Linked by John Munsch on Mon 30th Dec 2002 19:05 UTC
Why do it? I am asked this question more often than I expected, even by existing Linux users who I expected to know as well as I the reasons for building a next-generation desktop Linux for the home user. So here are some of my reasons for thinking that we must spend the effort to create a better desktop on Linux than any existing version now has. Editor's Note: Due to a technical glitch, the first segment of this article was ommitted for some readers. If you missed the "why" section, before, you can read it now.
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A lot of the changes you are proposing involves large sets of modifications to third party applications (many which has little to nothing to do with Linux, except for the fact that they can run under it) such as XFree, Gnome, XMMS etc. What about those of us who are not using Linux, but are using those applications? And what about Linux users not using XFree, but rather Accelerated X or some other X server. Sure it would be nice with a neat graphical control panel with all settings, but since Linux, and Unix, systems provide a freedom for users to select, and use, multiple applications - many of which are providing the same basic functionality, but in different packages - it would be hard to impossible to create a single settings application. A much better approach, imho, would be to create a configuration applet standard, and a small application that could load all those configuration applets (one for each application requiring configuration, installed together with the actual app) and generate a nice control panel. (GUI or CLI)
Btw, look at the FreeBSD sysinstall application, it may not be a fancy GUI but it provides settings for the entire system, ranging from disks setup to package administration and XFree configuration.
Talking about FreeBSD (and this goes for Net and Open as well) the package manager is outstanding, either you download a package yourself or through the official package collection and when you try to install it all dependencies are automatically solved. (and unlike dpkg it does not try to reinstall something that has already been installed outisde of the package manager).
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A very satisfied FreeBSD user who has a hard time understanding why osnews continuously reefers to most GNU and Unix applications as Linux apps. (Btw, Linux is just the kernel, the complete OS is GNU/Linux).