>> While that may be the case, is it laid out clearly on the front page of >> the Étoilé website? I don't think it is, and that should be addressed, >> since it's far more likely someone will be confused if there's no >> explanation on our website, than in a seminar where it can be explained >> to them immediately. I also think it should be said on the Étoilé >> website that Étoilé is not an operating system, or even necessarily tied >> to an operating system. It should probably even be referred to as a >> desktop environment on front the webpage at least once, and then go on >> to explain why it's unique/different. >> > > To be hones, it was not very clear to me too about how should I put the > Etoile > environment in a larger context. I have made few diagrams of possible > scenarios. Attached is a .pdf and OO document. > > Can someone correct the diagrams and add comments/questions there?
It's really a matter of "what are the goals of Etoile" and "who is its audience"? Is our audience new users? If so, the we need to provide 4, the complete solution -- probably via an installable LiveCD. Do we expect our audience to install from scratch or to have a system they want to integrate Etoile into? If it's the former, we can do a lot more with how the system works because we're not forced into making sure we play nice with other environments. Installing from scratch also has a higher barrier to entry -- look at Enlightenment and the effort it's had to make to get KDE and GNOME users. Additionally, are we experimenting, or are we making a "product" that we will support? If the former, then we'll probably go with 2, as that's less to maintain. If the latter, then we'll probably concentrate more on integrating it with existing technologies and go with 3. This is an open source project, so if we reach a critical enough mass or provide something that no other environment provides, then 3 will happen at some point eventually, because we can't provide _everything_ that a user will need -- just look at the efforts to tie GTK into Cocoa. Personally, I'm most interested in 4 because I'm a control freak and like the idea of a complete "packaged" solution. I would say though, that instead of exposing Core OS Apps to the end user as shown in the diagram, we would simply provide Etoile frontends for anything OS specific (like configuration for things like networking, displays, etc). I like that it would allow us to work closely with an OS team and make software that is tightly and smoothly integrated into the underlying system. That's something that you just don't get from most open source distros because it's a lot to coordinate and maintain -- just look at the number of BSDs vs the number of Linux distros. I'm also much more interested in the simplicity of the OS X way of "here's a disk, pop it in and go" vs the infinite complexity of the Linux way of "first pick a distro, install that, then pick a desktop environment, install that, then pick..., then hope it all works together". Granted, the multitude of options that Linux provides means that people are better able to tailor the system to themselves -- but what if you're a new user and you don't know what you want yet? Some distros do manage better than others at providing simplicity, but I think that's a niche that can still be explored. I think there are users that want that and I think it would be really cool to provide that for them. J.
