Re: [Fwd: Re: here i come !]

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="Seth Nickell">

> This is exactly the obscure sort of technical choice we *shouldn't*
> present if we are really targeting home users. There are options though...
> For example, what about having a low battery mode that mounts the
> filesystem as ext2 (you can mount ext3 filesystems as ext2 as far as I
> understand, right?). Things like that that end up being transparent.

I agree. At install time, we can have a selection like (the text is poopie,
but you get the idea):

[x] Desktop

    Include utilities and enhancements that allow GNOME OS to perform at its
    best on a desktop computer.

[ ] Laptop

    Include utilities and enchancements that allow GNOME OS to perform at
    its best on a laptop or portable, such as power saving, support for
    special laptop hardware with PCMCIA, and subpixel antialiasing for LCD
    screens. [1]

Then we choose a *whole bunch* of stuff like noflushd, pcmcia modules by
default, ext2, subpixel AA for laptop users, maybe even VPN software.
Desktop users get ext3, and run more daemons by default depending on
usefulness (more daemons on notebooks means more chance of waking them up
with logging and hard disk activity).

It's not just the filesystem - there's heaps of stuff we can do with this
choice that will make the default installations *shitloads* better. Most
distros positively suck on notebooks; you have to fix them up to handle
power saving well and stuff.

- Jeff

[1] Ha ha.

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