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Nice, I get modded troll for pointing out the obvious. What the hell are you mods smoking? Here's a few links to projects just like this that blew hot air and wasted bandwidth by talking and not doing, just like this one.
http://freedesktop.org/ http://www.freestandards.org/news/press.php?id=215 &view=full/ http://www.desktoplinuxconsortium.org/

Look up the following:

• Freedesktop.org
• Desktop Linux Consortium

I jumped in to the "Desktop Linux Consortium" back in the Feb 2003 to offer some thoughts about direction for the forming DLC and the linux desktop in general. If you have any interest in what I said back then:

http://www.desktoplinuxconsortium.org/pipermail/dl c-discuss/2003-February/000002.html

I think that the crucial missing application and management pieces are staring us all right in the face. It is not enough to have an easy install. It's not enough to have a slick desktop and functional apps. Those are important, certainly, but if we are really doing well at them, why hasn't the momentum shifted?

I've worked IT for fifteen years and the number of systems I've imaged with their OS and software loads dwarfs by 100 to 1 the number of times I've used any OS installer, even if you count the last five years of Install Parties at the Melbourne Florida LUG! The things most developers and non-corporate users think are important don't apply to corporate IT like people outside of IT would think.

The typical larger IT department has to deal with things like corporate software policies, locking user account profiles, automated application and operating system patches/updates and remote helpdesk. How can I enforce the corporate software policy against instant messengers when every distro except debian bundles all the stock KDE applications (including instant messenger apps) in a few giant RPMs? KDE 3.2 will be doing more profile locking features, but what about applications that don't use the KDE libs? What about Gnome?

I know people point to things like Red Carpet and the Red Hat Network for updates (still not 100% in my opinion), but I think corporations will need to be able to build or rebuild apps with different attributes or patches for distribution to corporate clients. SUSE is using 'autobuild' internally and Red Hat wants you to buy a Red Hat Network Proxy, but again, no-one other than Debian provides access to the build architecture to be able to modify certain stock bundled apps like removing parts from larger RPM's like KDE.

Remote helpdesk and other IT-friendly features are available in most distributions at this point, but they aren't really bundled and configured for that role in the context of the distribution. This needs work and attention. VNC is great, but a distro focusing on corporate desktops needs to have that puppy configured for easy remote desktop support by default.

I've spoken at LinuxWorld and other conferences, but every time I try to submit a topic that addresses some of these kinds of issues, I hear crickets and we get 10 more 'How to install Samba' sessions. We need a focus on what all the "Ticket System Cowboys" know about desktop deployments before some of the spectacular Linux desktop announcements turn into craptastic failures.

Just my $0.02.
DaGoodBoy

That's something that most "geek" projects have a hard time handling. It's just too large of a problem. They don't have the time or resources to QA their's and everyone else's work.

And as I think about it, it might be tough for a large company too. Take all that work and QA it, turn it into something useful. Hard, hard, and that's what most people like doing, right, is fixing some one else's work? Not.

So I was going to try to give you an answer but no I've talked myself out of it. Too big for geeks, and too big for companies too. I think perhaps we need a paradigm shift. Something that allows individual geek projects to work together better. Something like Extreme Distributed Software Engineering. So that the QA of an integrater for a distro is much smaller and easier.

Hmm, maybe this is a role that the DLC or OSDL could play.

Hello Michael,

Is there any chance that Lindows will join the Destop Linux Consortium? Has there been any contact between Lindows and this group at all?

I realize that part of the reason the group formed was some due to dissatisfaction over how the Desktop Linux Summit was managed by Lindows, but I do hope that the group would be willing to accept Lindows as a member. Your Desktop Linux Summit really did spark interest in Linux on the Desktop - enough so that these compaines felt that it was time to form a group to take advantage of this interest. I think that it was really great that Lindows took the initiative and put some money into a conference like this, and I really hope that you can work with other vendors to help spur interest in Linux on the Desktop even further (without having to fund most of it by yourselves!).

Oh, by the way, thanks for sponsoring www.kde-look.org.

uhm, not quite. actually, the consortium's proper url is desktoplinuxconsortium.org