On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 11:58 +0100, Duncan Mac-Vicar Prett wrote:

Klaus Kaempf wrote:

...

"Then, either integrate all the KDE Control Center desktop/theme/artwork elements into YAST or - my preferred option - lose the Control Center duplicates from YAST... but don't have both! YAST is excellent for handling hardware but by overloading it with all these other functions, its developers have created a monster. YAST has become too VAST (Very Awkward Setup Tool)."

http://www.raiden.net/?cat=2&aid=376

--- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)

That guys doesn't do a difference between user preferences and system management tasks.

That distinction is often not very clear either and often is a reflection of the underlying technology - printers being a good example - rather than how the users uses them. Also a role based yast that allowed users to "sync" their user preferences to the system (for instance timezone) would eliminate some problems Timezone: Europe/London [x] Make this timezone the system default Or something to that effect. -JP -- JP Rosevear Novell, Inc. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: yast-devel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: yast-devel+help@opensuse.org

On 13/02/2008, Duncan Mac-Vicar P. wrote:

I completely agree,

But I don't think mixing kcontrol with YaST is the way to go. You can't say YaST is a monster and suggest to make it even more confusing.

YaST is right now complex because a desktop user does not care about having the cluster setup together (or at the same level of importance / visibility) with setting up a printer or adding a software repository, and that is what we have to fix.

It is important to organise the modules well, In my opinion, though ,the fact that: - It is implemented with YaST platform - It requires administrator privileges Should not dictate where the user finds some particular configuration options within the desktop, as neither are things that are immediately obvious. At the moment if the user wants to change the time he or she has to either realise that it is a YaST module, or that it requires root privileges and so decide to look in YaST control centre to find the option. With something like kiwi it's less obvious that either condition applies. Just because some things require higher privileges should not dictate the users' workflow. Authorisation can be obtained when required, preferably as late as possible. I suspect the only way to actually find where the best place to expose settings is is to sit some people without even knowledge of the existence of YaST down at a blank desktop with some configuration tasks, and see where they try and locate them. -- Benjamin Weber -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: yast-devel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: yast-devel+help@opensuse.org

Hello, On Feb 13 22:05 Stefan Hundhammer wrote (shortened):

The user of a standalone home PC with one printer can rightfully claim that this is HIS printer and that he can do whatever he pleases with it, so it doesn't make sense for him to acquire root privileges to administrate that printer.

But this kind of user has (usually) installed the system so that he knows the root password. I never got one single request from such a user that he must be able to set up his hardware without the root password. Be careful not to confuse this with the reasonable request that he should not need the root password to disable/enable the print queue and/or to cancel any print job. The latter does not change the actual print queue setup, it is only about who is allowed to "operate" the print queue.

That printer might also be a network printer because it's so much more comfortable to work with the laptop from the living room couch and work over Wi-Fi. It's still his, and he's still the boss.

See where this is heading? Printer...network... all of a sudden, you find yourself in a corporate environment where things get administered in a lot less anarchic ways. There must be rules and order. System settings vs. user settings are coming back with a vengeance.

You see, in a simple example everything is - well - simple. Who would have guessed. But that's not the real world.

I think you waste your time with explanations. Unfortunately - I explained the printing stuff so often again and again and again - explanations are completely ignored. They want "just print". They never explain what exactly they want. They get something but they never get what they want.

...

Also a role based yast

Apart from that increasingly becoming a buzzword (with an extra score of bingo points), exactly how would it help?

Do we abandon all privileges and permissions, becoming much more Windows-like in the process? (And inviting all kinds of intruders, of course?)

Why not? They want it. They can get it. They have to accept the consequences. Of course for any real administrative task one needs root privileges because this is how the underlying system is set up by default (e.g. most system config files can only be changed by root).

Or do we still at least tell the user that whatever he is about to do is a privileged operation and ask at least his confirmation (not necessarily his password or a special "I, the XY subsystem admin" password)?

If there are YaST-specific "XY subsystem admin privileges" it means that the whole YaST must be made secure against privilege escalation because in the end YaST must act as root to actually do the administrative task (e.g. change a config file, start/stop a service, install a software package, ...). Why not? Just file a feature request so that it can be evaluated if it is worth the effort (i.e. if there is a sufficient business case).

Yes, for some users this will be a learning curve.

This is not what is wanted. What is wanted is that the user's mental model of the system is not disturbed regardless how wrong it might be. The consequence is catastrophic: Users with a wrong mental model of the system act with interfaces which please their wrong ideas but result plain wrong stuff in the system which results annoyance for the users because it simply cannot work as they expect.

...

that allowed users to "sync" their user preferences to the system (for instance timezone) would eliminate some problems

A perfect example of privilege escalation and ignorance of certain kind of problems (e.g. security problems). Additionally it could be a mess when several different users have the privilege to sync their timezone to the system. Kind Regards Johannes Meixner -- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany AG Nuernberg, HRB 16746, GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: yast-devel+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: yast-devel+help@opensuse.org

Dne Thursday 14 February 2008 11:41:24 Andreas Jaeger napsal(a):

Just one caveat: Please keep non-GNOME/KDE systems in mind. On systems with plain X or only a text console you want to reach everything and not lose functionality that is currently duplicated with the desktop control centers,

Well, if one does not want to waste disk space with installing GNOME/KDE libs (s)he does not need for any other purpose and yet use X + some lightweight WM (windowmaker, icewm), maybe we could adjust our scripts to start graphical version of plain old text-mode menu, as you can see on attached screenshot And since we now support adding icons to various widgets, to beautify this menu we could possibly append the smallest size icon to each of those selection box items. Just a thought ... frozenB. -- \\\\\ Katarina Machalkova \\\\\\\__o YaST developer __\\\\\\\'/_ & hedgehog painter

How much work is to create such version? I would like to see how that works.

Uh, I did not expect somebody could actually like the idea ;-) Adding icons to the items is trivial. Tweaking /sbin/yast script to start graph. version of text-mode menu if we have neither GNOME nor KDE desktop is probably not that trivial, but still doable Maybe I could try to put modified control center for non-KDE/non-GNOME users to some of the alphas and see how people like it. It is very simple to revert the change if they don't ... B. -- \\\\\ Katarina Machalkova \\\\\\\__o YaST developer __\\\\\\\'/_ & hedgehog painter