rawhide report: 20050711 changes

[Lamont R. Peterson]

On Monday 11 July 2005 11:25pm, seth vidal wrote:
> On Tue, 2005-07-12 at 01:14 -0400, Dimi Paun wrote:
> > Glad to hear that. But this is missing the point -- forcing such
> > preferences onto others is not right, and the people that don't like
> > this behavior (and let me tell you, in my experience they are the vast
> > majority, with the minority being ambivalent, no real fans AFAIK)
> > are going to be rightfully upset. But I digress, if folks didn't figure
> > it by now that this is not the way to make friends...
>
> 1. I think you're confusing vocal contingent on /. and osnews with
> 'majority'

I do not read /. nor osnews nor [insert biased "tech" news feed here].  I 
would say that the vast majority (like 98%) of people who I run into (at 
least hundreds if not thousands per year) love that it is as easy to open up 
a terminal as right-click and pick it.  This is true of newbs and vets alike.

BTW: I do not think a context-menu is a "hidden" menu, either.  Everyone knows 
and has used context menus for so long now, that it is not something 
mysterious.  Placing options on a context menu does not mean they are hidden.

> 2. it's not about forcing preferences it is about making sure the code
> is maintainable and not riddled with exceptions for corner cases and
> optional menus and ridiculous configuration dialogs.

If I wanted my computer experience to be dictated to me, I could either back 
Microsoft's Trusted Computing Initiative ("Trusted", my a...) or I can use 
GNOME.  Thank you for clarifying this.

Seriously, though, I know that I can customize GNOME to work the way I want it 
to, but the effort required to be able to do so is just plain not worth it.  
Not when you compare it with KDE, XFCE, Fluxbox or even EvilWM (which you 
have to recompile to change almost anything).

I do not want to recompile GNOME or Nautilus simply to get a menu or a menu 
item back.  I do not want to have to go get some extra program and build my 
own package for GNOME tweaking, either (yes, I know gconf is there).  I can't 
imagine many GNOME users who would prefer to do things this way.  At the very 
least, I think such tools should be in Fedora Extras.

> If you really want to learn more about how these decisions get made and
> maybe help with them then go be involved in gnome development. But
> complaining on fedora-devel-list isn't going to help.

Excellent suggestion.

If I thought GNOME was headed in a useful direction (I never have, but I do 
use it regularly along with KDE and fluxbox on different systems) and I could 
find time to work in Yet Another Project (YAP?), I might.

I work with a lot of systems.  Every week, I sit down to machines with fresh 
installations and am confronted by the defaults.  I already "automatically" 
make 5 or 6 changes to GNOME when I get a fresh install and I just live with 
the rest of the things that bug me.  I only change 1 thing in KDE (Focus 
Follows Mouse, the right way to do it :) for usability.  Sure, on any 
environment that I am going to have around for a while I move the bars around 
and customize the launchers and the background and the look-n-feel and...but 
even on those systems, having easy access to the shell is handy (this 
notebook has at least a dozen open right now).
-- 
Lamont R. Peterson <lamont at gurulabs.com>
Senior Instructor
Guru Labs, L.C. http://www.GuruLabs.com/
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