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List:       enlightenment-users
Subject:    Re: [e-users] EEM (Enlightenment on Zaurus); E17 LiveCD - good idea or bad?
From:       Jim Philips <jimmyc () speedfactory ! net>
Date:       2005-03-08 12:11:05
Message-ID: 200503080711.06752.jimmyc () speedfactory ! net
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On Tuesday 08 March 2005 06:39 am, Martin White wrote:
> Accidentally sent this off list (yet again!) so I'll try again...
>
> Live or normal, damn an E based distro would be superb!
>
> The one thing that is a little bit of a pain in the b* is that if you opt
> to use E, be it E16 or E17 in your favourite distro, (I've used SUSE and
> Mandrake) all the nice tools that they go to a huge amount of effort to put
> in (drakconf, rfbdrake, well, loads more that I can't think of right now!)
> are suddenly hidden out of sight and as I just demonstrated because you're
> so used to them just being there from KDE or GNOME half the time you don't
> even know what the tools are called :)

The people who code the windowing environments don't put this stuff on the 
menus. It's done by the people who create the distros. And that's where that 
effort belongs. You can't expect Enlightenment developers to create a 
separate menu for every distro, not even for the most common ones. KDE and 
Gnome certainly don't do that. 


> It's also a shame to loose the branding as well because let's face it,
> often a distro's branding is pretty good looking. SUSE is a good example of
> this and I have to say that while i wouldn't touch it anymore for plenty of
> more serious reasons, linspire's branding was pretty cool too...
>
> SO, to my mind, the ideal distro would be a SUSE or Mandrake or <insert
> your favourite GOOD LOOKING distro here> based effort that:
>
> A) Keeps said distro's good looking branded tools intact but brings them
> into play with the desktop (adding menus and/or icons to E)

Again, I don't think this task belongs to the people who develop windowing 
environments, which need to be as portable as possible. 

> B) By default DOES NOT install KDE or GNOME unless the user chooses to pick
> those during install time.

Amen on that one!


> Now, thinking about it, those three reasons alone are not reason enough to
> come up with yet another distribution to add to the mess that I personally
> thinking is now having a potential to make a negative impact on linux.
>
> Maybe the answer is simply to create themes based on distributions. So a
> set of Mandrake themes that include all the menu items to all the stock
> Mandrake config tools and stuff, or the same for SUSE, FC, whatever.

This would be a total mess, unless the distro owners themselves decide on some 
uniform standards...which isn't anywhere near happening.

Right now, the best efforts at theming are done by the fans of a particular 
windowing environment. Just browse awhile at kde-look.org. Gnome doesn't have 
nearly as much stuff of that type, basically because the Gnome developers 
don't want you to customize that much. This is dumb. It looks to me like E 
developers are sticking with the idea that users should be able to create and 
install their own themes, backgrounds,  etc.  And that's a good thing. The 
spirit of open source is "let a thousand flowers bloom". Sometimes designers 
working on a strictly volunteer basis come up with stuff that blows away the 
original designs. Take a look at some of the icons created by Everaldo for 
KDE. His Crystal icon set is now the default for KDE.


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