[Desktop_architects] Printing dialog and GNOME

George Staikos staikos at kde.org
Wed Dec 14 14:22:13 PST 2005


On Tuesday 13 December 2005 12:12, Timothy D. Witham wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-12-14 at 03:40 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> > <quote who="Timothy D. Witham">
> >
> > > Then you are missing the point.  One thing about enterprises is that
> > > they really want to be able to configure systems the way that they want
> > > to use them.
> >
> > We provide for that through a centralised configuration system, which can
> > impose defaults or mandatory settings as per the administrator's purpose.
> > Despite the focus of the discussion on "removing preferences" (people
> > keep saying "removing functionality", but that's not really what is going
> > on), there are obviously still a huge number of things that may be
> > configured by users and administrators, should they need to.
>
>     First I would like make sure that everybody understands I'm not against
> simple, easy to use default configurations.  What I object to is the
> removal of functionality for power users.   Hide the things used by the
> power users until you are smart enough to find them.  That's a good thing. 
> But when you take away the ability of a power/long term user to customize
> for productivity then you are forcing users to remain at a low level of
> productivity.

  Ok so I am WAY behind in this thread. :-)  I just wanted to point out 
something that I mentioned in the KDE presentation in Portland and I would 
like reiterated.

  KDE is not a Linux distribution.  It's not an end-user product.  It's not 
shipped as a complete package.  Some people in the KDE project think this, 
but they're wrong.  As long as I've been part of the project, we have had a 
policy that we ship -source-, not binaries.  Why?  It's clear!  We cannot and 
should not attempt to cater to every need.  We need to provide a framework 
and set of tools for vendors (the people who make "products") to create the 
product they need for the market they serve.  An example of this is RedHat.  
They very heavily customize KDE.  I applaud them for making something that I 
would never use.  (Sorry guys :-)  I build from source anyway...  Although we 
weren't so happy about the (c) removal.)  This is very cool.  Linspire and 
Xandros do the same, with a Windows-like flavor.  Very cool!  KDE caters to 
the geeks who compile from source by default, and provides the options, 
flexibility, and tools to cater to any other market with just a little bit of 
tweaking.

  Should any KDE distributor just compile the KDE source code and ship it 
as-is?  I would hope not.  They would be catering to the geeks who compile 
from source, and, well, they're compiling from source, not using that 
distributors binaries.

   What does this mean about options, configurations, and whiz-bang widgets?  
The more, the -better-.  Make sure that every user can do what s/he wants, 
the way s/he wants to do it.  Make sure those users get a desktop that is 
designed for them, though.  All users have different needs.  I don't intend 
to make their decisions for them, and I insist that no-one else makes my 
decisions for me.  Anyway, Linux is fundamentally about freedom of choice, 
right?

-- 
George Staikos
KDE Developer				http://www.kde.org/
Staikos Computing Services Inc.		http://www.staikos.net/



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