome desktop by them, as
> well as the idea of a single uniformed Gentoo desktop is completely
> -appalling- to me.

What does that mean? do you already hate me ? :) C'mon, I started with the
classical linux desktop description (mdk, rh, ...) and made it fight with your
vision of gentoo desktop.

Sad but true, the only answerwe have is that we don't want their desktop. But
every propositions to change things from the vanilla state won't fit everybody.
So the bottom line is the vanilla state, for now. I'm trying to make you all
react so that we can find something else.

We won't agree on menu structure, because some of us will find that it's too
intrusive. Why change the background of frame buffer, loader, and not the DE
background?

And if you change the background with a big G, then why not change the default
theme? Each time we'll want to change a little thing, we will fight, argue, and
so on, because we want to have a gentoo desktop without changing anything.

I'd say : let don't do "gentoo desktop"! we just maintain the desktop vanilla
stuff. Default config is the vanilla one, changed to fit the (non desktop)
modification that have been done to the core gentoo. If the guy wants an
unified menu, he emerges the menu system, we provide the good config file. If
he wants a background for the frame buffer, he can put one himself...

That's the best solution : let's customize every pieces without thinking about
the global desktop experience. The user will choose which pieces to put
together.

I think that's the debian desktop. That's not that bad, debian desktop is rock
solid, stable, good looking once configured, and powerfull if you install the
powerfull stuff.

But you seem to want something else...

>   In this regard the ruling cabal (ie, management)
> have flunked completely and their actions ,  and  more
> importantly, inactions are to be questioned.  This whole process could
> have been dealt with far nicer. 

I'm sorry about that, I learned I could be the desktop leader 10 mins before we
argue together on irc.

-- 
dams

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Spider]

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begin  quote
On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 22:35:05 +0200
dams@idm.fr wrote:

> Spider <spider@gentoo.org> said:
> 
> >
> > 9)  Decisions and communications
> > All theese things need to be properly discussed and in the open. I
> > was shocked to find out I suddenly got a manager who thought I was
> > to run my decisions about including applications to the Gnome
> > desktop by them, as well as the idea of a single uniformed Gentoo
> > desktop is completely-appalling- to me.
> 

> What does that mean? do you already hate me ? :) 

No, this was in no way a personal assault and I'm very sorry that you
choose to take it as such, and continued with the replies out of order
when doing so.  

I tried to carefully keep issues here apart, in order to further a
discussion about points I had. 


> 
> Sad but true, the only answerwe have is that we don't want their
> desktop. But every propositions to change things from the vanilla
> state won't fit everybody. So the bottom line is the vanilla state,
> for now. 

ok, thats a good start. I hope you refer to my point above here that
decisions about changing this "for now" are made in the open and
including the developers who are in line for it.  I really don't want to
find myself in a situation where there are global allcompassing
decisions made about things like this without open discussion and
communication.  I realize that for as long as this is a privately held
company, and perhaps even after that, Daniel has final say.

> I'm trying to make you all react so that we can find something else.

Erm, I wish to think I did react here before, and also tried to be
constructive in how I looked at things. Perhaps you disagree.



> Why change the background of frame buffer, loader,  and not the DE
> background?

I consider Splash-screens (Grub, Lilo, "Starting Gnome" ,  "loading 
KDE" )  and Login prompts to be good places for branding because they do
not infere with the function of the desktop, and don't intrude on our
users. 

This is also why I'm opposed to changing the desktop background, and
default theme's and icons. 



> I'd say : let don't do "gentoo desktop"! we just maintain the desktop
> vanilla stuff. Default config is the vanilla one, changed to fit the
> (non desktop) modification that have been done to the core gentoo. If
> the guy wants an unified menu, he emerges the menu system, we provide
> the good config file. If he wants a background for the frame buffer,
> he can put one himself...
> 
> That's the best solution : let's customize every pieces without
> thinking about the global desktop experience. The user will choose
> which pieces to put together.

This is a good way of doing it, and one I agree with completely.  

(That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see a uniform theme for Grub,
bootsplash and GDM screens, so the computer doesn't look like its doing
a fast-forward between themes on bootup ;)

> I think that's the debian desktop. That's not that bad, debian desktop
> is rock solid, stable, good looking once configured, and powerfull if
> you install the powerfull stuff.
> 
> But you seem to want something else...

I think I stated the things I'd like to see pretty well in the previous
post to the list.



 
> >   In this regard the ruling cabal (ie, management)
> > have flunked completely and their actions ,  and  more
> > importantly, inactions are to be questioned.  This whole process
> > could have been dealt with far nicer. 
> 
> I'm sorry about that, I learned I could be the desktop leader 10 mins
> before we argue together on irc.

