JUL
4
2003

KDE Traffic #57 is Out

Submitted by Russell Miller

KDE Traffic #57 is out, with more on the KDE 3.2 release thread, news on KDE 3.1.3, a new widget, a new privacy module and more. Get it at the usual place.

Comments

sorry I can't report this with bugs.kde.org ;)

But the title says
"By Russell Miller and"??

By anon at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Since you've extended a happy Independence Day to your American readers, I'd like to extend a happy Canada Day to my Canadian readers ;-)

By Aaron J. Seigo at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Why does everyone celebrate being free of british rule. I mean we are not that bad right. Right..?

:)

By Mark at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Well you did loot India pretty badly. :-)

By Anonymous at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Ive never forgiven you for sending the puritains over... I mean why couldnt the austrailians get them?

-ian reinhart geiser
(hint its a joke)

By Ian Reinhart Geiser at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Because they got the convicts of course!

By tfar at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

I'm deeply impressed this thread didn't set off a flame from Scotland/Wales/N Ireland - does this mean no one from these places is involved with KDE?

By Gerry - London, UK at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

No I think people recognised its ment in fun. I think we all agree the world over that our parents and governments did (and still do) some pretty silly things. I like to pretend we are above that.

Cheers
-ian reinhart geiser

By Ian Reinhart Geiser at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Nah people do live in Scotland. I study at Aberdeen University, so can vouch for this :)

And yep it was meant as a joke.

By Mark at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Poor old covicts the got the beautiful girls and the sunshine, I sure they missed the English rain.

By Jim at Sat, 2003/07/05 - 5:00am

Will they use the Gnome Setup Tools backend?

They've done a lot of the heavy lifting already, its pointless to duplicate it.

Also copying the GUI of the Gnome tools is Good Thing.

If people just learn one method of configuring things on the Free *nix desktop,
it can only be a good thing.

By rjw at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

This is a very, very good proposal indeed. To give some links for further information:

The source code for the backends can be found here:
http://cvs.gnome.org/bonsai/rview.cgi?cvsroot=/cvs/gnome&dir=setup-tools...

The frontend information is available at the follow location:
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gst/

The latest release information:
http://linuxtoday.com/developer/2003050700726NWGNRL

About 2 years, if I'm not mistaken, people have already undertaken an effort
to use these tools with kde. It stopped due to lack of people/time/etc.
There used to be a mailinglist devoted to this I think it was named ksysconfig,
but it is/was not hosted at kde.org.

By Richard Bollinger at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

There is a pretty new effort in kdenonbeta

By Anonymous at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Which module (ksysctrl looks e.g. not touched for a long time).

By Richard Bollinger at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

kggst

By Anonymous at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

I have started kggst some time ago, till now only the platform chooser works. I had not enough time to do any further work, but I hope that I will have the gui for the gnome system tools network module ready till Nove Hrady.

Kind regards
Joseph Wenninger

By Joseph Wenninger at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

It looks like that 3 people are working on a similar kcm module;

there is kggst, knetworkconf and a 3rd one. For more info see the
following url:
http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=105633689500459&w=2

By Richard Bollinger at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

There will be a workshop at N7Y...

By Anonymous George at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

well the knetworkconf is suppose to be portable to unix, not just linux. I will resist and protest any tool no matter how pretty looking that will not at least run on Solaris, and maby netBSD... I think the gnome ones have a few tools that run on Solaris, but afaik most do not.

Remember kids, this is a desktop for Unix not Linux.

Cheers
-ian reinhart geiser

By Ian Reinhart Geiser at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

All sane configuration systems should be split into a GUI frontend and a OS-specific (or distribution-specific) backend. If there are not enough Solaris (BSD etc...) developers who contribute backends for their system, then this should not stop the progress on more popular systems.

By Tim Jansen at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

This is what the network configs goal is. I think the hardest part about doing it though will be to enforce the neutrality of the backend vs frontend.

I mean its infinitely easier to write a gui that edits the vfstab on solaris than to abstract a fstab API that can edit the vfstab, fstab on linux and maby the other strange formats they have on AIX :)

This difficulty kinda makes it easy to stall out, but I admire anyone who can pull it off.

Cheers
-ian reinhart geiser

By Ian Reinhart Geiser at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

AFAIK, the Gnome Tools have totally configurable backends that should work on any UNIX, as long as someone takes care of such backend. Support for FreeBSD was started some time ago, dunno what its state is as of now.

http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/setup-tool-hackers/2003-May/0000...

By Traveller at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

By Juergen at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

1) IMO privacy clearing should offer an option to do that automatically on
logout and/or kde start
2) "System" modules should not be separate but within the normal control
center because it is diffiult to decide from an end-user point of view
where the difference is between "system" modules and "kde" modules.
This distinction would probably seem arbitrary.
3) Because it is difficult to write system modules because of all those
various distributions there should at least be some common "interface"
which distributors can "hook" into to provide those functions with
a common UI across all distributions. If they choose not to implement that
function with this interface there is of course nothing we can do about it,
but they might save some time not developing UIs themselves for every
single function but just a KDE-compatible CLI.

By Jan at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

"1) IMO privacy clearing should offer an option to do that automatically on
logout and/or kde start"

Good idea. I'll put it on my TODO list.

By Ralf at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Good ideas! Especially #3. I personally would like to see KDE evolve enough to provide something like Active Directory, that can be used to configure an entire network of KDE workstations. AD's concept of "snap-ins" is right in line with this idea.

Eron

By Eron Lloyd at Sat, 2003/07/05 - 5:00am

Thanks for this great digest, Russel, your efforts is really great.
.
The mail adrees above, futuretells63@hotmail.com, belongs to the "Africa Million Dolar Spammer, privete mail adrees. I hope his fellows grab this adrees and spam a lot. customerservice@africainternationalbank.com - "Dr.James Desouza" -

By Mr. Spammer at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Hi!
Do you know about
http://users.skynet.be/top/webconfig/
it integrates browser based configuration into kcontrol

By Ferdinand at Fri, 2003/07/04 - 5:00am

Looks good, would be nice to revive it and move it into CVS.

By Datschge at Sat, 2003/07/05 - 5:00am

If we waited until all the bugs have stopped arriving then there would never be any releases. There will always be issues relating to some specific distro or some library version.

System Admin modules for Control Center are an excellent idea, however it might be worth creating a seperate Admin Control Center.

By Ian Ventura-Whiting at Sat, 2003/07/05 - 5:00am