On Wed, Oct 23, 2002 at 10:09:01AM -0400, Luke Seubert scribbled: [snip] > > That doesn't even sound great for power users. A power user might well > > choose his own terminal emulator, but does he regularly switch between > > six or seven different ones? > > > Excellent point. Yes, provided that one terminal satisfies all needs, which is not the case currently. I use mlterm when I need good localized output without fiddling with fonts and multi-gnome-terminal when I want to save space on the desktop by using tabs (mgt is much faster than gnome-terminal2 and doesn't have the problem with fonts gnome-terminal sometimes exhibits). Also mlterm while great isn't configurable easily enough for a newbie... So, it would be a hard choice to pick The One And Only(tm) terminal. > > Whatever we do, we're sure to get bad reviews for it. > > > > Heh. Yeah, you have a good point. Debian has always been a very powerful, > flexible, and configurable system. Desktop Debian seeks to change that > somewhat, by making default choices (hopefully really good ones ;-) and > limiting other choices for the sake of simplicity and newbie easiness. > > Doing this will upset some folks who either don't like the default choices, > or who want the full range, power, and flexibility of regular Debian. > Desktop Debian I am sure will carefully listen to reasonable > complaints/feedack about the default choices. Those folks who want a > totally customizable Debian probably shouldn't bother installing the Desktop > Debian variant. I suppose it should be possible and not very hard to create *-settings debs, for example: gnome-standard-settings*.deb gnome-desktop-settings*.deb kde-standard-settings*.deb kde-desktop-settings*.deb which files would contain the customized settings for what we have now and the Desktop Debian variant. It would probably require extending the alternatives system to the configuration files, though (or perhaps making the config files auto-generated in postinst and removed/backed up/migrated in prerm etc.?) > This desktop thing is something very different for Debian, and slightly > heretical. It will draw its fair share of flames, some of which will be > helpful, and others a waste of bandwidth. The goal is not to please all of > the traditional Debian developers and users who have already got their > systems tweaked to their satisfaction. Indeed, it is impossible to devise a > common desktop for such a diverse group of people and preferences that > pleases everyone. Rather, the goal is to develop an installation option > that creates a simple, newbie friendly desktop for Joe Average computer > user. That is, "Software Which Just Works". (Gee, I hope Xandros didn't > trademark that phrase. :-) Again, it's not as much a matter of the software in question but rather of its configuration files/databases. The only problem, I guess, would be for users switching between the various setting "environments". In the case of GNOME it would require creating a utility that would modify the user's gconf database (with their consent, of course) the first time the new "environment" is started. regards, marek
Attachment:
pgpE8cm0GlF11.pgp
Description: PGP signature