Please, include Gnome System Tools in Gnome 2.6 (+suggestion for preferences)

[Egle Kriaučiūnienė <egle akl lt>]

Hi all,

Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com> wrote:
> Gnome System Tools
>
> It's looks like No, though not all members of the release team have
> given their full input. In general there is concern that
> - Distros are not using it yet.
> - It does not yet have a perfect solution for root privileges.
> - The menu structure for user and system preference is not fully
decided.

Why no ? More and more distros are using it (look at 
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gst/distros.php) and list of supported 
distributions is updated often, for example last version (0.32) works 
with PLD distro 1.1 and 1.99, look at: 
http://gnomedesktop.org/article.php?sid=1635&mode=thread&order=0&thold=1

In other hand, if gnome developers don't want to include 
gnome-system-tools how distros would start to use these tools?

Btw, some distros don't even use Gnome (like Suse) ;)

There was a big discussion about GST. I use these tools from
ximian-setup-tools 0.8 release and can't live without these tools,
because setting time or adding/removing users without these tools was a
difficult task in Linux with GNOME. For example KDE had boot manager,
time and users management tools about 3 years ago, why Gnome developers
are still discussing about including such tools ?

> Hopefully this decision reflects the community's wishes, though the
> maintainer deserves a more constructive explanation. I will reply to
> this email to give my personal opinion.

No, this decision don't reflect community wishes :(

Most of users wanna see gnome-system-tools in Gnome Desktop, look at
http://gnomedesktop.org/pollBooth.php?op=results&pollID=52

If some parts of these tools are too unstable when Gnome 2.6 will be
released, they can be simply excluded. Desktop users can't live without
time and users management tools, leave at least these.

Hope, you change your mind and Gnome 2.6 will be more user-friendly and 
simple users will be able to change time or date, connect to network or 
add another user.

Btw, I also have one suggestion about menu structure for user and system 
preference - we should expand an Actions menu.
For example now in Actions menu there are only few, pretty randomly 
chosen actions. If there is logout action in actions menu, why "new 
login" action is in Applications->System tools menu ?

I think, that Actions menu should also contain 2 submenus, one named 
"Configure System" with all system configuration tools, which require 
root password (like gst tools and gdmsetup) and other, named "Configure 
Desktop", where should go all settings from Applications->Desktop 
preferences. Settings should be moved out from Applications, because 
settings aren't applications ;)

Then there will be 2 main actions for changing system and user 
preferences - "Configure the System" and "Configure the Desktop".
This is not very big change, because Gnome menu already splited from 
version 2.0 to Applications and Actions. Now we just should to fit 
existing programs, configuration tools and utilities to applications or 
actions :)

Good luck,
Eglė Kriaučiūnienė	Email & Jabber ID: <egle akl lt>
Public organization "Open Source for Lithuania"	www.akl.lt