GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 645061
Tools to perform system administration should be available in the menus somehow
Last modified: 2021-05-25 12:46:05 UTC
Downstream bug https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=685142 Things like the old-school techy firewall configuration tools need a place in the menus if they exist on the system. They used to be available under the System->Administration menu but that isn't applicable to GNOME 3 default or fallback mode.
Created attachment 183669 [details] [review] Experimental addition of Administration tools to the App menus
Just to clarify a few things: - the tools don't fit in the system settings because of the design, right? (ie, system settings are for user stuff; I must admit that I find it confusing we have user accounts there, though) - are we fine having Administration appear first in the categories? Or do we want to define an order? - what's the long term design for system-wide configuration tools? Are we going to migrate them somehow to another control center shell? To merge them with current system settings? To keep them in the menus?
See also gnome-shell bug https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=645063
(In reply to comment #2) > Just to clarify a few things: > - the tools don't fit in the system settings because of the design, right? > (ie, system settings are for user stuff; I must admit that I find it confusing > we have user accounts there, though) I think it's more that the tools have no design or coherency with the system settings; we don't have a good story for them. > - are we fine having Administration appear first in the categories? Or do we > want to define an order? One thing Jon pointed out is it's pretty lame that we alphabetize; actually even worse things change place depending on translation, right? > - what's the long term design for system-wide configuration tools? Are we > going to migrate them somehow to another control center shell? To merge them > with current system settings? To keep them in the menus? I think the long term design is to both evolve the GNOME system settings, but also as much as possible make the legacy vendor tools unnecessary.
(In reply to comment #4) > (In reply to comment #2) > > - are we fine having Administration appear first in the categories? Or do we > > want to define an order? > > One thing Jon pointed out is it's pretty lame that we alphabetize; actually > even worse things change place depending on translation, right? We don't have to alphabetize; it's just the default. That being said, it's generally a good thing because it makes it faster to read for people (in general). But if we want to force an order, we can.
(In reply to comment #2) > Just to clarify a few things: > - the tools don't fit in the system settings because of the design, right? > (ie, system settings are for user stuff; I must admit that I find it confusing > we have user accounts there, though) Basically everything in Administration should go away eventually. Unless you are using some kind of server or something. Some of these can already go. User accounts should definitely be removed right away I think. > - are we fine having Administration appear first in the categories? Or do we > want to define an order? No, not really fine with it. I think having an order would be useful. Either that or we can maybe invent a new name starting with Z or something :) We also have these System Tools things that are sorta similar but different enough to warrant a separate section - but at the same time it is a little confusing. Another obvious candidate for ordering is Other. It should certainly be last in the list I think. > - what's the long term design for system-wide configuration tools? Are we > going to migrate them somehow to another control center shell? To merge them > with current system settings? To keep them in the menus? If they are things that ordinary users need to do they ought to be merged into System Settings. Mostly we're already there or will be by 3.2. User accounts, date/time, printing can probably go right now. Firewall - we still have to figure out the GNOME story there. Language should be able to go once we finish the Region & Language panel (3.2). LVM etc should go into Disk Utilities (palimpsest).
Putting this on 3.0 target to keep it on the radar.
Comment on attachment 183669 [details] [review] Experimental addition of Administration tools to the App menus So once someone defines the order we want for the menu, we can commit :-) Or we can just commit this for now (since the patch is fine) and define the order later.
I think the question of order (and locale-dependence) is orthogonal to adding the admin tools. So +1 to committing the current patch as-is.
Gah. We need string freeze break approval to add a Settings-System.directory.in file. Can you request this please?
Created attachment 184663 [details] [review] layout: Show administration tools and old capplets in Other Alternative patch, to show the .desktop files in Other. This is not perfect, but it doesn't add any string.
Review of attachment 184663 [details] [review]: That sounds OK; I'm a bit worried about suddenly pulling in other stuff we don't want, but I guess if crap is installed, it's not our fault. In Fedora e.g. I see ibus-setup.desktop which would now be in the list (but this is ok because it's NoDisplay=true). gpk-prefs.desktop would now be shown though. So would desktop-effects.desktop (eww =/ ) And gst-mixer.desktop. But, oh well. Again this is a vendor problem I think.
Comment on attachment 184663 [details] [review] layout: Show administration tools and old capplets in Other Committed this, but leaving the bug open as we want a better fix later on.
Now that we at least don't lose those .desktop files, this is not a blocker anymore. But we'll want a better fix for 3.2, so moving to 3.2.
It really feels like these tools should be in their own category.
Created attachment 186904 [details] [review] layout: add System Administration menu This is a place to nicer than Other for not-installed-by-default system administration applications to sit.
As discussed in downstream bug https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=697834 , the use of the two top-level categories System and Settings together to mean 'core administration tools' is an abuse of the fd.o menu layout spec (http://standards.freedesktop.org/menu-spec/latest/ ) and a Fedora-ism at that; no other distro uses that system AFAIK. Per the upstream spec, .desktop files should specify only one top-level category, and use sub-categories to define themselves more specifically. The big thing that's missing here, simply in terms of spec compliance, is that gnome-menus does not account for the category Settings at all; it's a standard top-level category per the fd.o spec, so gnome-menus really ought to account for it. I don't think upstream gnome-menus should adopt the Fedora-ism of System+Settings, it should just handle the Settings category (probably with a new menu called Settings or Preferences or something), and Fedora .desktop files should be adjusted to match the upstream spec and hence be properly categorized in GNOME...
"Per the upstream spec, .desktop files should specify only one top-level category" well, it doesn't really require this, but it's clearly the intent, and it warns that specifying more than one top-level category can lead to menu duplication.
Vincent, were you going to make any changes for this ?
This really shouldn't be a blocker anymore. Here's the latest status I sent on d-d-l at the beginning of September: ===== (Note that the tools are available in the Other category right now, so I'm not sure this is a blocker by itself) The current suggestion is to add a Settings category in the menus; however, I'm unsure how well this works with the fact that it won't show what's in the gnome-control-center... Any opinion? The alternative is to just leave Other, and push people to move the items there in more appropriate categories. ===== FWIW, I'm leaning towards just leaving the Other category and living with it.
Is this still A Thing?
Yeah, it still is A Thing. In Fedora, all the system-config-* tools show up in the Other group, still. This is one of those things that never quite bubbles up to the top of my todo list...
ideally we'd just kill all the system-config-* tools, but that's not entirely practical yet, though we're getting there.
(In reply to comment #23) > ideally we'd just kill all the system-config-* tools, but that's not entirely > practical yet, though we're getting there. Sounds like the correct fix.
It's not something we can really do overnight, there's still several with no full replacement: system-config-lvm system-config-printer system-config-firewall (still needed for non-firewalld configs) system-config-date (not sure if the GNOME one can be applied systemwide, and it definitely can't do system-clock-as-localtime/system-clock-as-UTC) system-config-kickstart (that's pretty Fedora-specific) ... it doesn't really look like we'll be able to kill them all any time soon. I think the recommendation that GNOME handle the 'Settings' category and then we fiddle with the Fedora .desktop files is probably the most practical. I should check if GNOME started handling Settings, actually.
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