Re: GNOME and non-linux platforms (release team please stand up)

[Colin Walters <walters verbum org>]

On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 5:10 PM, Brian Cameron<Brian Cameron sun com> wrote:

> Though, probably the main reason why there has not much of a drive to
> add PolicyKit to Solaris is because there has not been much need.  To
> date, Sun has not had much of a problem integrating the GNOME stack
> without having PolicyKit available.  I am sure there are some features
> that Solaris is lacking because of this, but I do not recall any bug
> reports or user complaints about this.

I don't have a full feature list to hand, but some concrete examples
are things like:

* shutdown/reboot (the legacy code may still be there)
* Changing the system time from the clock
* PackageKit updater
* Doing simple administrative process control in gnome-system-monitor

I think it makes sense for things like this to be in the default
desktop UI flow, and enabled by default by OS vendors for the
unmanaged case[1], the first three particularly without any
authorization required at all.  Here PolicyKit is just a fancy way for
us to work around the default Unix permissions model which was
designed for timesharing servers, while allowing administrators in the
managed case well-defined control.

This doesn't replace the need for tools targeted for admins, but I
think it is going to be a better experience than firing up Visual
Panels, system-config-date or whatever for the covered cases.

[1] Where someone downloads a CD from a website on their own