Fedora Desktop on XO

[Tomeu Vizoso]

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 09:21, C. Scott Ananian <cscott at laptop.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 11:00 AM, John Gilmore <gnu at toad.com> wrote:
>>> I'm very interested on this, as it would give us also for free a FUSE
>>> interface. Why I haven't pursued it yet is because the API for
>>> developing new gio backends is still private and our new backend would
>>> then need to live inside the gvfs gnome module or as a patch in every
>>> distro. Aside from having to periodically adapt to any API changes.
>>>
>>> See http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gvfs-list/2008-May/msg00004.html
>>>
>>> That said, such a backend would be very simple, for the journal in Sugar 0.84.
>>
>> Hi Tomeu, I'd say write the simple backend and submit it upstream.  Their
>> interface sounds very much like every other interface in a computer,
>> i.e. not quite done right in retrospect and always subject to change.
>> Their mailing list only got a dozen messsages that month -- it's not
>> evolving SO fast.  Host the code in their gnome module and then it'll
>> evolve along with the module and also go into each distro.
>>
>> My idea is that when an ordinary GUI program pops up an "Open File"
>> dialog, if an OLPC Journal exists for that user, it will be one of the
>> icons in the left column (like "Desktop" or "File System" or each
>> mounted removable storage device).  If Journal is already the default,
>> or is selected, then the filename and type are pre-defaulted, though
>> the user can override them by typing.
>>
>> Even on a sugarized OLPC, people are going to neet to touch files that
>> have real names in the real filesystem (e.g.  Python source code,
>> config files, even new firmware downloads) as well as Journal entries,
>> so they'll need ways to pick things OTHER than the Journal, too.
>>
>> This design would also let people try out the Journal concept, just by
>> "apt-get install olpc-journal" and starting it up.  Then by picking
>> Journal in the file dialog or file browser, it will arrange the files
>> that they save or read, by date of access in one big glob, with tags
>> or whatever, rather than making them pick hierarchical names.  This
>> would all happen modularly, without installing the Sugar GUI.  (It
>> would only be interfaced to Sugar and Gnome, but maybe other desktops
>> would get the hint.)
>>
>> This would also be a really cheap way to browse USB keys, etc.  Open
>> two Gnome file browsers (one hierarchical in USB key; the other in
>> Journal) and drag things back and forth.  The code's already there,
>> it just lacks this one interface.
>
> John, I don't know if you ever saw: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Journal,_reloaded
>
> Given the massive disruption to the status quo, I'm not sure that I
> would attempt to argue for one approach over the other; just noting
> that there is an alternative.

For the record, I think that Scott's approach is the best if it can be
put to work.

If I'm working on something else is because we need to ship something
better than what we had and didn't saw so clear how we could do it
given the resources we have and all the open questions that there are.

Regards,

Tomeu