Yeah, in my opinion it should be easy to conceive a set of packages that 
even eschews Firefox in favor of something more efficent (which is to 
say, less complex to maintain, as well as smaller/faster), like Dillo 
(dillo.org) for example.

Ross, Gary (G.A.) wrote:

>I agree that some applications have become foundational. But let's also
>look at where the client is going in general. In the Corporate world,
>thinner clients are becoming in. Not necessarily just display devices,
>like SunRay, but also having CPU and memory for local processing of some
>applications like a browser, or media player. We'll call them "thin
>PC's".
>
>That said, applications do need to be divided into "foundation", and
>"everything else". The foundation apps are part of the OS, and are
>installed on each system. Everything else must be able to run off a
>shared directory (NFS mount). 
>
>Care needs to be taken when labeling "foundation" apps. Too many of
>them, and you have the same problem the LINUX environment is having,
>with all of the interdependencies. Please let's not go down the path of
>having to load 30 packages, just to get a single application running.  
>
>Just my $0.02, as a user and customer...
>
>Gary A. Ross
>Network Operations Architect
>Ford Motor Company
>gross at ford.com
>Phone: (313) 390-4313
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: desktop-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org
>[mailto:desktop-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of Eric
>Boutilier
>Sent: Monday, May 15, 2006 8:45 PM
>To: opensolaris-discuss; desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org;
>companion-discuss at opensolaris.org
>Subject: [desktop-discuss] Thoughts on freeware ports and GUI
>library"sub-stacks"
>
>Thinking (and toying with) the concept of a minimal desktop over the 
>weekend, I got to thinking about how Firefox has become an indispensable
>
>desktop application, and how it is based on the GTK+ (Glib, etc.) 
>"sub-stack" library set. The point being that even for non-GNOME desktop
>
>environments, Glib, Pango, ATK, et al. have become foundational. In 
>other words, these days that set of libraries are, for all intents and 
>purposes, no less essential than say, the X Window (Xorg) sub-stack.
>
>Looking at things that way, it's also true that every Solaris freeware 
>stack project either diverges from OpenSolaris or not at the GUI (GTK+) 
>"sub-stack" level. For example, the independent distros have diverged --
>
>albeit, out of necessity -- at this level. (Those projects have such a 
>broad scope they have to maintain their own GUI/GTK+ library stacks.)
>
>In contrast, the projects that have not diverged (that I can think of) 
>are: The Companion project, Pat Mauritz' pmpkg project, the 
>spec-files-extra repository, and Sun's Firefox/Thunderbird ports (found 
>in the Mozilla contrib repo). In other words, these projects -- although
>
>independent of each other -- standardize on a common GUI library base; 
>and therefore (correct me if I'm wrong here) together they comprise a 
>large pool of highly compatible ports.
>
>Eric
>_______________________________________________
>desktop-discuss mailing list
>desktop-discuss at opensolaris.org
>  
>


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