Re: [Usability] Configuration Applications

[Eric Larson <elarson novell com>]

On Wed, 2005-10-05 at 13:40 +0200, Estradin Solaris wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I guess this has been already discussed, but i would like to know the
> reasons for it. As a user, I find it quite easy to configure any
> system settings in Mac OS X, because all of the system settings are in
> the same place: System Preferences. GNOME seems to try to do this, but
> IMHO, it fails. Firstly, because some very important settings are not
> in the Configuration menu or are duplicated. I'm talking about Network
> settings, for example. Also, the configuration menu is a menu, so in
> order to choose the configuration application you want to use you have
> to keep it open, and it is not too pleasant to scan through a menu
> with so many items... especially when some of the names are not
> descriptive enough. 

I think you make a good point but part of the issue is out of our
(GNOME) control. For example, ubuntu does the default GNOME action of
having a menu. SuSE on the other hand uses YaST which requires quite a
bit of control over configuration options due to the fact that it is
meant to control not only some desktop setting such as the resolution,
but apache configurations, dns server configuration, etc. My point here
is that distributions have provided the major push for system
administration tools which in turn somewhat competes and conflicts with
GNOME's system configuration tools. 

I agree with you that something like "gnome-control-panel" is a better
path. OS X does do this extremely well, especially through using search
to make finding the right tool for the job very simple. Again, if you
want this feature then it is best to look at using a distro such as SuSE
or NLD[1] where the gnome-control-center is on by default instead of the
menu system. 

Eric

[1] I a bit bias on what distro to use to take my suggestions with a
grain of salt. If you do choose a distro based on this issue, then SuSE
and NLD handle this pretty well IMO.