Re: Make default

[Matthias Clasen <matthias clasen gmail com>]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 7:05 PM, Thomas Wood <thos gnome org> wrote:

 Could you explain a little more about why Sabayon is not the right
> answer? My understanding was that one of Sabayon's goals was to set
> system defaults.

The curious thing about sabayon is that when you pitch it to somebody,
most people are very enthusiastic about it. But I have yet to meet
somebody who actually uses sabayon regularly....

One aspect of sabayon is that it really forces you into a special
'setup' mode...and window-in-window desktops are not easy to
understand, or convenient to use.

Also, the deployment side of sabayon was never really solved in a
convincing fashion.

> Also, could you explain a bit more about the rationale for setting
> system defaults, especially for those people who primarily use
> single-user setups. I'm not sure we can draw up a good plan for how to
> integrate this functionality if we don't understand who and what it is
> used by.

I think of sabayon as an account setup / role definition tool, which
is not quite the same as system settings.
System settings I think splits into

- system-wide defaults for session settings

- settings that may have an effect outside of user sessions

You are probably right that you can completely ignore system-wide
defaults if you are using a single-user system with autologin. There
may still be one or two settings that you want to have configured
correctly because they affect your boot, e.g. the language that is
used for any text during boot, or your screen resolution - ideally you
want to system to switch from text mode right into the graphics mode
that is also configured in your session, for flicker-avoidance and
smoothness.

Here are some ad-hoc use cases where you might want to have an 'apply
system-wide' button:

- You want to put a nice landscape shot from your last vacation as the
login screen background for your family computer.

- You have used left-handed mice for 20 years, so you cannot handle a
right-handed mouse on the login screen.


Matthias