Riddell has a tool for migrating settings from one KDE desktop to another. Is that fallout from the Release Event? I know there were at least two BoF sessions – a user and a distro one – during the event that addressed the issue of moving settings around. I sat in on the user BoF and here was the user experience case (made with a flair and conviction that I can’t muster):

My friend sees my desktop, and he says: ‘hey, that’s cool. I want some of that.’ So I press a button and hand him a USB stick with all the stuff to make his desktop look like mine.

That’s a long way extension from what there already is. Come to think of it, it is a simple solution to just drop .kde into SVN and use that as a sync “solution”. That doesn’t have any notion of semantics, though. Knowing just what the data you’re syncing means would improve the sync possibilities a lot.

One of the comments to Riddell’s blog suggests using OpenSync – that’s where you add structure and meaning to the data and rules on how to do conflict resolution. It’s a good idea; OpenSync ought to be able to do that quite well. On the other hand, as far as I can tell OpenSync development has totally stalled in the past year; the website is down at the moment (evil coincidence).

Part of a really good desktop experience is the “take it with you” part, where it doesn’t matter where you are or what device(s) you are using (or even if they are your own devices – why should you drag along a laptop if your KDE desktop can virtually travel with you); thin client and NX solutions are one way to go and settings sync and publication is another.

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