Configuration applets-- Linux Configuration Console?

[John Richard Moser <nigelenki comcast net>]

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This is probably going to sound lame to anyone who's seen certain other
operating systems; but would it be absurd to package a program that can
incorporate GNOME configuration applets for user preferences and
administrative actions into customized consoles?  For example, a user
could put Theme, Screen Saver, and Desktop Background in, and then save
a file that would load that configuration set in.

Along these lines I am thinking that the actual options offered would be
communicated via XML, and the user interface used would actually draw
them.  The point of that particularly would be to allow third party
configuration applets to drop in, where such configuration applets (like
Synaptic Package Manager) could export an interface that would be useful
to more than just GNOME, possibly drawn on a text console or in other
toolkits.

Existing applets would be converted into modules that would run as
separate processes.  The console.. Linux Control Console, LCC.. would
start these modules as separate processes (like GIMP does) to isolate
their security contexts (i.e. package manager from the UI and desktop
config applets).  Modules could be easily proxied, so administrative
modules would fall under a second LCC process that proxied their
requests to the first; this second one would be called using `gksu` to
get root privileges, and then spawn all root-needing modules below it.

The Preferences and Administration menus would be filled with entries
that called LCC in a special mode to activate a single module, ditching
the part of it that allowed loading other modules and saving the set to
a file; in effect, their current UIs would be kept in tact.

This would have three major effects overall.

 - The basic configuration and administration applets could be combined
   by skilled users; other users wouldn't care, they'd never see the
   LCC.

 - Configuration applets would become easier to write; their options
   would be largely XML, they would interact based on a protocol giving
   commands dictated by the XML, and there would be no UI coding.

 - Cross-DE work could be consolidated.  A KDE or ncurses based LCC
   could be written, which could use the exact same modules and render
   using Qt or ncurses.  Modules such as package managers or security
   configuration applets which don't tie themselves to GNOME or KDE
   would require no alteration to work.

It's just an idea.
- --
    We will enslave their women, eat their children and rape their
    cattle!
                  -- Bosc, Evil alien overlord from the fifth dimension
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