RE: [Setup-tool-hackers] Where XST is going.

["Mantas K." <monte mail lt>]

Hi all,

I'm a simple linux user, and I always *hate* graphical configuration 
tools, because most of them are only in single distribution (like Suse's 
Yeast, Mandrake Control Center, etc) or they are not user-friendly (like 
linuxconf).

But in Ximian Setup Tools these problems disapear, they are impressive 
and I love them ;)

XST are very user-friendly (I installed XST on the beginers' computers, 
most runing debian and one on mandrake. All users are very happy, all 
users say "some configuration things in linux are more user-frendly than 
in Windows !!!". Users can simply press System->Shares (maybe we can 
integrate Shares tool with nautilus, then users can simply press right 
mouse button on folder they want to share, select Sharing and Shares 
admin will run) or System->Internet sharing and that's it. But one thing 
is not so good - XST don't always work correctly (for example Internet 
sharing (ver 0.11) does not work on Debian Woody with kernel 2.4.17 or 
2.4.18, sometimes Shares admin are doing strange things, etc. But same 
as for ver 0.11 they are very stable and impressive (ver 0.11 is not 1.0 
:) ).
I totally agree with all Chema ideas, but not with this:

Chema Celorio <chema@ximian.com> wrote:
> The project will be renamed to "XST System Tools"
I think this name is not clear and not user-friendly. XST means Ximian 
Setup Tools
then XST System Tools will be Ximian Setup Tools System Tools. Sounds 
strange, isn't it? Maybe name can be System Control Tools or System 
Administration Tools or Gnome System Administration Tools or something ?
But name is not very important thing, I only suggest to change it to 
more clear.

> Debian and XST have a big synergy between them. They don't have a
> standard set of graphical tools and could greately benefit from XST; on
> the other hand, the Debian community is could help drive the project
> forward in an important way. We will switch the focus from Red Hat into
> Debian as our reference platform.

Cool, I like this (debian is my favourite distro). But debian already have
some good setup tools (partially dpkg-reconfigure (debconf) or gkdebconf
are good configuration tools, you can do dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86
and you will see graphical (if gnome debconf libraries are installed) or
text-mode configutation interface).
Second tools are Debian Configlets 
(http://hackers.progeny.com/configlets/) - they are integrated in GNOME 
Control Panel too: "http://hackers.progeny.com/configlets/book/ - The 
current GNOME front ends include a druid to invoke each configlet as a 
wizard, and individual capplets that are incorporated into the GNOME 
control center."
There are other cool projects, like PGI's graphical "Custom" 
partitioner, which uses Progeny's Python bindings to the GNU Parted 
library - see http://hackers.progeny.com/pgi/screenshots/screen05.png
I think this is excellent partition manager and XST can use it (it is 
multiplatform, because depends on multiplatform parted library)
All projects are in http://hackers.progeny.com/

I think progeny debian hackers and ximian setup tools hackers should 
colaborate, because users don't need 2 different tools, integrated in 
Gnome control panel. Progeny hackers are doing excelent job for GNOME 
and Debian, XST hackers too, I think now it's time to colaborate ;)
(I can write letter to progeny hackers team, but I think it will be 
better if XST maintainer writes)

At last I want to say about Distros:
I think we can make (I can test and write suggestions, because I'm not a 
very good programmer :( ) pretty stable and good tools, perfect working 
on one distro (for example debian) and then we can invite developers of 
all distos to join us and use XST. I think Red-Hat can use XST, because 
RH uses GNOME as default desktop. Mandrake can use it too - Mandrake 
Control center is writen with GTK+, but it has ugly user interface (that 
changes a lot from release to release) and is pretty unstable. I don't 
know how about Suse - Suse uses KDE as default desktop and Yeast2 is 
pretty stable and user-friendly.

I think to use XST is usefull to all distro developers, because 
colaboration is always more efective then working alone.
Now all distros have to create and develop their own graphical interface 
and to adapt this interface to their own distro. When using XST lots of 
work and time could be saved, because developers of the distro would 
have to do just the adaptation (backend).

Thanks one more time to all XST developers and all Ximian developers for 
improving and doing Unix and Gnome more user-friendly.

Gratefully,
Mantas Kriauciunas <monte@mai.lt>
Jabber IM: mantiena@jabber.sk


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