Re: Solution for OEMs/Gnome

[Stanislav Brabec <sbrabec suse cz>]

Daniel Carrera writes:

> Ok, how about just ~/.gnome2 ? That should be enough for the panel, 
> right? And what about the menu? Is that also in ~/.gnome2 ?

No. Panel is a part of GConf settings. The rest of ~/.gnome2 is not much
useful, because by copying it you will define things you don't want
(cookies, cache and history for epiphany, last size and/or position of
windows you used etc.).

If you will start gconf-editor as a root, you are able to change all
these settings for all users. It's easy and intuitive to define here
most aspects of GNOME (well, except default panel, which is extremely
unintuitive here).

(But with default GConf path it can be overwritten by a subsequent
package update, so you can want to change default gconf path -
$sysconfdir/gconf/2/path).

But configuration of default panel in gconf-editor is very, very
unintuitive.

Default panel is actually defined in
$sysconfdir/gconf/schemas/panel-default-setup.entries. I am not sure,
what is an intuitive way to change it.

Using GConf way instead of skeleton has one another big advantage - it's
easy to reset settings to predefined values.

> > In .gnome2 you should decide, whether keep session files or use
> > gnome-session properties.
> 
> I don't really understand this part. Help?

~/.gnome2/session and ~/.gnome2/{application}-{random 6 characters}
store your last session, if you decide to save it. If application
started by this way is terminated, it will be started never more.

Opposite way is using of gnome-session-properties (and
~/.gnome2/session-manual) for single user or
$prefix/share/gnome/default.session as root, which cause starting of
applications forever. In new GNOME versions you can also Autostart
feature, I guess.


In general:

Having a chance to configure important things for all users as a root
without touching home directories is a reasonable feature. If you find
interesting things not configurable, please fill a Bugzilla entry.

-- 
Best Regards / S pozdravem,

Stanislav Brabec
software developer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
SuSE CR, s. r. o.                             e-mail: sbrabec suse cz
Drahobejlova 27                               tel: +420 296 542 382
190 00 Praha 9                                fax: +420 296 542 374
Czech Republic                                http://www.suse.cz/