Abandon "Default Desktop"

[Kevin Kofler]

Naheem Zaffar wrote:
> Then ubuntu came along and since it was a one cd distribution, it went for
> "best of breed applications" - not sure if it accomplished that

No. You can't accomplish that by only shipping either KDE or GNOME, and not
at least the libraries of the other (and a 1 CD distribution doesn't really
allow for shipping the complete libraries of both, and definitely not the
complete environments). The only way you can really get "best of breed"
applications is by shipping both KDE and GNOME and cherry-picking the
applications from both. The result is a poorly-integrated hodgepodge of
apps with different HIGs. This sounded like a good idea in RHL 8 times, but
these days both GNOME and KDE are complete enough to cover the default
apps. You'll most likely still need the other environment's libraries, or
even stuff like Tcl/Tk, for specialized apps, but those are not part of the
default install.

What Ubuntu really ships is only GNOME applications, and only KDE
applications in Kubuntu.

> but since then other distributions were "forced" to make decisions. Fedora
> including.

The "only one application" concept doesn't come from Ubuntu, it comes from
the necessity to fit on one CD. Likewise the "only one desktop" concept. We
may see a return to offering multiple desktops and multiple apps for the
same task at some point in the future with live DVDs.

        Kevin Kofler