(i'm afraid this mail might get quite long) i just get home from a party, and read an announcement that yast is now 'community'. the party was good though. well.. i loved suse, but not anymore. mainly because of yast. to me a distro is 3 things: - a good package manage system - an integrated product - some sane defaults everywhere suse from 10 onward was (imho) lacking all. yast basically didn't change; it also was not very 'community'. now there is the *ubuntu family that kind of save all of us by being the cool debian, and all of a sudden yast is not longer a 'strategic advantage' but a large disadvantage. it already became a problem when suse got some strong gnome forces on board. toolkits are a religious discussion; i agree. ;) yast is a more kde'ish app that stands bad in a gnome environment (true). so yast is a problem, and ZEN* is apparently not the solution. so now suse tries to go 'community' with yast. and i think that is the logical next thing to do. i think novell understands that people will not write the core of their distro for them. so some investment is needed. the problem is old: the desktop linux user community needs a standard way configure their computer (the configuration/ system settings windows on other OSes). and preferably we also want console access (besides the GUI) to some of the features (like y as). the solution can be new: why not do the configuring from a webpage (that at the same time has a command line interface)? reasons why: - no gnome/kde/whatever dilemma - today with AJAX we can make very good looking interfaces. - webpages are easier to 'fix' (usability wise) - more people can help - ... features: - plugin based - written in ruby (or python) ((biased? who, me?)) - stylesheets can be used for theme creation - a command line interface (new to the locally served web page) - runs on gecko/khtml (with the accompanying javascript engines) - put in a specially crafted browser, to look very clean - ... strategic: - try to cooperate with other distributions - share the development - seek cooperation with openusability.org - uniformize linux configuration -- users benefit - novell shows that it is really interested in the community as a whole (sorry guys, you kind-of let the free software community -- besides your own userbase -- down by signing that MS deal: you could have know) - ... conclusion: obvious to me: re-write. please think big! p.s.: although i think novell let the free software community down by signing the MS deal; i don't mind they did it -- actually i'm glad! they showed a hole in the GPL that can will now be closed in GPLv3! "what does kill it makes it stronger" p.p.s: did i mention that it might also be a good moment to drop RPM in favor of DEB? (this might even create a strong cooperations between suse and the debian/ubuntu/etc.) -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: yast-devel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: yast-devel+help@opensuse.org