I apologise in advance for any 'tones' in this message, offensive or otherwise. Please take everything I say 'with a grain of salt'.
> Message: 1 > Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 13:40:34 +0200 > From: Estradin Solaris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [Usability] Configuration Applications > To: [email protected] > Message-ID: > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Hi, > > I guess this has been already discussed, but i would like to know the > reasons for it. As a user, I find it quite easy to configure any system > settings in Mac OS X, because all of the system settings are in the same > place: System Preferences. GNOME seems to try to do this, but IMHO, it > fails. Firstly, because some very important settings are not in the I'm not surprised; IIRC, generally people who develop the Linux kernel don't believe that system configuration belongs in a Desktop environment/window manager such as GNOME; since some components of such things have to be configured during kernel compilation, or involve sending signals/commands/settings to the kerenl. Other components involve wrapping around existing programs (which require the existing program) or replace it (making it incompatable with the command-line equivilant). It is worth noting that while it would be nice for GNOME to have this; all the effort would need to be duplicated in other window managers/desktop environments (e.g. twm, KDE, icewm, xfce, any other one you can think of). (Furthermore, software is configured at different levels for different systems; e.g. Ubuntu uses it's X-based whatever install plus aptitude, Debian uses command-line-based aptitude (does it support X? I don't know...), (both Ubuntu/Debian are dpkg-based) SuSE uses YaST, if you compiled Linux yourself you're editing 5 million different configs in /etc and everywhere in between...) It seems to me that for this problem to be truly solved, the architecture of system configuration needs to be rewritten, meaning that the entire architecture of Linux in general needs to be rewritten. A comprimise would work in the meantime; however, it seems to me that for something like this is very difficult (if not impossible) unless you, running the desktop environment, have full control over the environment (like how Apple has control over most components in OS X, such as the 'kernel' or whatever that gets access to the hardware, etc. etc. etc.). Of course, from a usability standpoint, this sounds like something that needs to be dealt with anyways (duplication, as well as configuration for new users versus experienced Unix/Linux users, where the same config is listed twice and the grouping of Mice/Keyboard/Input seperate or with X11/Display settings). Actually dealing with it is the hard part. I guess usability is just one of those things where you can't please everybody. -- ~Mike - Just my two cents - No man is an island, and no man is unable. _______________________________________________ Usability mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/usability
