RE: 2.4: System Tools - Please try them

[Murray Cumming Comneon com]

> From: Cumming Murray (COMNEON Linz) 
> > From: Cumming Murray (COMNEON Linz) 
> > So, people need to try them out _now_ and start the 
> > criticism. The GEP 11
> > end date is June 2nd - 4 days from now.
> ftp://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/gnome-system-tools/

So here's some superficial comments on 0.26.0:

- RedHat 9 is not officially supported - it shows a warning. 
  Lots of the GNOME developers are using RedHat9, so it would be nice to fix
that.

- Where are they supposed to show up in the GNOME menu?
  I had to launch them from the command-line.

- The executable names are a bit too generic.
  For instance, I would prefer gnome-network-admin to network-admin.
  Let's avoid confusion with distro-specific tools.

- They are not quite HIGgy enough, but that can be fixed easily.

- We need to lose the Ximian icons, I think.

- Runlevel Settings: The icons are obscure and color-coded.

- I guess we want to use the proposed GNOME ask-for-root-password thing
instead. What's happening with that?

- The tools do some checking and processing at first. I think they should
show at least a busy cursor while doing this.

- Various tools crash on close for me, though actually I see this warning:
*** ERROR **: vte.c: line 6850 (vte_terminal_process_incoming): assertion
failed (_vte_buffer_length(terminal->pvt->incoming) > 0 )
aborting ...

- Boot manager:
  - The initial window size is too small - the TreeView is smaller than one
row.
  - Again the obscure and color-coded lightbulb icons.

- Networking:
  - It's shows my network connection, but doesn't show what type of
connection it is.
  - Again, the lightbulbs.
  - Shouldn't the profile choice be at the top of the screen, if everything
else depends on it?
  - I can't see what device is used for each connection. Surely I need to
know whether I'm using my WLAN card or my ethernet card?

Murray Cumming
murrayc usa net
www.murrayc.com