Fedora 7

[Jesse Keating]

On Saturday 06 January 2007 07:52, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> Are we aiming for a equivalent footing or not? If we are then the
> branding should be a reflection of that. The problem with selecting a
> release name based on a alleged current shortage of community resources
> is that the perception would make it a permanent thing. Like calling
> Fedora a beta would make it a excuse for bad bugs in the release. You
> dont get much of a second chance to change perception some time in the
> future yet again. Heck, we are *still* getting badly burned by poor
> messaging in the past. Have we not learned anything from that?

You and I just disagree that this is bad messaging.  Whether we're aiming for 
equal footing or not, it just isn't there right now.  And to be honest, 
putting a lot of effort into making them equal is not going to happen from 
the Red Hat resources.  We've picked our desktop, what we want to put our 
efforts behind for our RHEL product line.  For our product, multiple desktops 
just fractures our userbase, doubles our support needs, weakens the product 
overall as it takes away resources better spent on total integration.  For 
that reason, the vast majority of Red Hat contribution to the Fedora 
Community is going to be around the gnome desktop.  I don't likely see this 
changing in the foreseeable future.  Will there come a time that the non Red 
Hat contribution to the Fedora Community around KDE will outsurpass and 
outshine the Red Hat contribution to the Fedora community around Gnome?  I 
don't think so, any time soon.

>   End users continue to want a well oiled integrated desktop,
>
> > and thus choose the Fedora Desktop spin.  We want to name based on
> > functionality, not on what particular software is used.  
>
> So why is one of the spins called Fedora KDE?

Because it is a targetted spin for a particular peice of software, much like 
an eclipse spin or XFCE spin or asterisk spin.

> How is it *not* a Fedora 
> Desktop? 

At this point it is not THE Fedora desktop.  Its not what we want to flaunt, 
have reviews written about, be judged upon, etc.  It is a startup, and needs 
a lot of work/time to get to the polish / integration level we have with 
gnome, our premier desktop.

> What about when someone wants to do a Fedora Desktop spin based 
> on another of those alternative desktop environments, windows managers?

ee above.

> Take a look at your
>
> > menu system for example, Calculator, Dictionary, Terminal, Web Browser,
> > etc...  End users need not care what actual app their using, and if they
> > did care, Help -> About.
>
> That's true for GNOME currently. Not for the KDE menu in Fedora. Do take
> a look.

You say this as if it's a good thing, I see this as another fact that KDE 
isn't really designed for the mass userbase.  How in gods green earth is 
somebody supposed to look at a KDE menu and know that Konqueror is for 
browsing the web?  That "Kate" is for writing text files?

-- 
Jesse Keating
Release Engineer: Fedora
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