> Bryan Ischo wrote: [...] > Right. There are a couple of ongoing discussions, and you probably > aren't aware of them. > > One discussion has crystallised into the idea that, actually, Fedora > Core shouldn't include everything (which is why we have Extras). Linux > distributions take a pretty expansive definition of an "operating > system" (practically nothing else includes office suites, for example), > but there is still going to be stuff that Fedora doesn't try to do. > [...] > Having multiple alternatives available confuses the user: which should > he or she use? "Try both" implies that the user needs to invest time to > choose, which is not user-friendly. [...] > Against this background, the removal of those programs you mention does > make sense. Yikes. I have the feeling that my usage of Fedora is going the way of the dinosaur. I've known this for some time - I still use twm and some older X11 programs all the time. And this has been increasingly more difficult to do as these older programs become less and less popular. But I realize that there is need for progress and I agree completely with the idea of consolidating functionality because it is true that choices are actually work for the user in many cases. The KDE-vs-Gnome debate must be very interesting in light of this idea. I would be willing to maintain an extras package for these X utilities that Mark A. Harris removed. But can we at least be consistent and remove *all* of the utilities - meaning, take xmessage out of there too - rather than just some, which is not only "unfair" to those of us who care, but also technically more complicated than just removing them all and maintaining a separate package for them. Unless xmessage is the "only" application available that does what it does (pops up a simple text message in a window)? Thanks, Bryan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bryan Ischo bryan@xxxxxxxxx N, R, 6 New York, NY, USA http://www.ischo.com RedHat Linux 7.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
