Re: GNOME and non-linux platforms (release team please stand up)

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Colin:

> > Though, probably the main reason why there has not much of a drive to
> > add PolicyKit to Solaris is because there has not been much need.  To
> > date, Sun has not had much of a problem integrating the GNOME stack
> > without having PolicyKit available.  I am sure there are some features
> > that Solaris is lacking because of this, but I do not recall any bug
> > reports or user complaints about this.
>
> I don't have a full feature list to hand, but some concrete examples
> are things like:
>
> * shutdown/reboot (the legacy code may still be there)

Yes, Solaris has a hack to workaround this.

> * Changing the system time from the clock

We keep planning to hack the clock to launch Visual Panels for doing
this, but that will need to wait until Visual Panels actually fully
integrates.

> * PackageKit updater

Solaris does not use PackageKit.

> * Doing simple administrative process control in gnome-system-monitor

Not sure about our plans on this one, actually.

> I think it makes sense for things like this to be in the default
> desktop UI flow, and enabled by default by OS vendors for the
> unmanaged case[1], the first three particularly without any
> authorization required at all.  Here PolicyKit is just a fancy way for
> us to work around the default Unix permissions model which was
> designed for timesharing servers, while allowing administrators in the
> managed case well-defined control.
>
> This doesn't replace the need for tools targeted for admins, but I
> think it is going to be a better experience than firing up Visual
> Panels, system-config-date or whatever for the covered cases.

True, there are some features that Solaris lacks because PolicyKit is
not yet integrated.  The question really becomes when are the features
significant enough to warrant the work involved to integrate PolicyKit.

Brian