On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 8:12 PM, Adam Williamson awilliam@redhat.com wrote:
Well, sure, but I don't place much faith in this exact formulation of this common argument. 'Caring' isn't something that just magically Happens or Doesn't Happen. It's not like anyone was maintaining s-c-* before because it was a bundle of fun, they were maintaining them because they were the Fedora system configuration tools. And, bluntly, RH was paying most of them. But now RH's paid resources and most of the 'we care because they're our most prominent configuration tools' resources get re-directed into working on the GNOME tools, to the detriment of the desktop-agnostic tools.
Configuration tools that are part of and integrated into the desktop do offer a better and consistent user experience,
They offer a better and more consistent user experience *for users who use that desktop and only that desktop*. They offer a less consistent user experience for users who use multiple desktops, and they offer nothing at all for users who don't use that desktop.
This is not exactly a fair picture. GNOME has offered a set of configuration tools for over a decade now (initially created by Ximian), Ubuntu has used them since it was created. That Fedora and Red Hat are finally working with other distributions to have a unified set of configuration utilities, whether it's designed in KDE or GNOME or others, is a very *good* thing. It means less work for everyone involved and a much better experience for users.
It's true, desktops which don't offer a set of configuration utilities get left behind. But I don't think someone running a custom .xinitrc with openbox and xscreensaver and others really cares about a GUI for setting the time or hostname. And if they do they can still use gnome-control-center, it's not that much different.
-- Evandro