Display settings should not be per user

[birger]

On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 00:27 -0800, Don Quixote de la Mancha wrote:

> GnuStep isn't supported on Fedora because of some manner of Political
> Insanity.  Cocoa and GnuStep software is always packaged in small
> directory trees known as bundles; all of the files that on a
> traditional *NIX box are spewed all over God's Creation and Then Some
> are, with GnuStep and Cocoa, all kept neatly in one small tree.

All things Fedora could potentially end up in RHEL. I can assure you
that all my experience from > 20 years of running Unix-based servers
confirms RedHats policy on this. When running hundreds of servers you
cannot know how and where each kind of 'bundle' is installed. You need
to know where all config files are. Where all log files are. Without
knowing any details about what bundles are installed on a server.
Otherwise you will make big mistakes. Really big ones.

I actually drafted a policy for one of my biggest customers outlining
the same kind of requirements for all 3rd party unix apps on all kinds
of Unix systems. We demanded that all config files go in /etc, all log
files in /var/log/<appname>, and that the install directory should be
read-only. Being one of the big oil companies, they actually had the
muscle to force app vendors to accept this.

Are all OpenSource apps designed this way? No. Most of them will by
default compile into either a 'bundle' in /usr/local or at least put
their config files and log files in /usr/local/etc, /usr/local/log, and
so on. The thing is, they have a build system that supports changing
these defaults at compile time. All you need for Fedora is then a
spec-file that specifies the arguments for the build systems so the
package gets built correctly for Fedora. If GnuStep is well-coded it
should be easy to rebuild it to conform.

birger