On 14/04/09 Mark Knecht said:

> While not a KDE user I echo your thoughts. I'm personally a bit
> worried about Gentoo overlords sort of pushing this hald thing with
> reasons like 'Gnome's automounting depends on it'. If I wanted
> automounting that's OK, but what if I don't? Eventually someone will
> remove hal as a USE flag and then what do we do?

Would they do that? Choice is the only reason I'm using Gentoo. If my choices
go away then I'll just go back to Debian.

> I started in Linux about 12 years ago and the best environment for my
> needs at that time (audio recording, 32 channels of live audio,
> real-time kernels, Ardour, etc.) was fluxbox. Low overhead. Easily
> customizable. Every time I get fed up with Gnome I go back to fluxbox.
> Takes a few minutes to build, not hours like Gnome or days like KDE.
> Not a great environment for my wife and kids, so they get Gnome.

I tend to do the same. I also use older hardware, which is half the point of
using Linux to me, and Gentoo. If Gentoo starts requiring cutting-edge
hardware then it will have outlived its usefulness to me, and defeated its own
purpose, IMHO.

> I hope the future of Linux desktops doesn't look anything like
> Windows. Sometimes it seems to me we're moving too far that direction
> too fast.

Yes, the drive for adoption by Windows users is being driven by the lowest
common denominator.

Mike
-- 
Michael P. Soulier <msoulier@digitaltorque.ca>
"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a
touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."
--Albert Einstein