#7768 HIGH 8.2.0 (: Alternate linux desktop capability

[Zarro Boogs per Child]

#7768: Alternate linux desktop capability
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   Reporter:  kimquirk      |       Owner:                      
       Type:  enhancement   |      Status:  new                 
   Priority:  high          |   Milestone:  8.2.0 (was Update.2)
  Component:  not assigned  |     Version:  not specified       
 Resolution:                |    Keywords:                      
Next_action:  never set     |    Verified:  0                   
  Blockedby:                |    Blocking:                      
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Changes (by cscott):

 * cc: cscott (added)


Comment:

 See the 'faster' branch, which adds two new packages: 'sugar-xfce-control'
 which allows you to switch between sugar and xfce, and 'sugar-mcs-control'
 which installs the sugar control panel as an item in xfce's "settings
 manager" -- allowing you to switch back to sugar using the same mechanism
 you used to switch there.

 In 9.1 we expect that we will use standard activity startup notification
 in Sugar, eliminating the "grey dot" problem, and upgrade our window
 manager so that traditional unix apps behave reasonably.  I hope that the
 other side of this work will be refactoring the Sugar mesh, friends, and
 home views such that they play nicer with traditional window managers, so
 that Sugar will fit seamlessly in an environment, even if you swap out our
 window manager with an alternative you prefer, or are running Sugar inside
 a traditional gnome or KDE environment.

 The 'faster' branch adds about 50M (1/6) to the size of our image, with
 very limited functionality (no working network or web browser).  Creating
 a "full-fledged" alternative on the XFCE side will require either
 integrating sugar activities into the XFCE environment, so that you can
 launch the Write, Browse, and Firefox activities from xfce, or installing
 completely separate versions of abiword, firefox, etc on the xfce side,
 with the resulting system bloat.  We would also need to properly packaged
 an integrate NetworkManager-gnome into the XFCE side to allow networking
 there, or else use wifiradar or another alternative (bloating the system
 with more redundant code).

 Launching a "traditional" window manager as one "activity" within the
 Sugar system, as hhardy describes, is a neat trick.  I hope that improving
 Sugar's window manager in the 9.1 timeframe will reduce most of the
 incentive for so doing, but it will probably be worth revisiting.

-- 
Ticket URL: <http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/7768#comment:14>
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