rawhide report: 20050121 changes

[Sean Middleditch]

On Fri, 2005-01-21 at 16:04 -0600, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-01-21 at 13:08 -0500, Richard June wrote:
> > > GNOME is the default desktop, so of course it shouldn't be removed.  I'm
> > > wary of moving KDE due to the political issues, but I wouldn't mind
> > > seeing all the other WMs and DEs moved (XFCE, for one).
> > I'm with you, keep GNOME and KDE in core. everything else can go in extras
> > *especially* after there's a graphical yum client/software manager that's 
> > included in core.
> 
> One could argue that Xorg and fvmw2 are all that's needed for Core.
> Minimalistic to the bone.  If KDE goes to Extras, then GNOME needs to as
> well.

It's not "strip down," it's, "only provide one option."  GNOME, KDE, and
XFCE are the only actual desktop environments in the system.  (Yes,
there is a very big difference between a desktop environment and a
window manager.)

Three desktops environments aren't needed.  Of the three, two are very
popular and very politically charged, the third is in fact an extra
provided mostly for low-resource folks.

*If* KDE is removed (and I don't think it will be, or should be at this
time) then that doesn't mean GNOME should be removed.  GNOME is the
default, KDE is by definition (by not being the default) provided as an
extra desktop in addition to GNOME.

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing Core become the bare minimum, and then
split Extras into sets like Network Server, GNOME Desktop, KDE Desktop,
Desktop Applications, and so on.  That's a fundamentally different
distribution model than the Fedora Core/Extras split, though.