Record which GNOME panels are owned and which are not

Which panels we own is a question that otherwise gets answered one panel
at a time, and forgotten between them.

Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BRvzt4H8XXLPVH5MyYdk9L
This commit is contained in:
Gabriel Brown
2026-08-19 13:17:53 -04:00
parent a23b42841a
commit 914d58f52b
@@ -187,3 +187,27 @@ is self-contained and answers a question people actually ask. Phase 4 is small
but changes daily habit. Phase 5 must precede 6 because 6 needs somewhere safe to
keep a repository password. Phase 6 is the largest and is staged so each part
stands alone.
---
## Deprecating GNOME Settings
Not removing it -- making it unnecessary. Tracked here because "which panels do
we own" is a question that otherwise gets answered one panel at a time.
**Owned (2026-08-19).** Users and Sharing. Users drives accountsservice, the same
daemon GNOME's panel drives, so a name or picture set here is what the login and
lock screens read. Sharing covers remote login and remote desktop, and reports
file and media sharing as absent rather than offering a switch for software that
is not installed.
**Still handed to GNOME.** Printers, Color, Wacom, and Universal Access. Each
wraps hardware-specific tooling with no D-Bus surface worth reimplementing, and
each launches with XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=GNOME because gnome-control-center refuses
to run otherwise. Digital Wellbeing is deliberately absent: it configures
gnome-shell's own screen-time reporting, which does not run here.
**Open question.** Whether owning Printers is worth it. CUPS has a real API, but
the panel is mostly driver discovery, and getting that wrong means a printer that
silently does not print.