On Thu, 2008-09-04 at 14:10 -0500, Brian Cameron wrote:
> Andre:
>
> This question seems to have created a lot of FUD, and I wanted to try
> and give a more clear perspective on the situation. As the maintainer
> of GDM for the past several years, I feel I have a good understanding
> of the needs of GDM users, and what will cause issues.
>
> First of all, I don't think that the loss of gdmgreeter or the GDM
> themes is a real issue. Some users will find it annoying that their
> favorite theme can't be used, but if there is enough interest in
> supporting such themes long-term, then we can imagine such users will
> push for it to be rewritten to use the new infrastructure. This
> probably isn't a huge amount of work. The old greeter just needs to
> be updated to use a different IPC mechanism. However, there are
> a few design issues that probably would need to be considered. Session
> and language choosing has changed in the new GDM, so it might make
> sense to revamp things like this when porting the old greeter. Also
> making it GObjectified is perhaps a bit of effort. Users who really
> love the old theming can probably just continue using GDM 2.20 if they
> want. Such users probably are geeky and would know how to replace or
> rebuild a module.
Hi Brian,
It is not my intention to extended this discussion, but I would like to
share the following (real) user's story just because you think that is a
geeky feature:
Some facts:
* I used to think gdmsetup had a lot of features (read it as "more
than needed"); and,
* I used to think that choosing themes was a feature just for
geeks and for institutions (companies, universities, and so on)
set by sysadmins; and
* Even more, I used to wonder 'Who on the earth could set "Random
themes" for gdm?' I used to think this was kind of ridiculous.
Sometime ago, I used my wife's computer for the first time in a long
time, and it got my attention she had a different gdm theme (not the
default one) installed.
The second time, it was a different theme and so on, until I decided to
ask her why she changed the theme frequently?
Shame on me when she told me she downloaded more than 100 themes that
she found on Internet. Not enough with that, she showed me how to search
them, and how easy was install them, etc. and she set "Random themes" in
the configuration dialog!
If this is not enough, she also changes the background according her
mood, and... because it is easy to do.
I have seen her interchanging tips with other Gnome users (men and
women, but mostly women) and how they use some applications. That is a
whole experience by itself.
... and she think my desktop is boring, however everybody else thinks my
oversized trash scan is nice (4x at least). This is not a fair
situation.
So, looking my crystal ball I see when this (anti)feature arrives, my
lovely wife will ask to me:
* Why I let you go to GUADEC if *you*[1] changed my desktop?;
and/or
* If you don't fix it soon you are not going to GUADEC anymore!
[2]
And... you know..., I'm looking forward to attend more GUADEC's.
However, some changes are for the better health of a project.
Happy release! :-)
[1] Whenever some people know you contribute to Gnome, any "fault"
they look on Gnome is because you (me, in this story) did
something in that direction.
[2] She won't say it in that way, neither she would say it, but it
sounds funnier :-)
--
Germán Póo-Caamaño
Concepción - Chile
http://www.gnome.org/~gpoo/
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