On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 8:12 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam(a)redhat.com> wrote:
Well, sure, but I don't place much faith in this exact formulation of
this common argument. 'Caring' isn't something that just magically
Happens or Doesn't Happen. It's not like anyone was maintaining s-c-*
before because it was a bundle of fun, they were maintaining them
because they were the Fedora system configuration tools. And, bluntly,
RH was paying most of them. But now RH's paid resources and most of the
'we care because they're our most prominent configuration tools'
resources get re-directed into working on the GNOME tools, to the
detriment of the desktop-agnostic tools.
> Configuration tools that are part of and integrated into
> the desktop do offer a better and consistent user experience,
They offer a better and more consistent user experience *for users who
use that desktop and only that desktop*. They offer a less consistent
user experience for users who use multiple desktops, and they offer
nothing at all for users who don't use that desktop.
This is not exactly a fair picture. GNOME has offered a set of
configuration tools for over a decade now (initially created by
Ximian), Ubuntu has used them since it was created. That Fedora and
Red Hat are finally working with other distributions to have a unified
set of configuration utilities, whether it's designed in KDE or GNOME
or others, is a very *good* thing. It means less work for everyone
involved and a much better experience for users.
It's true, desktops which don't offer a set of configuration utilities
get left behind. But I don't think someone running a custom .xinitrc
with openbox and xscreensaver and others really cares about a GUI for
setting the time or hostname. And if they do they can still use
gnome-control-center, it's not that much different.
--
Evandro