No reason to be, you weren't the one behind this decision. 
 
//Spider

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

Spider <spider@gentoo.org> said:


[...]

>> I'd say : let don't do "gentoo desktop"! we just maintain the desktop
>> vanilla stuff. Default config is the vanilla one, changed to fit the
>> (non desktop) modification that have been done to the core gentoo. If
>> the guy wants an unified menu, he emerges the menu system, we provide
>> the good config file. If he wants a background for the frame buffer,
>> he can put one himself...
>> 
>> That's the best solution : let's customize every pieces without
>> thinking about the global desktop experience. The user will choose
>> which pieces to put together.
>
> This is a good way of doing it, and one I agree with completely.  
>
> (That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see a uniform theme for Grub,
> bootsplash and GDM screens, so the computer doesn't look like its doing
> a fast-forward between themes on bootup ;)

I also totally agree.

What do the other think about that? Can we start with this as an accepted
thing, and try to be more precise on the other points?

-- 
dams

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[foser]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 23:21, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> I also totally agree.
> 
> What do the other think about that? Can we start with this as an accepted
> thing, and try to be more precise on the other points?

Well, i'm not against non-intrusive theming here and there (with
caution). The hard part is too get a good artist who also sticks around
for updates and improvements over time. So we can agree, but still get
nowhere.

But this discussion ends in all sorts of details, while there should be
a focus on defining what a Desktop TLP would do.

- foser


--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 19:44, Spider wrote:
> begin  quote
> On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 16:00:13 +0200
>
> Paul de Vrieze <pauldv@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Gnome's configuration does not include a menu system with all
> > installed X applications
>
> No, and this is in many cases a -good- thing.  Gnome does not -need- to
> provide menu entries for xcalc, xmag, xeyes and a lot of other  X
> applications.  To include theese on a default menu would go against
> guidelines and common sense.
>
But in other cases a not so good thing. (The reason that I like a good menu 
system to be available)

> This means that for many such applications a good line of reasoning has
> to be added so our default "newbie-friendly" desktop doesn't end looking
> like L random User 's desktop did in the year 1997 after 1.5 years of
> active installation in windows 95. ie, it would be a clear sodomization
> of a good interface.
>
Certainly, I know the hell of installing in windows. It's not even so much the 
fact that all applications are installed as the fact that they all want a 
toplevel presence making a big cluttered menu of software vendors

>
>
> However, there are some points coming up otherways in the thread that we
> have to bring up front.
>
> 1) No major redesigns of the DE's.
> This is important, we shan't make all icons look like different versions
> of larry, replace all Foot's , K's and other such things with a G', make
> the default to include Gentoo Tip of the Day, add Gentoo.org links on
> every desktop, make all desktops install Evolution and add it as the
> default mailhandler everywhere "because its the best" .
>
I wouldn't mind people creating themes with cows in them, and could be 
persuaded to include them in kde, but I basically agree with you and would 
not like to go the redhat direction either (especially since their magic does 
not allways work creating a big mess).

> 2) We need a consensus and smooth integration of tools. This is the more
> important part of a Gentoo desktop.  A cdburner shall work for users in
> the 'cdrw' group, and preferrably without running a Druid or Wizard.
>
Couldn't agree more

> 3) Multimedia.
>   The various DE's partially integrate their own multimedia
> applications, but theese all use common backend libraries.
>
There are also multimedia applications that are not tied to DE's at all so I 
think we need a multimedia subproject too.

<cut>
>
> 4) Menu's
>   There's a lot of controversy here.  I want the installation of such a
> system  to be a consious act and preferrably kept off per default.
> (genmenu is a good example here. very good even.)

I agree, and I believe that is the direction the people who are working on it 
are going to.

>
> 5) extra-DE integration.
>   This mainly belongs upstream, as DE's move towards common standards
> this is something we can lean back and reap the fruits of.
>
Certainly, but there sometimes is more then just DE's, what about the many 
more standalone windowmanagers.

>
> 6) intra-DE modifications
>   I'm all for the various DE's implementing or removing features, as
> long as its maintainable, and sane.  Adding highstrung pipedreams that
> can't be made to work properly is not our thing.  Leave this to
> Mandrake, SuSE and RedHat. They are good at it.
>

Certainly.

