question/suggestion

[Andrew Oliver <acomaillists yahoo com>]

I have a question that I guess is more of a
suggestion.

Would it be possible for gnome to have a bit more
sophisticated user context manager?  Currently
whomever you were logged in as is who you are. 
Desired capabilities are:

1. Ability to open windows with different
context/context managers

2. Cross-machine context.

The first, to me, (though I'm only starting to start
to get involved in the Gnome project), seems possible
(though I'm wondering if there isn't a philosophical
reason it isn't there).  I think that this would be
useful for four different kinds of users: -> people
installing things (similar to redhats update agent, on
init the window would ask "please give me xx's
password"), developers (>2 X's loaded on different
virtual machines I think would bring my SCSI PIII-500
512MB down ) and how many times have you needed to
test something under a context that you're not running
under, yes you can kick it off from a xterm but that
depends on what you're testing!, administrators,
newbies who have no idea what Unix is but just
switched and have their security so screwed up they'll
never find their head from their *** (converts from
windoze).

2. Mainly this would help administrators.  I for one
HATE installing X on a real server!  Secondly I loathe
installing X on a firewall/router type server.  It
WOULD be nice however to somehow run software against
that machine.  (such as any of the gui apache stuff,
firewall admin stuff, network admin stuff [I hate
editing all those files]), I know there is linux conf
web (no I've never gotten it to work very well), but
it would be nice to just open a capplet or
control-panel or whatever under root@linux1 (from
linux2) providing the appropriate password than have
to edit text files.  there are lots of people trying
to solve similar problems with more complex tools
(CIM, etc) but this to me seems the most practical
approach.

-ACO

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