Default browser of FC3?

[Ricardo Veguilla]

On Tue, 2004-10-12 at 14:35 +0200, Lars E. Pettersson wrote:
> On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 14:40, Ricardo Veguilla wrote:
> > On Sun, 2004-10-10 at 13:19 +0200, Lars E. Pettersson wrote:
> > > On 10/10/2004 03:35 AM, Ricardo Veguilla wrote:
> ...
> > I read the thread. Are you reading my questions? I didn't ask anyone
> > "Why should Firefox be the default?", I use firefox regularly, I know
> > how good it is, and I know why it will be convenient to used it as
> > default browser. 
> 
> Why not use it as default for Fedora then?

Because I think Epiphany is a better choice for a default browser.

> > But what I asked was "Whats wrong with epiphany?" and when you extended
> > the dicussion to "Why not *insert my favorite browser here*?" you
> > changed the discussion. 
> 
> No, no change in the discussion, I just wanted you to open your eyes for
> the alternatives a bit. When deciding a default for a distribution, you
> have to go through *all* alternatives, not just one, or a very selected
> few.
> 
> > > First, I think the "tightly integrated to Gnome" is irrelevant as Fedora 
> > > is not a Gnome only distribution. 
> > 
> > Well if Fedora includes Gnome and Gnome is designed to be tightly
> > integrating, then it is relevant to Fedora. The same thing happens with
> > KDE. If KDE is designed to be flexible and customizable, then Fedora
> > shouldn't break that user experienced. 
> 
> But it is breaking the user experience for Kde users by having a tightly
> integrated (in Gnome) Gnome application as a systems default. I do not
> think that the Kde users appreciate this.
> 
> Perhaps a systems default is a bad choice, perhaps we should have one
> default for Gnome, one for Kde, one for xfce, and so on.
> 

That was also my conclusion. 

Quite frankly if the KDE developers/user don't care what Fedora puts as
a default browser (I'm not saying thats the case, I'm just speculating)
then fine by me. But it seems that the Gnome people decided that
epiphany is the browser that should be offered as default in the Gnome
desktop, and if Fedora is including Gnome in their distribution, I think
that they should respect that decision (obviously for the Gnome
desktop). 

> > I disagree again, popularity is important for deciding what to include,
> > but its meaningless for the "default application" issue. Defaults are
> > for newbies. An experienced user will use his preferred application, no
> > matter what the default is.  
> > 
> > An new user shouldn't need help using the browser... thats the whole
> > point of using epiphany (or any simple browser). 
> 
> The majority of new users come from the Windows world. These are used to
> certain level of functionality in browsers (and other applications as
> well), why give these an application that have less function than the
> browsers they are used to?
> 
> The number of total computer newbies that never have sat behind/in-front
> of a computer, and start using Linux, is very low. The vast majority
> have experience from Microsoft Windows. That is the reality, at least
> from where I come.
> 
> So the default should reflect what most people use, and want to use.
> 

I already explained why I disagree with this argument.

> On what grounds was Epiphany selected as Gnome default, and on what
> grounds has it been selected as Fedora systems default?
> 

In the case on Gnome, I guess looking on the epiphany project page or in
the gnome mailing list archive might produce an answer.

In the case of Fedora, I don't know. According to a comment Alan Cox
made earlier in this thread, the Gnome folks asked for Epiphany as
default browser (I'm assuming that he means the Red Hat gnome
developers).

Regards,
-- 
Ricardo Veguilla <veguilla at hpcf.upr.edu>