Re: Gentoo Desktop - Proposal

James William Dumay <[email protected]> said:

> Yeah, I sat down and thought about it some more. Heres what I have come
> up with. I welcome flames, comments and changes to the document.

ok, below are my comments

> 
> Gentoo Desktop

The name cannot be Gentoo Desktop, there is already an official gentoo desktop
project.


> 
> Overview
> ===
> The purpose of the "Gentoo Desktop" to to provide a different and Customized
> version of the vanilla desktop environment. The desktop will be a
> modification of not only applications and Desktop Environment, but small
> changes in the Gentoo core, to raise the level of usability and improve ease
> of use.

ok, why not

> 
> Target Audience
> ===
>  "Hobbyist" users coming from other distributions, such as RedHat, Mandrake, SuSE, etc.
> Small to Medium Enterprise Desktop Roll outs
> Educational Institutions (Universities, Collages, Secondary and Grade
> Schools) 

the goals are missing : is it just coolness, or security? polishness?
professionalism? ease of use? etc. redhat is polished, professional, but not
the easiest to use, for instance.

> 
> Desktop Environments - Why GNOME?
> ===

I'll cut the rest : for me gnome is NOT the dominant desktop environment. KDE is
a lot more widely used, more powerfull, more integrated, has more extensions.

[...]

> 
> End Product
> ===
> The end product will be a Gentoo Desktop Livecd and Documentation for installation and configuration of the system. User would boot into a preconfigured and polished GNOME Environment.
> 
> Customisation rundown
> ===
> A quick rundown on the type of customisation for for future discussion.
> Base System
>  - Some kind of "Kernel Profile" with additional device modules using Genkernel or similar tool.
>  - Hardware detection and configuration scripts and services.

that part is going to be done anyway in the core.

>  - Tools for rolling out system and desktop configuation settings.

same, I think this should go mainstream


[...]

> 
> Gentoo Desktop - The First Step
> ===
> 
> Milestone 1
>  - Report on the Applcation and Services needed on Desktop System
>  - System Services - Hardware Detection Services, File/Print Sharing, Printing, etc
>  - Applcations - Office Productivity Tools, Internet Tools, Gaming, etc
>  - Decide on the appropriate virtuals and USE flags needed for user customization of the desktop.
>  - Create gentoo-desktop-x86-2004.0 profile based on the decisions made.
>  - Build system with new profile and report on system usability from an end users perspective, noting specific issues to be discuss and delt with in Milestone 2.

this is a good way to do it. Maybe we should decide before that,

- do we need/want that
- how should it be integreated/handled by gentoo


-- 
dams