Re: FW: Nautilus and Setup Tools

[Seth Nickell <snickell stanford edu>]

> > If you want to extend into trying to solve all the UI problems of the
> > whole operating system, instead of just creating a good desktop
> > component, then you're going to have to look at working with the whole
> > OS and various relevant open source projects, instead of just the
> > GNOME Project. We have got to think bigger-picture if we want to have
> > a bigger impact.

Actually, rereading this, this is exactly the point I am trying to make.
When I say I want GNOME viewed as an operating environment/system, what
I am saying is that we SHOULD be looking at the overall UI problem and
not just saying "oh, that deals with moduleFoo which is outside the
graphical-shell domain of problems so we shouldn't deal with it". I'm
saying that GNOME and KDE are *exactly* the projects that should be
looking at these overall UI issues and figuring out what needs to be
done to create a seamless user environment. I consider that to be an
operating system. Distributions currently do this job because they want
to make a buck, and users care about the state of the system as it first
lands on their desktop, but I think the desktop environment has as much
connection to delivering a complete desktop experience as the
distribution, so we should be looking at these issues too.

I'm not voting for becoming more isolationist or something and using
only GnomeTechnology(TM), I'm saying we *should* be considering the
whole picture. The model I use for understanding that is viewing GNOME
as the operating system. This helps me to think clearly about the issues
we need to be addressing. Apparently the term has too much technical
association to work for everyone, but it helps me *shrug*.

-Seth