I would like to present an alpha version of new Manjaro Settings Manager
Itβs still WIP but already has some functionality.
Most noticeable features/changes are:
Logic is separated from GUI so we will have GTK and Qt versions (and maybe TUI version later)
Pamac backend is used instead of pacman CLI
New modern UI respecting GNOME and KDE guidelines
Removed modules of settings that can be configured in DE - locale, date and time, keyboard.
Manjaro Hello will become a part of MSM to get more tight integration between system utilities. Also there are plans to replace MHWD with Solusβ Linux Driver Management library.
Screenshots of Qt version:
Manjaro Hello - more or less a mockup, not yet functional, but will get updates soon
So, if hello gets replaced by msm, shall we plug also gnome-layout-switcher switcher in there like we did with manjaro hello? If yes, then making the layout switcher work with kde too becomes appealing.
There are such plans, sure! However I will need to think how to make separate modules and how to distribute them. Maybe making packages like msm-modules-kde (or -gnome)? Hmm
The way the current layout looks, it could also fit nicely as blades in gnome-control-center too. Do you think we should go there, like Ubuntu has? Or is it too much extra work.
This indeed is the idea. But as Ubuntu devs stated there is too much work to achieve this. If there will be some standard interface to integrate third-party modules to Gnome Control Settings then MSM will be there just like KCMs for Qt version.
UPD: I still need someone with Glade skills to help me with GTK UI
Btw, there is also mhwd-tui tui already integrated into bmenu, the official Manjaro cli main menu. It does kernel management and driver switching with mhwd.
Cinnamon does not offer locale configuration. Now, I donβt know if you will take it into account, as it is not a official flavour of Manjaro (unlike XFCE, KDE or GNOME). I wonder if you can do that on XFCE.
Hopefully we will still have a module to configure user accounts that allows to configure groups. Many DEs does not offer to configure user accounts at all, and those that does offer that feature are very limited on that aspect (generally just able to create/delete users and set it as βadministratorβ or not, but you canβt select groups individually).
In Date and Time, I like that it allowed you to enable/disable systemd-timesyncd and also configure if the OS has to consider the hardware clock as local time or UTC time. Although you could create a βMiscellaneous configurationsβ module where you could put various little tweaks like that. It could also include an option like βMute PC speakerβ (which would add a βblacklist pcspkrβ in /etc/modprobe.d) to deal with the few PCs that still have a PC speaker screeching loudly.
Itβs just a draft but yes I didnβt tested it in a clean chroot (both building and running) so I just forgot to add some things
Because itβs non functional for now and install directive needs to have resource creation in CMake first.
There is no base package for now so I just dropped it.
MSM will use separate pamac.conf from /etc/msm but itβs not the reason of crash. I forgot to put .json with language packages to install directive. Will fix it now.
The idea of this was not to show duplicated modules if they are present in default DE settings. They will be implemented and can used anywhere but later. So Iβm open to ideas how to make it better. βMiscβ module looks promising for example.
Indeed, this is what I understood. However, not all DE are created equally. XFCE does not offer to configure locale and user accounts (I have just check that right now) at all, unlike KDE or GNOME, for example. So even if you stick solely on official editions of Manjaro, you might have to create modules later on that will duplicate (partially or totally) functionalities because a DE doesnβt have the feature included.
Of course, you might prioritize some features than others right now. I am thinking more in long term.