On Mon, 3 Dec 2001, Mark Evans wrote:
Can't this be done by sym-linking the appropriate parts of '.kde' to a non writable master copy. I though I'd limit my users (my wife) in this fashion but see told me not to.... The problem is you can need to think quite hard about exactly what you link.
And what is supposed to prevent users deleting the symlinks?
IMHO it's a design defficency quite a bit of software (not just KDE) has, apparently copied from Windows. Which is to make everything only end user configurable. Which is a pain where not only don't you want the end user configuring things they wouldn't have the first clue anyway. (I find web browser settings an especial annoyance.)
Personally, I think that the most elegant solution is for applications to merge both central and per-user settings. KDE does this - you can create settings in /usr/share/config/* that will apply to all applications, but can be overridden by end users when necessary.
Somtimes you want to be able to disable certain per user settings. Either because they will result in things not working e.g. web browser proxy settings. Or because the risk of causing problems for other people is high e.g. the From: field in emails. (In schools either users shouldn't be able to change this or a Sender: header must be generated.) The latter is something the older text based software handles far far better then any GUI software, IMHO.
For the record, and because it's mildly relevant to this discussion, we are currently creating a policy-type configuration tool. The idea is that you don't bother to configure any individual computers on the network (even servers); instead you create configuration rules from which every computer can derive their configuration. For example, you create a rule that says "the proxy server is SERVER1". From this, SERVER1 knows that it must install and start up Squid. Simultaneously, all the other computers on the network know that they must set SERVER1 as the proxy server for all installed browsers. Please note *all* computers and *all* browsers: this rule would apply to Konqueror, Netscape, Galeon, Opera, MSIE, lynx, etc. - the same configuration rule applies to multiple different pieces of software across multiple platforms.
Lynx already handles proxy settings very effectivly through environment variables. The others not so well... -- Mark Evans St. Peter's CofE High School Phone: +44 1392 204764 X109 Fax: +44 1392 204763