Re: no external panels for gnome-control-center [was GNOME Feature Proposal: Backup]

[Dylan McCall <dylanmccall gmail com>]

I wasn't intending to jump into this because it has become vastly
tangential and there's a pretty unhappy signal to noise ratio already.
So, I realize I might be totally misunderstanding this. If I sound
accusatory or anything, it's purely my writing getting carried away :)
Here goes…

In any Gnome 2 desktop that has been loved, the System menu has many
applications which do not exist upstream. An integrated control centre
gives users a nice way to find those applications on the basis that
they are accessed for similar reasons: configuring services and things
that relate to the entire system (where each panel might affect more
than one device, hence keywords).

Okay, that sounds good. Gnome 3's Control Centre _is_ really good.
However, from the sounds of it, this isn't actually fixing our
problem. This isn't replacing the system menu, or providing any kind
of top level order. It configures Gnome, and only Gnome. From here
arises a pretty serious question: what does Gnome have to do with my
screen resolution, and what am I to do if I am using NVidia's
proprietary driver which comes with nvidia-settings? I no longer have
the System menu, and apparently this won't be in Control Centre
either. Either Gnome needs to keep up with everything nvidia-settings
does, nvidia-settings needs to be an official Gnome module, or our
users need to search for nvidia-settings as if it is any other
application (eg: in the Applications section of the Activities
overlay).

On this same vein, it sounds like users will need to know what Gnome
is and that Control Centre configures Gnome if they expect to find the
particular configuration panel they are looking for.

Am I on the right track here?

--
Dylan