Abandon "Default Desktop"

[Julian Aloofi]

Am Montag, den 27.04.2009, 18:45 +0200 schrieb Roberto Ragusa:

> And what about a "no desktop" option too?

Wondeful! Everytime I install Fedora from the DVD and uncheck GNOME, all
applications and even the system-config tools, for some reason big parts
of GNOME get pulled in as dependencies (I think that even applies if I
uncheck everything except of "Base System" and "Hardware drivers").
This choice would be extremely useful if you wanted to install Fedora
without X(it may not be used for server installs, but some crappy old
laptops run better without X) and without building your own spin with
Revisor.

But I think that someone who uses a linux based OS for the first time
will not know what choice to make (I remember how I didn't know, back
when I first used linux). And GNOME is certainly not the wrong desktop
for new users. It's stable, simple and the system-config apps look
native.
Of course KDE (and everything else) is good too, but at the moment it's
(in my opinion, KDE 4.2 brought great improvements but it still crashes
from time to time) not stable enough (that will change).
Other desktops like XFCE are great too, but why should we choose them
over GNOME?
Users who know about the different desktops will make their choice
anyway, even if they don't have their own LiveCD (I'm thinking of LXDE
and e17). I don't think new users can't learn about all the desktops
when they install Fedora, but I hardly think they want. All desktops are
pretty well supported (in terms of updates and integration).

What I think would be best is keeping the GNOME Live-CD as default
installation media and add all the other choices to the DVD installer
(and call it DVD installer on fedoraproject.org, not just "Upgrade from
an older version"), as far as I can see our DVD only has 3.5 GB, so
another two or maybe even three little desktops and an "Advanced..."
menu could easily fit into the remaining MB's. I think an "Advanced..."
menu would be better than just choose "Customize now" and run the
package selector, because if you choose a desktop from the install DVD
it sometimes uses odd programs (for example kpackagekit and
gnome-packagekit at the same time). That could be prevented by a menu,
or we change the behaviour in the package selector itself and make the
various apps explictly dependent on the checkable desktop.
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