Why is Terminal 'extra' ?

[C. Scott Ananian]

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 11:37 AM, Mikus Grinbergs <mikus at bga.com> wrote:
> Was not aware of the implications of "the official builds from now
>  on will contain only _base_ Activities" (discussed in Ticket #6598),
>  until I saw a recent post to the Sugar list.
>
>  I happen to be a heavy CLI user.  It appears the target countries
>  for OLPC deployment have not insisted on CLI - hence Terminal is
>  being omitted from the _base_ software distribution.  I'm presuming
>  not all users in the field will have a connection whereby to
>  download 'extra' Activities omitted from the _base_.  That leaves
>  the text console as the "approved" OLPC CLI interface.

Terminal, Log Viewer, and Analyze are not included in the core build,
but they *are* included in the core *library*.  That is, you can
always install them, even though they may not show up by default in
the toolbar.

Now, there are people who feel strongly that Terminal should appear in
the default toolbar.  I don't have a strong personal opinion pro or
con on this.  But it *must* be (and is) *available* (even if not
'installed by default) because it is essential for OLPC to diagnose
and fix problems in the field -- although it is probably not useful
(and possibly even confusing) to many naive users.
 --scott

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