few ideas how to make fedora better as a desktop

Gian Paolo Mureddu gmureddu at prodigy.net.mx
Tue Mar 25 18:02:09 UTC 2008


Valent Turkovic escribió:
> I have a few ideas that IMO would make Fedora more usable as a general
> desktop and developer platform:
>
> What? :
>
> 1. have gnome-terminal shortcut on gnome panel (as firefox and evolution)
>
> 2. have gnome clipboard manager installed by default (glipper gnome applet)
>   

I agree with these two.

> 3. have /usr/sbin and /sbin in PATH for regular users
>   

I don't agree with this one...
>
> Why? :
>
> 1. because gnome-terminal is the second most used [1] application on
> gnome desktop and this would make it more accessible for users.
>
> 2. because any desktop needs a good clipboard manager, it enhances
> usability enormously.
>   

These two indeed make sense, though some people might think that having 
a shortcut for the terminal in the panel by default may be against the 
purpose of the desktop usability guidelines.

> 3. I personally need it only for some commands - like /sbin/ifconfig
> and /sbin/iwconfig are there any down sides to putting new /sbin and
> /usr/sbin in every users PATH variable? What do you think is this a
> good or bad idea?
>   

Maybe a better approach for those commands in particular would be to add 
aliases for them in /usr/bin?  I can think of a couple more commands 
that may benefit from being also available in their restricted mode to 
regular users (lspci, lsusb, lsof, etc), but being as /sbin paths are 
meant for administrative tasks, I actually do see having them as part of 
a regular user's PATH a potential security risk.

> Cheers,
> Valent.
>
> [1] http://online.gnome.org/applications
>
>   




More information about the Fedora-desktop-list mailing list