No more right click terminal

[John (J5) Palmieri]

On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 17:07 +0100, Rui Miguel Seabra wrote:
> On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 11:12 -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> > > I understand the "this is a bug" idea (to a certain point), but  
> > > reality is harsh. It's going to take many years for this to change, 
> > 
> > Hopefully not many years.
> 
> s/not//
> 
> Which world did you come from? Windows? MacOS? It looks like that each
> time you say such an absurd statement.
> 
> The terminal is _the_ killer feature of an UNIX like operating system.
> 
> All the rest are bonuses. We're merely at the point where the GUI
> bonuses clearly start overcoming those (some may say they are the only
> one) of Windows and MacOS.
> 
> At the same time, the other mainstream OS's are bringing the terminal
> back in (Apple's already done, Microsoft is on the verge of doing it,
> since DOS doesn't really count).
> 
> Rui
> 

*sigh* I was hoping not to get sucked in but I feel the need to respond.
Does any of these systems have a right click open terminal button?  No.
In fact MacOS X's terminal is buried deep in the file system hierarchy.
If I am not mistaken we still have the terminal in the menus which you
can drag and drop to your desktop and panel.  And there is a plugin to
add the right click back.  It is not taking it away by any stretch of
the imagination.

But here is what it is taking away - the self defeating mentality that
the command line is needed on a desktop system.  I've seen so many bugs
ignored over the years because the answer on some forum would be, "that
is easy to fix, just open a terminal and type foo..."  No that is not
easy for everyone and if you are not sysadmin or developer no where
should you ever find the need to drop down to a terminal.  The former
group should know how to open up a terminal and make it convenient for
themselves to do so.  If normal people feel that they need the terminal
for some function then it is a bug we need to fix in the GUI.

Are we completely there yet? No. That is why we still have a terminal.
Do we need to promote the need for a terminal by including it in the
right click menu?  No. Reducing the right click menu to a few items is a
good idea.  Allowing extensions to be installed to tailor the right
click menu to a user's need is a good idea also.  I suspect those who
need the terminal in FC5 will be smart enough to find it.

-- 
John (J5) Palmieri <johnp at redhat.com>