My explanation to "a default DE" (was "Providing a default graphical environment on FreeBSD")

[Guido Falsi]

On 09/18/12 00:23, Zhihao Yuan wrote:
> On Sep 17, 2012 4:04 PM, "Guido Falsi" <mad at madpilot.net
> <mailto:mad at madpilot.net>> wrote:
>  >
>  > On 09/17/12 21:13, Zhihao Yuan wrote:
>  >>
>  >> 1. Maximize graphical user experience by officially implementing Wifi
>  >> helpers, auto-mounters;
>  >
>  >
>  > A good automounter definitely does not need a GUI.
>  > …
>  > BTW for this case too there is a whole set of problems due to
> authorizations. various other OSes have solved this in many ways, most
> common solution used to be to just make every user "root"(or whatever
> the other OS calls it ;)
>  >
>
> So, my opinion is, we need to standardize both, or we can't provide a
> modern graphical user experience.

Standards can't accommodate the wide variation of uses a general purpose 
OS with such a diverse mix of uses as FreeBSD has.

Whatever option you choose to standardize on you will end up with just a 
small portion of the users satisfied and the other unsatisfied.

I'd like to FreeBSD to keep this attitude. "blessing" one DE is just the 
opposite and even if the blessing is just a blessed option between many, 
if successful it will tend to marginalize the others.

>
>  > Also, you should also have a look at net-mgmt/wifimgr if you really
> can't do without a mouse.
>
> As u can see, it's a stand alone app. But the most widely used wifi

What's so bad about stand alone things? They are simple and less prone 
to breaking in mysterious ways

> managers are always taskbar applets -- something bound to a specific DE.
> -- we must standardize a ${DE}!

What about people who dislike DEs and taskbar and all these kind of 
things cluttering their screen? What about ones using Plain old WMs??

In fact why should I have a wifi management GUI running all the time if 
I need it just a few minutes a week when I happen to be around and need 
to add a new network? Same goes for other gadgets(toys...).

If working applets are what is needed I think it would be a better 
effort to adapt to the APIs the ones which already exist and give them 
the needed backend. Not easy, but would have the best reward.

Anyway The blessing part is the problem. Everyone has it's preferences 
and wil be a very big bikeshed.

You ignored the most important part of my email. Even before worrying 
about the GUI part of such applications there are difficult technical 
things to solve. Writing the applet is the easy part once the bigger 
technical problems are solved. The technical problems are not 
standardization ones, new general solutions are needed. It's not just a 
question of picking up one between various options for the authorization 
problems. The evident options are all suboptimal, just choosing one is 
no good. And this is just an example.

Personally I have never used taskbars, toolbars and the like(well except 
when I have to use a very common OS with a mandatory taskbar in lower 
part of the screen by default), I like plain old Windows managers and 
use a simple mouse menu to launch the most common programs (I played 
with gestures, but were not satisfied) and use terminal emulators to do 
anything else.

I have little knowledge of the DEs since I have not been using any for a 
long time, even though I do use some gnome software as a standalone 
program. So I can't help choose one

-- 
Guido Falsi <mad at madpilot.net>