[kde-edu]: New Mailing List for System Administrators

[Sean McGlynn]

Hello All,

As KDE continues its steady progress into the workplace, it has become 
apparent that there needs to be a mailing list dedicated to the requirements 
of the busy Systems Administrator and other related roles.

Waldo Bastian has kindly agreed to allow the kde-kiosk mailing list to be 
used for this purpose. As the name suggests, this list was originally created 
to deal with issues related to the "locking down" of KDE systems, so that 
their usage can be controlled/restricted in certain ways. This is a subject 
close to the hearts of system administrators, as many questions on the 
various general mailing lists have recently shown. As the kde-kiosk list was 
not being greatly used (i.e. "not being used at all" really :-) it seems as 
good a place as any to formally host system administration related issues.

Most people will probably be unaware of the new "kiosk-framework" which has 
been integrated into the upcoming KDE3. This framework
"provides an easy way to disable certain features within KDE to create a more 
controlled environment."
(For more details, please see the 'README.kiosk' file available in the 
'kdelibs/kdecore' directory of your KDE3 source code, or read the file online 
at http://webcvs.kde.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/kdelibs/kdecore by clicking on 
the number to the right of the filename, under the 'rev' column).

As well as providing a simple way to disable features in all KDE 
applications, the framework provides methods for those applications to 
realise this fact and amend their interface accordingly. For example, 
'kicker', the KDE panel, will recognise if its configuration file has been 
marked as "immutable" and not show the "Preferences", "Size" or "Add" 
items when displaying its right click context menu. So far, kicker and 
kdesktop have been made "capability aware". Other applications will surely 
follow. With feedback from systems administrators and others interested in 
these capabilities, (think "preventing your six year old child from changing 
the system the way you set it up for him/her"), the framework can be tested 
and fine-tuned.

So, for all the Systems Administrators and other interested parties out 
there, please sign up to the list by either sending an email to 
kde-kiosk-request@mail.kde.org with the word SUBSCRIBE in the subject field 
(and nothing in the body of the message) or by going to 
http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-kiosk
and signing up online. If new users would then be kind enough to post a short 
introduction note to the list, with the subject line
[introduction] your_name_here
and a brief note of their system setup, we can get an idea of how many people 
need this new service. The [introduction] bit allows the archives to be 
easily searched so that people can get some background on others' setups 
without everybody having to continually repeat themselves. Obviously, this is 
not a requirement of joining the list.

Comments/questions/suggestions to myself or the list are welcome.

Cheers,
Sean
-- 
Sean McGlynn
sean@tmiau.com

BGITSOS