Solving super/sub-GNOME problems [Was: Shipping Vera with 2.4]

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Havoc Pennington">

> As a tangent, IMO many of our current end-user-impacting issues are going
> to require working outside of GNOME in order to address them.

Yes, and it's awesome that we've reached this point, but it will require yet
another huge chunk of work. Can we work out a way of going about this?
Perhaps an integration team or something silly like that? (I'm mostly
serious though - there are a lot of people to work with when you're trying
to drain a swamp.)

[ All of this needs to be done in a cooperative environment that is familiar
to us, but seems inscrutable to everyone else: Free Software. "How the hell
are they going to solve that?" seems to be the Big Question all the time,
but we keep answering it well enough. ;-) Another mountain to climb... ]

> There are many issues about hardware, system configuration, general system
> integration, that are some of the highest-priority issues in terms of a
> desktop system. Not to mention the usability nightmare that is multiple
> MIME systems or font systems.

Some specifics that come up a lot:

  - Integrated su/sudo access (solved at distro platform level usually, but
    cannot be relied on by apps, API needs to be in developer platform)
  
  - User-level font configuration (no longer a problem, yay!)
  
  - Just-in-time device configuration (generally not solved, systems level
    issue, but it often requires user input)
  
  - Device notification (removable media, etc. solved by some distros with
    things like magicdev, but not available in platform yet, hopefully lots
    of D-BUS buy-in will fix this)

- Jeff

-- 
  "Ever since GNOME development began, I have urged people to aim to make   
   it as good as the Macintosh.  To try to be like Windows is to try for    
                      second-best." - Richard Stallman