<cut>

> 8) Extra
> What needs to be made work though, is a consistent set of graphics to be
> made avaiable, and perhaps default.  Fex, the GRUB loader should have a
> graphics design similar to the framebuffer background, as well as the
> GDM and KDM + elogin themes.
>
my idea of the vanilla flag would be for this kind of thing. To have the 
default gdm theme being the default instead of the gentoo one (which I like).

> This sort of branding is not intrusive on the user (framebuffer
> background is the most intrusive one, and should and could well be
> disabled by default)

> 9)  Decisions and communications
> All theese things need to be properly discussed and in the open. I was
> shocked to find out I suddenly got a manager who thought I was to run my
> decisions about including applications to the Gnome desktop by them, as
> well as the idea of a single uniformed Gentoo desktop is completely
> -appalling- to me.   In this regard the ruling cabal (ie, management)
> have flunked completely and their actions ,  and  more
> importantly, inactions are to be questioned.  This whole process could
> have been dealt with far nicer.

For me the final decision has not been made yet, but I believe there is a need 
for a -desktop toplevel. For the gnome and kde teams I guess its main role 
would be coordination, not making all kinds of decisions the gnome team is 
capable of making.

Paul

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

foser <foser@foser.dyn.warande.net> said:

> On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 14:52, dams@idm.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 proposed implementation i have seen i dislike for several reasons,
> but mostly because of the reasons i stated down here in my last mail
> (compliance part). I think other possible solutions may be a lot more
> workable and should be investigated first. But these are details, this
> isn't the place to discuss this.

ok, but, I doubt we'll find a lot to do without braking vanilla-ness

>
>> >> - 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.
>> 
>> That's a possibility, but that means that, as a linux distribution, we don't
>> provide additional compliance. If you keep the desktop vanilla, we don't either
>> provide additional desktop default. That can be what we want. But what will
>> provide gentoo linux, as desktop, then?
>
> 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).

ok, but maybe she wants that when she installs something, it shows
automaticcally in the menu, but she doesn't want to have a cluttered menu

>
>> 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.

ok, we can do this with gnome-office and so on, but it's a lot of
overloading...

I'd say, after all these opinions, the conclusion would be that gentoo is not
desktop oriented, but the desktop project handle the dekstop software, and make
sure they work great together, that's all.

>
>> 
>> Now if the guy has to configure each workstation, it's not very convenient...
>
> Humm, that wouldn't be a bright guy.

hmm, I have to say : they are not bright most of the cases :) When you have to
handle customers, the reality may affraid

> 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.
>
> - foser
>
> --
> gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

-- 
dams

--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 16:59, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> hmm, I have to say : they are not bright most of the cases :) When you have
> to handle customers, the reality may affraid

If they were, they would be developers themselves ;-)

Paul

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

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Jason Stubbs]

On Thursday 28 August 2003 22:21, foser wrote:
> On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 14:52, dams@idm.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.
>
> The proposed implementation i have seen i dislike for several reasons,
> but mostly because of the reasons i stated down here in my last mail
> (compliance part). I think other possible solutions may be a lot more
> workable and should be investigated first. But these are details, this
> isn't the place to discuss this.

There is currently work going on to create a unified desktop menu system with 
the hopes of integration with portage.Check out:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=66754

To sum up, it is an optional system that will create menu items for useful 
applications following guidelines on freedesktop.org for organisation. The 
issue of WM specific menus (such as KDE desktop settings) has been touched on 
but I don't believe has been resolved yet.

I've posted to the forum to alert the head developer of the project of this 
discussion. Hopefully, he'll clarify the idea.

Regards,
Jason

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Chris Gianelloni]

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On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 08:52, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> 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
> 
> Now if the guy has to configure each workstation, it's not very convenient...

Actually, the corporate world works quite a bit differently.

- Decide on standard hardware/software platform
- Install software onto chosen hardware platform, including setting up
all standard software
- create Ghost image of "standard" platform
- multicast images to all other machines

Even in the most complex situations, the configuration is only done
once.

It is impossible to create a good "corporate desktop" because quite
simply, no two places will ever have the same needs.  Creating a simple,
easy-to-use default setup is the closest you can come to this goal. 
There will always be custom software to install that is specific to that
one company/office/department that is different from everyone else.  Why
add a bunch of cruft that isn't needed and only needs to be removed
later?

I honestly think the "desktop" is a bad idea as a goal.  It is paramount
to going to the school bully's house, calling him out, then slapping
him.  We should really be focusing on making everything in our
distribution more consistent and accessible.  The end-product desktop is
always something different from the original and is always tailored to
the specific user.  Making things easier to locate and having a
consistent interface is the best way of competing in the desktop arena. 
Also, documentation is definitely most important.  My hat's off to the
documentation team and to everyone whom has submitted documentation. 
The reason Gentoo is as popular as it is today is 100% because of the
amazing amount of resources we have available for a user to find the
answers to any questions that he may have.

