lagitus
02-10-2004, 08:59 AM
I've recently set up some Linux machines with Gnome in them mainly because it's faster to load than KDE (which I prefer at home).
For a test computer at my school I configured a (Debian unstable) Gnome desktop for a public user account. Everything seemed to work nicely until I tried to restore a backup copy of the public users home directory to restore some settings someone had messed up. I logged in again only to see the desktop icons out of order and half of the panel missing. I hastily tried to restore the critical settings to make the computer usable.
Later I started messing with the users home directory again and the situation at the moment is that the panel loses many of its objects when I log in again and I can no longer create a second panel. The existing one dissappears! Adding panel objects doesn't work like it should either.
I examined the /etc/gconf and found a mess of partly corrupted, unindented xml files in three seperate trees that I refuse to correct by hand and the editor that comes with gnome is next to useless.
The mess closely resembles the Windows registry, which is IMO one of the greatest flaws of the OS. Why would such a thing be used in an otherwise good desktop environment??? IMHO KDE handles configuration in a much more logical way by having each app store its configs in a logical location in the users home directory in human readable form.
AFAIK having a lot of files in one logical place is part of the Unix philosophy that has made Unix systems so successful.
For a test computer at my school I configured a (Debian unstable) Gnome desktop for a public user account. Everything seemed to work nicely until I tried to restore a backup copy of the public users home directory to restore some settings someone had messed up. I logged in again only to see the desktop icons out of order and half of the panel missing. I hastily tried to restore the critical settings to make the computer usable.
Later I started messing with the users home directory again and the situation at the moment is that the panel loses many of its objects when I log in again and I can no longer create a second panel. The existing one dissappears! Adding panel objects doesn't work like it should either.
I examined the /etc/gconf and found a mess of partly corrupted, unindented xml files in three seperate trees that I refuse to correct by hand and the editor that comes with gnome is next to useless.
The mess closely resembles the Windows registry, which is IMO one of the greatest flaws of the OS. Why would such a thing be used in an otherwise good desktop environment??? IMHO KDE handles configuration in a much more logical way by having each app store its configs in a logical location in the users home directory in human readable form.
AFAIK having a lot of files in one logical place is part of the Unix philosophy that has made Unix systems so successful.