Re: tlug: the pros and cons of under-reconfiguring your kernel

["Manuel M. T. Chakravarty" <chak@example.com>]

Jonathan Q <jq@example.com> wrote,

> Manuel M. T. Chakravarty (chak@example.com) wrote:
> 
> > Jonathan Q <jq@example.com> wrote,
> > 
> > [...]
> > > In fact, I will state as a reformed former user of Some Other
> > > Operating System, that while still a bit rough around the edges, Gnome
> > > is not as good as That Other Operating System's GUI - it's better.
> > 
> > That's interesting.  As I am using That Other Operating
> > System only for the occasional game or to get at hardware
> > details before replacing it with Our Favourite Operating
> > System, I would be very interested to hear what you think
> > are the features that make Gnome better.
> 
[...]
> In fact, having seen and occassionally used Win 98,
> I find it's GUI doesn't measure up very well against Win 95.  More flash,
> but no more substance.

That's what I thought.

> The creators of Gnome and KDE, on the other hand, were starting with an
> essentially clean slate.  They could look at everything that had been done
> before, take what they liked, leave what they didn't.  While I would 
> agree that both still have some maturing to do, they are nevertheless
> quite nice products which deliver their ease of use without restricting
> those with the ability to do so from manually editing the configuration
> if they feel like it.  
> 
> How do you think they stack up?

I agree with you.  But as I never tried to use That Other
Operating System for serious work, I was just wondering
whether maybe I missed some aspects.  The last non-Unix OS
and GUI that I used seriously was GEM on the Atari ST.

I definitely agree with you that it is superimportant that
it is possible to get around all GUI sugar coating and edit
the config files manually.  When you are knowing what you
are doing, this is always the fastest way of doing things
(and over a slow modem connection often the only way).

Another aspect of Gnome's design that I like very much
(although it is only partially usable so far) is that they
have an eye on allowing to use scripting languages (Guile,
Perl, Python, etc) to manipulate the Gnome components by a
script (via Corba).  This way, you can combine Gnome
components in scripts similar to how you combine standard
Unix command in scripts via pipes and stuff.

Manuel
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