My conclusion is this:  Make the system more consistent and convenient,
and the desktop will follow.

-- 
Chris Gianelloni
Developer, Gentoo Linux
Games Team

Is your power animal a penguin?

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> said:


[...]

>
> It is impossible to create a good "corporate desktop" because quite
> simply, no two places will ever have the same needs.  Creating a simple,
> easy-to-use default setup is the closest you can come to this goal. 

That's what makes redhat and suse so popular in corporates. It's not difficult.
But if badly done (rh, suse), it clutters the whole distro.


> There will always be custom software to install that is specific to that
> one company/office/department that is different from everyone else.  Why
> add a bunch of cruft that isn't needed and only needs to be removed
> later?

I don't want to do that. They install the additional stuff. But the default is
user friendlier than the vanilla DE.

-- 
dams

--
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Stuart Herbert]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 4:03 pm, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> That's what makes redhat and suse so popular in corporates. It's not
> difficult. But if badly done (rh, suse), it clutters the whole distro.

Don't agree.  RedHat and SuSE are popular in corporates because they go out 
and do the deals.  They partner with other companies who have products that 
the corporates want.

Best regards,
Stu
-- 
Stuart Herbert                                              stuart@gentoo.org
Gentoo Developer                                       http://www.gentoo.org/
Beta packages for download            http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/packages/
Come and meet me in March 2004                 http://www.phparch.com/cruise/

GnuGP key id# F9AFC57C available from http://pgp.mit.edu
Key fingerprint = 31FB 50D4 1F88 E227 F319  C549 0C2F 80BA F9AF C57C
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

Stuart Herbert <stuart@gentoo.org> said:

> On Thursday 28 August 2003 4:03 pm, dams@idm.fr wrote:
>> That's what makes redhat and suse so popular in corporates. It's not
>> difficult. But if badly done (rh, suse), it clutters the whole distro.
>
> Don't agree.  RedHat and SuSE are popular in corporates because they go out 
> and do the deals.  They partner with other companies who have products that 
> the corporates want.

That too, that's right. But redhat is imho orienting their distro to meat the
corporate desktop.
>
> Best regards,
> Stu
> -- 
> Stuart Herbert                                              stuart@gentoo.org
> Gentoo Developer                                       http://www.gentoo.org/
> Beta packages for download            http://dev.gentoo.org/~stuart/packages/
> Come and meet me in March 2004                 http://www.phparch.com/cruise/
>
> GnuGP key id# F9AFC57C available from http://pgp.mit.edu
> Key fingerprint = 31FB 50D4 1F88 E227 F319  C549 0C2F 80BA F9AF C57C
> --
>

-- 
dams

--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[jonah benton]

On Thursday 28 August 2003 11:36 am, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> Stuart Herbert <stuart@gentoo.org> said:
> > On Thursday 28 August 2003 4:03 pm, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> >> That's what makes redhat and suse so popular in corporates. It's not
> >> difficult. But if badly done (rh, suse), it clutters the whole distro.
> >
> > Don't agree.  RedHat and SuSE are popular in corporates because they go
> > out and do the deals.  They partner with other companies who have
> > products that the corporates want.
>
> That too, that's right. But redhat is imho orienting their distro to meat
> the corporate desktop.
>

As a happy gentoo user, I beg- please don't try to do this. Let someone start 
a business to do what's involved in building/selling/supporting a 
gentoo-based desktop solution in a business context. Don't take that on as 
part of the 501c3 organization.

Jonah


--
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Thursday 28 August 2003 13:15, foser wrote:
>
> To sum it up : everything non-console.

No, also console applications like pine and mutt will probably considered 
desktop applications. Basically there will be a partition of all ebuilds into 
probably (we are not ready with it yet): -desktop, -base, -server and 
- -toolkit

Of these -toolkit is the most vague but it basically includes things like 
libxml, various programming languages (not gcc which is part of -base), 
tcl/tk and other packages that enduser packages build upon. I know there will 
be some tough judgements with certain packages but desktop basically includes 
those packages that someone uses when using the computer as 
desktop/workstation and has nothing to do with socalled desktop environments 
as kde and gnome

Paul

- -- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[foser]

On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 16:04, Paul de Vrieze wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> On Thursday 28 August 2003 13:15, foser wrote:
> >
> > To sum it up : everything non-console.
> 
> No, also console applications like pine and mutt will probably considered 
> desktop applications. Basically there will be a partition of all ebuilds into 
> probably (we are not ready with it yet): -desktop, -base, -server and 
> - -toolkit

Those 3 or 4 cursed/console apps vs. all GUI or all non-enduser console
apps, big point to bring up.

