[Rule] Is Gnome/KDE the greatest bloat?

[M. Fioretti]

On Wed, Aug 29, 2007 10:14:07 AM +0200, Ingo Lantschner
 ingo.lists at vum.at  wrote:

> Am 27.08.2007 um 19:33 schrieb M. Fioretti:
> >
> > What I mean is that we should realize that for end users who badly
> > need to recycle a 4/5 year old computer for SOHO work or study, a
> > system made of console-only apps on a bare X will be either
> > objectively useless or practically way beyond their skills.
> 
> hmh, Xubuntu has both X, a windowmanager and a Desktop (Xfce).

Yes, but honestly the end users I talk about couldn't care less of
what X and Xfce are. They use computers only because they have useful
applications, that is tools to make practical things: what I mean is
that one should start from "what is the smallest and lightest set of
tools that makes it possible to do {opendocument text processing,
digital signatures in email, html4, what else?}". From there, one
should ask "what is the set of libraries, window manager, etc... that
makes it possible to use those apps with the smallest possible
overload?"

Starting from the bottom (which kernel, which distro, which X, Qt or
Gtk, which window manager) only makes sense to us geeks, that is
people who probably like to _build_ and _tune_ than environment _more_
than actually using it :-)

This is not to dismiss your suggestions that we consider Ubuntu: I've
already said several times that all the recent traffic on this list
seems to be equivalent to some form of "we have to merge with
Ubuntu-lite or simply take that project and revive it if its authors
are gone"

It's just important to go for it with the right attitude.

> Finally I have to say, that I learned a lot of interesting details
> by reading and discussing on this list, which are still valuable for
> me, even outside of the field of recycling outdated hardware.

Of course, everything we can put online to help in this field is
valuable to many more people than those subscribed to this list, no
matter where the project ends up eventually.

Ciao,
	Marco
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