Re: GNOME Usability Improvements - Fix the window manager!

[Alexander Volovics <awol xs4all nl>]

On 02-Aug-99 Matthias Warkus wrote:

>>      Easier to use dial up control
 
> Just *how* much easier do you want it to get? You've got gnome-ppp and
> the Modem Lights applet, what's the problem?

The problem is for example:

1) The permission: `user'<-->`root' problem
2) The `configuration' problem

For the Modem Lights applet you first have to configure ppp using 
`netcfg' or `linuxconf' (if you are using RH) and then have to know
that you must enter something like "/sbin/ifup ppp0", "/sbin/ifdown ppp0"
under the `properties' of modem-lights.

Gnome-ppp seems to suggest that you can get by without using netcfg or
linuxconf, i.e. you can enter all the info under the `Account' menu entry.
And then you discover that it does not `work' because you have not got
the permission to start pppd. And then you have to use a `suid root'
construction for example. Not elegant and not secure.

Think of the hurdles this raises for someone new to Linux.

And it is easy to think up even more problems:

3) More than 1 ISP for example if you use `modem-lights'.

It is not at all evident how to add more than 3 DNS servers and 
keep them `seperate' without writing scripts and you would maybe
need more than one `modem-lights' icon. (I am assuming RH)

However these are not really Gnome issues, they are Linux (system) issues.

Alexander

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Alexander Volovics
Dept of Methodology & Statistics
Maastricht University, Maastricht, NL
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