galeon 1.3 yet again, for the last time

actually, i wasn't asking that the developer include a lot of new
features,  i just wanted the features that had been there, and i think
that a massive interface change, while it might change to be consistent
within a group of apps, is not consistent in the app itself.

really,  these are the things i wanted:

1) the -choice- to pick what my buttons looked like, because stock
gtk/gnome buttons look clunky

2) the -choice- to pick my email client from the preferences panel.  the
only way to do that now is to access it through gconf. fortunately,
fedora allows you to do that through an inconspicuously named menu
choice called "configuration editor".  in order to do that, you have to
read the extra prefs readme and find it down near the bottom of that doc

3) the -choice- of throbber, i thought the thing that launched those
little orange globes was cool.  now, after reading the help, i find that
this too can be changed through the previously mentioned configuration
editor.

i think these last 2 items significantly increase the difficulty rating
for customizaton, especially when all of this was done inside the
preferences dialog of the previous version.

for all the talk about freedom to make linux what you want, if you don't
like it you can change it, i find myself increasingly forced take things
as they come.

i think it is kind of antithetical to the whole philosophy of open
source when things like this occur.  why assume that i want to use the
gnome mailer?  there are five different email utilities in the fedora
internet submenu, and as many web browsers.

i don't think that you have to sacrifice consistent user interface by
allowing choice.  i do think it that it would be better to leave choice
in where it was, (that is consistent user interface), than to place in
the command line arena of gconf or something a little better like
configuration editor, and then to document it in an extra prefs readme.

do you guys feel that there is a trend toward less configurability, 
because i do, and i have felt that way with the redhat offerings
starting with the 8 series.  i remember that the first linux i bought
was redhat 6.0, and i didn't know what to expect, up to that point i had
only used windows products, but i was blown away with redhat 6, and
subsequently each issue up to rh 7.3, but when rh 8 came out, i took one
look and thought, well it looks cool, but it isn't very easy to change,
i mean you basically got stuck with bluecurve.

what about gnome, in rh7.3 they said that the core of the interface was
the gnome panel, but they taken most of that aspect away, for the most
part, along with viewports.

but, thank you, adam, michael t, christophe, michael m, ben, and andrew
for your thoughts because the have been education and helpful.

by the way,  what linux distros do you guys use, and window managers,
and why?

thanks,
philip dahlquist


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