On Mon, 2005-10-10 at 18:37 +0100, Jonathan Underwood wrote:

I also idley wonder why Fedora sticks with system-config-* rather than gnome-system-tools and friends, given the push for upstream compatibilitiy, but that's another thread :).

I think, as discussed earlier on this list (and extensively on desktop-devel-list@gnome.org), that neither system-config-* nor gnome-system-tools (at least in earlier versions) is the right approach regarding configuration of a desktop system or a laptop [1].

The problem, or bug, is that both of these normally requires the root password and, to an extent, touches system-wide configuration.

So, what we want is ideally auto-configuration (thus no need for an actual tool and no need to waste precious menu space), per-user configuration (thin NetworkManager or gnome-power-manager) or something third. Btw, there's lots of things that needs to get fixed; sound [2] and video [3] are two examples comes to mind. Patches fixing things like these are much welcome and should ideally be directed to upstream rather than Fedora if possible.

Cheers, David

[1] : Things like servers, e.g. httpd, is an entirely different problem and I think most people agree that e.g. system-config-httpd isn't the right approach either.

[2] : Bastien nicely summed up the work required here http://mail.gnome.org/archives/utopia-list/2005-July/msg00001.html

[3] : E.g. dynamic reconfiguration of the X.org server