[Usability] PAL

[Thilo Pfennig <tp alternativ net>]

hi

I have some thoughts about that abstraction layer:

http://live.gnome.org/PackagingAbstractionLayer



Wouldn't it be good to make a distinction between small aplications like
applets, plugins, desktop applications, backgrounds,themes etc. and
software that is installed systemwide?

I can imagine that applets could be installed via the "add to panel"
dialog, also I like installation method of Firefox for plugins. All
these installation don't need  root access.

I think it would be could for security if installation of systemwide
software is totally different.

Also I think there is no such thing like "GNOME plugins" yet? I think
plugins can be a bad thing, like in Firefox I think they overdid it,
because they do not argue about usability any more but give plugins
away.

But on the other hand those plugins are nicer to handle for a user as
hidden settings. And that people need to use teh gconf-editor or execute
some strange looking terminal commands to enable or disable some things.


So I would say it would be nice to af "GNOME plugins" that handle some
issues. Maybe it would be good if the user gets a question if he wants
something to be installed system-wide and than he is todl that he
therefore needs to have admin rights.

I also think that it would be good if GNOME has settings for the kind of
installation it has. In the future I suppose we will have more and more
network computers that work with netboot - so the user will not be able
to add or change admin settings, but he has to ask the administrator.

I also think the menu entry System/info about GNOME should be so that
the user gets information about how old his gnome is and that he might
be able to update. The system also could analyze:

* Ok this guy uses an old distribution version and runs GNOME 2.8
* it knows that FC3 wioth gnome 2.10 is out
* it tells the user how he could update. (this might include links to
download, start and upgrade or buy a new distro online)

It also could tell the user which applications ar outdated.



Thilo


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