Re: [Utopia] Roadmap to Utopia

[Bill Nottingham <notting redhat com>]

Robert Love (rml ximian com) said: 
> We could put a notification applet in the GNOME notify area if we want,
> which could glow or something when a device is attached.  But I don't
> overly love that idea.

Perhaps a throbbing red exclamation point.

> >  2. What happens during insertion of new hardware? Does it 'just work'?
> >     If it needs to be configured, how does this happen? What if the user
> >     inserts the hardware when GNOME is not running and it needs to be
> >     configured? How is the user notified, if at all?
> 
> As much as possible, everything should just work.  Very few devices
> require explicit user configuration (printers, networking cards not yet
> configured being the exception).  For those, if a user is logged in, we
> can invoke a configuration utility.  If a user is not logged in, then we
> don't.

Network cards don't necessarily need configuration (yes, that requires
other work. But it's not hard, and doesn't even need any tie-in to HAL
at all :) )

> >     Does the user have to do something before unplugging a device when
> >     the system is running?
> 
> I think we should definitely aim for a big definite NO here, except
> where otherwise impossible.  E.g., users have to unmount storage volumes
> before removing the backing device, and they are going to have to learn
> to live with that.  But, otherwise, the user should be able to rip
> anything out at anytime.

Well, you want to fix it so that even if they hot-pull, it does
*something* sane. That's more driver work than desktop work, of course.

Bill