Shawn Walker wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 17, 2008 at 1:01 PM, Frank Ludolph <Frank.Ludolph at sun.com> 
> wrote:
>   
>>  Alan Coopersmith wrote:
>>  Calum Benson wrote:
>>
>>
>>  On Fri, 2008-03-14 at 07:44 -0700, Ken Mays wrote:
>>
>>
>>  Tossing in my two cents:
>> 1. Simplistic on applets: Show/Hide Desktop, Web browser, email
>> client, volume manager,network monitor/connectivity, graphic/audio
>> card settings, PCMCIA/USB card unplug/eject status applet, (yelp) help
>> applet, switch user applet, lock/shutdown/log off/restart applet.
>>
>> - more on less here but I always remeber having a modem applet and
>> networking (LAN) status applet.
>>
>>  True, might be worth adding the network monitor applet back to the
>> default config. (It will be replaced when the NWAM Phase 1 GUI is
>> complete, but that's not going to land in time for the May release
>> AFAIK.)
>>
>>  Though someday people will want to run Sun Rays on OpenSolaris, and
>> network monitor on Sun Ray is still a waste of bandwidth (is there
>> network traffic? yes? let's flash the icon! what? that generated
>> network traffic sending the icon change to the Sun Ray for display?
>> flash it again! infinite feedback loop? what's that?)
>>
>>
>>  I'm going to disagree on SunRay being a consideration about how the desktop
>> is configured by default. SunRay users are definitely not the target users
>> for OpenSolaris. If someone is setting up OpenSolaris to run SunRays they
>> will have a lot of work to do including some configuring of the desktop.
>> This does add work, but it is for very few people compared to the primary
>> target user group for the first release, developers and other users with
>> technical backgrounds.
>>     
I disagree.  Sun Ray and other thin clients should always be considered 
an eventual target for OpenSolaris.    We've already seen how difficult 
it is to fix thin client scalability problems after a desktop is 
released so I think we should be thinking about these issues up front.

  - There are already hundreds or thousands of developers within Sun who 
should already be "flying OpenSolaris airplanes" on Sun Ray clients, as 
some of us have been for months.  (No it isn't supported, but the 
earlier people start looking at it, the more likely it will be a rock 
solid platform a few months from now when it is deployed more widely.)

  - GNOME desktops already have lots of exposure on single user laptops 
with accelerated graphics display on a fast local bus.  We already know 
that works.   But what happens when you deploy those desktops on a Grid 
or 16 CPU machine with hundreds of users and shared NFS filesystem?  

  - Sun Ray clients are now selling well but an unfortunately many 
customers are still paying license fees for Microsoft Desktops when a 
well designed OpenSolaris desktop could easily meet their needs.  Why 
not design a desktop which helps a good integrator/developer/reseller 
yank some of that "default thin client desktop" excess market share back 
from Microsoft?

Since 1985, a typical PC's CPU speed has increased from 7Mhz to about 
2Ghz a factor of 285.  In the same time home network connection speed 
has gone from 2400bps to 8Mbps or more, a factor of 3333.   Some things 
that made sense to run locally in 1985 don't make sense anymore and some 
things which make sense to run locally now won't make sense in 10 or 15 
years.

>
> This applies to remote desktop users as well of course.
>
> However, it does lend credence to the need to have easier desktop
> configuration profile management and an applet to switch between them
> if you ask me...
>
>   
Fortunately the network applet is easily disabled on Sun Ray.  The 
desktop, X and Sun Ray teams have already done quit a lot of work 
finding and patching laptop, single user and single CPU centric bugs in 
desktop components but it would be too easy to slip back and have to 
redo this. 

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