'Op alle slakken zout leggen' in ye olde dutch. You shouldn't be pushing
to define everything on every level, i thought that was what this whole
TLP thing was good for. Better to have them just handled by some mail
group or irc group, we're getting into the herds realm here.  Pine is
part of net-mail herd (or something), that is part of TLP Desktop i
assume. So in the end we're on the same line. Getting into details
again. Who brought this up.

> Of these -toolkit is the most vague but it basically includes things like 
> libxml, various programming languages (not gcc which is part of -base), 
> tcl/tk and other packages that enduser packages build upon. I know there will 
> be some tough judgements with certain packages but desktop basically includes 
> those packages that someone uses when using the computer as 
> desktop/workstation and has nothing to do with socalled desktop environments 
> as kde and gnome

I don't know if this is all a good idea, this will result in herds
maintaining packages for different TLP or in case this isn't allowed in
herds not maintaining packages they have always maintained or are the
major users of. TLP's concerning ebuild groups (as mentioned above
-base, -server, etc) should be defined by control over herds, not over
individual packages.

- foser


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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Seemant Kulleen]

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Perhaps Damien came off wrong initially, but please people cut him some
slack.  Things have gotten a little personal in the argument.  I think
it's better to keep the discussion focused on the initial concerns, viz.
what exactly makes up a Desktop TLP and why.  I would tend to think that
the TLP would be non-intrusive to the individual projects involved, ie
gnome, kde, commonbox, xfce4, e, and so on.  I think dams is only trying
to make it, on the whole, more co-ordinated, with the aim of improving
communication across them and across to other projects (like the lower
level libs and what-not).

Additionally, Paul mentioned the kde herd being a little too all
encompassing, which is a separate issue -- but it is entirely up to him
and the kde@gentoo.org people to create the sub-herds as they see fit.

Thanks,


-- 
Seemant Kulleen
Developer and Project Co-ordinator,
Gentoo Linux					http://dev.gentoo.org/~seemant

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Luke-Jr]

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Could someone summarize this thread please? I'm somewhat interested in the 
discussion, but don't really have time to go through reading all 50 or so new 
messages... o.o;;
Thanks.
- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams]

Luke-Jr <luke-jr@gentoo.org> said:

> Could someone summarize this thread please? I'm somewhat interested in the 
> discussion, but don't really have time to go through reading all 50 or so new 
> messages... o.o;;

summary attempt (please correct me if we still don't agree)

desktop will handle the desktop component. It'll try to stick with vanilla
desktops as much as possible, but provide good default, and uniformization when
it's possible and non-intrusive. In all case, additions should be easily (un)pluggable.

About non visible stuff, desktop will try to make things work out of the box.
Ie, addapt config/default data so that they better interact with gentoo core
system.

Some questions to answer :

- do we want X in desktop or in base or elsewhere? it seems we tend to put X in
  base, but not included in default system

- should we have rules to decide if such modification will change the DE too
  much from vanilla state?

- probably other things, but my head is in a bad state right now

-- 
dams

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Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[Luke-Jr]

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Ok that somewhat explains what 'desktop' is... But what has the *discussion* 
been discussing? :)

On Friday 29 August 2003 02:06 pm, dams@idm.fr wrote:
> Luke-Jr <luke-jr@gentoo.org> said:
> > Could someone summarize this thread please? I'm somewhat interested in
> > the discussion, but don't really have time to go through reading all 50
> > or so new messages... o.o;;
>
> summary attempt (please correct me if we still don't agree)
>
> desktop will handle the desktop component. It'll try to stick with vanilla
> desktops as much as possible, but provide good default, and uniformization
> when it's possible and non-intrusive. In all case, additions should be
> easily (un)pluggable.
>
> About non visible stuff, desktop will try to make things work out of the
> box. Ie, addapt config/default data so that they better interact with
> gentoo core system.
>
> Some questions to answer :
>
> - do we want X in desktop or in base or elsewhere? it seems we tend to put
> X in base, but not included in default system
>
> - should we have rules to decide if such modification will change the DE
> too much from vanilla state?
>
> - probably other things, but my head is in a bad state right now

- -- 
Luke-Jr
Developer, Gentoo Linux
http://www.gentoo.org/
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