Abandon "Default Desktop"

Julian Aloofi julian.fedoralists at googlemail.com
Tue Apr 28 17:29:43 UTC 2009


Am Dienstag, den 28.04.2009, 13:24 -0400 schrieb Orcan Ogetbil:
> On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Julian Aloofi wrote:
> > Am Dienstag, den 28.04.2009, 19:15 +0200 schrieb Kevin Kofler:
> >> Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> >> > Add a randomize button... and I'm completely serious about that.
> >>
> >> I think that would be a really bad idea. Even a bad default is better than a
> >> random default!
> >>
> >>         Kevin Kofler
> >>
> >
> > At this point I want to mention my option 5.) again ;)
> > Don't forget, we will get famous!
> >
> > No seriously, that's the worst thing we can do, because the user knows
> > that he made a choice, but he never knew, what he chose.
> >
> 
> So why don't we give users some brief information about what KDE and
> Gnome are about, accompanied with some screenshots, and let them
> decide?
> 
> Orcan
> 
That's exactly what I talked about on option 4.), but now as I'm typing
I realize that what I wrote could easily be mixed up with a signature
because I used a line like this (IGNORE THIS LINE :))
_____________________________________________________________________
to seperate it from the first part of my message. I'll just add it
again. This is what I wrote:


As far as I see we have the following choices:

1.)Don't change anything. GNOME is the default desktop.

2.)Put all possible desktops on the DVD, but we choose a default live CD
that is also used as default installation media.

3.)Create a bloated LiveDVD that contains all desktops and use it as
default installation media.

4.)We use the DVD as default installation media, put all desktops on it,
use it as default installation media and teach the users about the
different desktops in an info window before they choose their desktop.
For users who don't have a DVD drive or want to test Fedora we can still
offer an info page on fedoraproject.org and link to the live CD's.

5.)desktop = rand()

Option 2 is pretty nice. We had the default installation media with a
default desktop and that's what the normal user, who doesn't care about
choices and just uses the default programs and so on, would use.
And everyone who knows about the diffent DE'S could use the DVD or a
non-default live CD. The only thing we had to care about then is, that
we have to fit as many desktops as possible on the DVD. At the moment we
only have GNOME and KDE on the DVD, so we had to add LXDE(3.2 MB),
XFCE(16.4 MB) and various others (e17, fluxbox, TWM etc.) who will,
summed up, not be about more than 35 MB's (just a guess, based on the
package sizes that packagekit tells me).
Then we had a default desktop for all new users, but would treat all
desktops equally on the DVD.



If we'd use option 3 I could think of a GRUB based menu like 
Welcome to Fedora:
Boot Fedora with GNOME
Boot Fedora with KDE
Boot Fedora with XFCE
Boot Fedora with LXDE
Boot Fedora with Enlightenment 17
etc...
Install Fedora (that would allow users to choose their desktop while
they install)

That would also be acceptable, but the users wouldn't know what the
different desktops are when they enter GRUB (I don't know how hard it
would be to realize that outside of GRUB, or to realize that at all).



Option 4 (the option I prefer) is also pretty nice, because it informs
users about the DE's before they install. We can give them all
information they need and we wouldn't have a default desktop anymore, so
everyone is happy. A disadvantage may be the lost "consolidation of
efforts", but maybe that is the price we have to pay for being
politically correct.



Option 5 would be funny, and maybe I even prefer it over option 4, but I
think we could lose some users, and some people could make jokes about
us. But we would be a legend and even in 10+ years people would
say:"They did it the Fedora way" if they talked about random decisions
or decisions they can't understand.

In the end we have to notice that Fedora is a project, which involves
many people with different interests, and saying "We really like your
work, KDE people, but GNOME is just better, we'll use it as our default
desktop" (nobody said that, but maybe that's how some people feel) is
not fair, and if only one person of the KDE/XFCE/LXDE/etc guys says that
they want to be threatened equally it's something we definetly have to
think about.

By the way, just out of curiosity, I wonder how "the Red Hat guys" think
about that, and if they would like to see the Fedora project taking a
certain direction, as RedHat seemed to be more GNOME-focused as far as I
know and remember. (for example this doesn't contain any KDE/Qt related
apps:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Red_Hat_contributions#Desktop_Software)

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