In the good old days, setting up the desktop to a particular preference used to be done through this link. GConf, even though it took sometime to get used to and caused a lot of nightmares in the kickstart %post section while testing, was edited by hand (or hand hacked so to speak). Pessulus would allow one to define and figure the limits of the configuration. So here are a few screenshots:

The main screen of Pessulus

Locking down various bits of the GNOME Panel

Locking down the screensaver

Locking down the browser (epiphany in this case)

At the same time one can use Sabayon which is a system administration tool to manage GNOME desktop settings. Sabayon provides a sane way to edit GConf defaults and GConf mandatory keys: the same way you edit your desktop. Sabayon launches profiles in an Xnest window. Any changes you make in the Xnest window are saved back to the profile file, which can then be applied to user’s accounts.. Here is what happens when you combine the two of them together.

The combination looks fascinating on a Fedora box – now to get them working towards a mass deployment scenario simulation