ianseeks wrote:
I would prefer that items not installed have greyed-out
icons rather than just removing them. That would let any
knowledgeable administrator know that the item is available
and can be installed.
I was thinking of a set up for new users. Greyed out icons would be more
confusing and as cluttered as it is now. An icon should only appear to show
something that is there.
A knowledgable user would know whether or not he/she had, for example, NIS
installed and if they didn't have it installed they would know that they
would have to install it.
NIS is a poor example, because it is long-established
(20 years old) software.
An icon that just plain old doesn't even appear doesn't
help an admin that some NEW software (say, yet another
virtualization, or something else that we don't even
have today. Basically, the greyed-out icon is a
way advertising new features, without making everyone
read a big book which is 98% identical to the previous
book.
Thats why i suggested the "Add Service/Harware" option, once this is selected
it could then list the items that could be installed.
But then you can't see what you already have installed,
for example, a user goes and sees a web server, and
decides to install it...but does't realize that there's
one or two OTEHR web servers already installed -- seeing
"XYZ Web Server" sitting there by itself will prompt
the uninitiated to think, "Hey, I didn't install the
Web Server software" -- not realizing that, say, Apache
is already installed, and possibly even enabled, and
any half-way intelligent packaging is going to default
to the web-server looking to /srv/www ... now you've
got two web servers in contention for the same
resources... and at boot time, a race condtion develops,
and the observed behavior depends on which one grabs
the port first, Apache or XYZ. And then the poor sot
can't figure out why some times, his configuration
takes effect, and other times it doesn't.
Basically, seperating installed software from software
that isn't is just inviting all sorts of problems
with those who are new to SuSE.
regards
ian
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