Re: [gentoo-dev] desktop

[dams@idm.fr]

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

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