[lpi-discuss] GUI fun (was Server vs. Wrokstation (was Some Objective Feedback)

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday, 14 September 2005 05:33, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
> Dan York wrote:

<snip>

> The main problem surrounding desktop certification has nothing to
> do with the diversity of apps, and everything to do with delivery.
> Duplicating the MOUS or ICDL programs securely is prohibitively
> expensive (they required huge subsidies from Microsoft and the EU
> respectively) and you just can't test a word processor using
> multiple choice items.

And there you have the crux of the matter. A word processor or a GUI 
mail client just doesn't fit the profile we are interested in 
testing. It's Linux *Professional* Institute, which to me means 
someone to whom Linux is his job, not someone who uses Linux to get 
his real job done. Configuring my KMail doesn't quite fit in with 
that.

In contrast, the work at freedesktop.org warrants a good close look, 
because it impacts on configuration issues. 

In terms of "the desktop" maybe it's time to define exactly what we 
mean, because some apparent desktop apps do fit easily in the current 
LPI scope. Take gpg - most folk will interact with it through the gui 
frontend. But it's essentially a very important cli app - I'd like to 
see some items about generating new key pairs. Menus - if freedesktop 
gives us a consistent menu structure for all wms to use, we can and 
should test it, just not in the context of kmenuedit.

alan

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan at linuxholdings dot co dot za
+27 82, double three seven, one nine three five