What is your answer to solve the top inhibitor for the Linuxdesktop adoption? (was Re: [Desktop_architects] Most wantedApplication: Email)

Bastian, Waldo waldo.bastian at intel.com
Tue Jan 3 20:01:08 PST 2006


>On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 05:11:27PM -0800, Bastian, Waldo wrote:
>> >Yes, the concensus was that it would be difficult to host a
developer
>> >resource like this with any of the Linux distributions and/or
desktop
>> >organizations.  However, the distros and desktop organizations have
the
>> >content that is needed to make the portal meaningful.
>>
>> I think the solution to that dilemma is agregation. I can imagine
OSDL
>> defining a set of "how-to-questions", upstream technology providers
>> (e.g. gnome, kde and trolltech) providing an answer to those
questions
>> based on the use of their technologies, and distributions wanting to
>> ammend some of those answers to take into account distribution
>> specifics. What is needed then is a web-infrastructure to shuffle
that
>> information around and allow the various parties to present those
bits
>> that are relevant to their audience as an integral part of their own
>> websites without the need to actuallly duplicate creating that
>> information.
>>
>> Think of it as the convergence of wikipedia+docbook+RSS+tagging.
>>
>> You would want to be able to tag information as "only relevant to
Gtk+"
>> or "only relevant to KDE 3.1 or older" (and differentiate between
>> "relevant to applications based on KDE 3.1 libraries" and "relevant
to
>> applications running under a KDE 3.1 desktop")
>
>This sounds like it would be a very, very big writing effort, perhaps
>not to the scale of Wikipedia, but at least of the scope of the Linux
>documentation project, and perhaps larger.  So...  what would keep
these
>writers motivated to do this (seemingly overwhelming amount of)
writing?

There would be a natural motivation in the sense that everyone will be
documenting those parts of the system that they have a natural interest
in already anyway. On top of that there is some competitive pressure
between technologies, e.g. if OSDL lists on his website how an
application can print using the Qt libraries, gnome developers may want
to make sure that there is also an entry that explains how you can do
the same with gnome-print.

You wouldn't rewrite the complete API documentation for this. Where
possible you would refer to existing API documentation. The information,
and value, that you would provide is "if you have problem ABC, component
XYZ can help you by doing this, this and that and you can find component
XYW here..." 

You could add some examples if the API documentation doesn't provide
them already.

If OSDL would generate the questions I'm sure that the individual
projects will manage to come up with answers, after all, these are the
same issues that are being asked and answered on mailinglists already.
The only difference is that with this infrastructure such knowledge
would be much more accessible. 

Employing some tech-editors to polish content up and throwing in some
rewards for people submitting documentation wouldn't hurt either of
course.

Cheers,
Waldo




More information about the Desktop_architects mailing list