Announcing Fedora 12 Alpha

[James Hubbard]

On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 11:21 AM, Stephen John Smoogen<smooge at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 8:54 AM, James Hubbard<jameshubbard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 28, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Christopher Beland<beland at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
>>> I wonder if it would be a good idea for desktop users to get some sort
>>> of notification that they have local mail waiting to be read, even if
>>> they don't have an email client running.  Then firstboot would strongly
>>> recommend sending mail locally, so it would work more reliably (at the
>>> cost of not being co-mingled with all of your other email, though
>>> hopefully it would only get sent if something was malfunctioning).
>>
>> How would you suggest that these users read this email?   Should
>> evolution be setup with the default local account?  What if they never
>> open evolution?
>>
>
> What if they never install Fedora? OMG What if they never turn on the
> computer? [Ok I think I have covered hyperbole enough here]
>
> Please there is only a limit to what people can assume the user will
> or will not do. The issue is to make it easier for that user to know
> whats going on.

>From what I've seen, all of the current notifications provide the user
with a way to act on them.  Update/security notifications allow the
user to update the system or view.  SELinux has something similar.  If
there is to be a notification to the user about local email, a method
of displaying that email should be provided that is automatically
configured.  It should open a list of messages and provide a way of
reading them.  There should be consistency for the end user.

Cron should drop it's logs into a directory with a name like
~/cronlog, if it can't find a local mta.  Any user using cron should
be competent enough to check the logs, configure the mta, or be able
to do a google search as to how to do those things.