userconfig broken

[Alex Fiestas]

On Saturday 29 December 2012 12:30:13 Scott Kitterman wrote:
> I may be wrong, but I had always considered KDE to target both the user that
> doesn't care much about computers and users that are more into them.  The
> more advanced user is the reason that all of the customization options are
> important.
Indeed customization is important, being able to manage groups from a GUI not 
so much since those users will not mind doing it from the CLI (and again it is 
something you hardly want to do).

> While we should never enforce use of the GUI where it can be avoided, we
> should, IMO, also strive to enable people that don't like command line to
> avoid it.  When I say Linux to people one of their first reactions is
> commonly that they don't want to have to open a shell and type lots of
> commands.  The fact that I can honestly tell them that it's not necessary
> makes them much more comfortable with trying it out.
For reaching this point (using the cli) in the case we are talking about I 
have yet to read a usecase that is not figurative or super cutting edge.

> Userconfig was developed as a kuser replacement.  It was proposed to replace
> it, but it never quite got to the top of the TODO list, so it's not part of
> KDE SC.
> 
> As far as targets for your development efforts, I think the "About Me"
> module covers the basic case and you should try to encompass both kuser and
> userconfig functionality in what you are doing.  KDE SC already has two
> user management functions ("About Me" and kuser) and I don't think it needs
> three.
> 
> Of course, Rome wasn't built in a day and software isn't either, so "Replace
> userconfig/kuser completely" may be a longer term goal, but I think it's a
> good one.
> 
> As far as the case for group related functions goes, I think it is important
> to be able to see a list of groups and membership in groups because "Is xxx
> in group yyy" or "What users are listed as members of zzz" are reasonably
> common troubleshooting/support questions.  Personally, although I regularly
> edit /etc/group in vim on my servers, I use userconfig on Kubuntu systems
> because it's harder to screw something up.  Just because I can do it by
> hand, I prefer to take the safer route where I'm only checking/unchecking
> boxes and not editing directly.
Can you tell me why are you messing with groups in your Kubuntu box? In a 
server I can understand but in a desktop? Give me use cases !

As a personal note, we (KDE) won't be able to move forward if we keep thinking 
on our old user base of hardcore users, do you know what most sysadmins do 
these days? Use osx. I wonder why.