Some thoughts for the future

Ben Steeves ben.steeves at gmail.com
Wed Jun 29 23:11:40 UTC 2005


On 6/29/05, Richard Kelsch <rich at csst.net> wrote:
> *  How about the ability to clone the configured and working version on
> my hardrive to be burned on a DVD (dual layer and blue beam makes this
> possible) for easy portability?

How about something like Solaris' Live Upgrade / Flash Archive
functionality.  The Solaris sysadms at work are always extolling its
virtues -- basically it lets you have a running mirror of your OS on
which to install patches, etc., and when you're sure everything is OK,
you just have to reboot and voila, upgraded system.  Something broke? 
No problem -- just switch back to the old mirror and you're done.  Of
course, you can do something similar in Linux with command line tools,
but LU has a nice (and apparently functional) front-end.

> *  Someone needs to make X more display hardware friendly.

This is being actively worked on by several projects...
 
> *  Gnome and KDE are nice and such, but even Apple knew how to exploit
> the display hardware to make a cool interface.  So much so that MS is
> trying to copy and "improve" it for their next release.  There's more to
> a gui now days than skinning.  Fedora needs a cooler looking GUI.

Here, I have to disagree.  Of the three operating systems/desktop
environments I use daily, GNOME using the Clearlooks theme/engine is
by far the cleanest, most attractive one.  I actually spend most of my
day on a Tiger PowerBook, but the Mac interface, for all it's hardware
accelerated smoothness, is a jumble of confusing and fractured UIs:
the web browser has a different interface than the mail app, which
both have a different interface than the productivity suite, all of
which are different than the file browser and the PIM suite!  And to
top it off, they added a whole new set of UI metaphors when they
incorporated Dashboard and Spotlight.  The third operating system I
use is Solaris 9, which is based on GNOME 2.0.2 -- which gives me an
appreciation for how far GNOME has come!!!

One thing I would love to see added to the base FC install, however,
is Mono, specifically so Beagle will be installed out-of-the-box. 
After a few weeks with Spotlight, I became addicted to fast indexed
desktop searches, and Beagle scratches the itch for FC4.
-- 
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