On Tue, 29 Oct 2002, Mario Vazquez wrote:
> You are right, a poll would be nice. No matter which one Mandrake will
> choose at the end, it must be (1) the one the most users want, and (2) apply
> the same to gnome to have a little uniformity between desktops.
I still don't understand why uniformity between different desktop
environments is required. Some people mostly use KDE, others mostly GNOME
(, yet others anything else). Why eliminate differentiation and choice
for the ones who like switching all the time? (If you only switch once in
a while you should be able to sustain this apparent disorientating blow of
difference...)
I use GNOME because I don't like the smooth uniformity (and slow
bloathedness but that changed lately I heard) of KDE. Please, tweak as
much as possible in both environments but keep the difference. Otherwise,
there is no point in wasting resources to maintain two environments when
their look and feel is the same.
Linux is about choice! And I'ld like to make that choice for myself,
not by the majority of users, usability experts or bean counters.
Individual users should not have to undo "integration efforts". If it is a
matter of support in an organisation, then integration is the job of the
support department or a third party (not necessarily the distributor). But
yeah, I realise that also companies like "free as in free beer" so
everything should be uniform, integrated, grayed out, uninteresting and
dumbed down at install time to keep support costs to the minimum.
Package software as is configuration-wise, keep on providing excellent
configuration tools and pre-package optional configurations separately :
raw_pkg-<ver>.<rel>mdk : minimal tweaks
drone_station_config_pkg-... : fully unified, integrated, drone station
configuration package
ergonomic_config_pkg-... : ergonomic AND esthetic configuration
package
avantgarde_config_pkg-... : fully themed and right out ugly
configuration package :-)
anything_else_that_sells_or_is_requested_or_contributed_config_pkg-... : ...
Also configurations can have dependencies, just like libraries. And since
most configuration in a Unix-like system is through separate text files,
this should not add too much space on the mirrors, CD's, .... (Anyway, the
installer already makes a distinction between configurations, but mostly
on the raw install level...)
And before you argue who is going to have to do all this additional
work, just think about it first... (and yes, I do realise that an awful
lot of configuration is hard-coded, i.e. at compile time so this does not
apply to that case. On the other hand, I also realise that with tools like
libtool, alot of modern software is heavily modularised, making separation
of configuration from raw install possible.)
Just my opinion,
Guy Bormann
