FESCo meeting summary for 2009-06-26

[drago01]

On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 1:16 AM, Kevin Kofler<kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> drago01 wrote:
>> Yeah but only because it is treated as a second class citizen (I hate
>> using this kind of arguments but I think you should get the point).
>
> There are plenty of distributions shipping XFCE or LXDE by default. Even the
> fairly-famous Knoppix is now defaulting to LXDE. So the choice is there.
> Still, all the evidence I've seen so far is that the vast majority of
> GNU/Linux (not just Fedora) desktop users use KDE or GNOME.

Has been a while since I used Knoppix ;)
I did not say that KDE is less popular than GNOME, nor was my post
directed to KDE.
I just said that having "$DESKTOP1 and $DESKTOP2 and Alternatives" is
just providing the user a list of choices between things he does not
know anything about.


>> No its not, the above point is simply replacing KDE with something
>> else so that you can see how your own arguments sound to others.
>
> The thing is that KDE is vastly more popular than what you substitute for
> it, so it's not the same thing.
>
> That said, I do think XFCE, LXDE and Sugar could use more visibility. I'm
> intentionally not including WM-only solutions because they simply can't
> compete in functionality with a complete desktop environment.
>
> What I'd do to the download page [..]

I am not happy with the current download page either.

>
>> We can't simply provide a list of 15000 packages and tell the user
>> "please choose" we have to select a default set of packages. (ie what
>> we are doing now).
>
> Huh?
> 1. This is clearly not what we're doing now.

Sure we have a default set of packages selected, the user has to
choose opt in if he wants to change the package set.
Which results into:
- New users do not get confused because they just end up with the
default package set and can install anything post install
- User who want a specific choice can do so


> 2. The initial choice wouldn't be among all 15000 packages, but among 2 main
> spins (GNOME and KDE, which should be equally featured) and ~3 secondary
> spins (XFCE, LXDE, Sugar, though the selection could vary) each
> corresponding to a desktop environment and defaulting to applications
> written for those environments where it makes sense. That choice already
> exists, but KDE is treated as a second-class citizen (hidden behind an
> extra link), XFCE as a third-class one (listed only on
> spins.fedoraproject.org) and LXDE as a fourth-class one (no official spin
> yet, only an unofficial remix).

Well XFCE, LXDE should be more popular in parts of the world where
fast hardware isn't really common.
(No numbers to back this up so don't ask for them)

> 3. Of course, users can then choose the applications they want to add! How's
> that a bad thing? Many of those packages are niche apps, some people need
> them, so it doesn't make sense to drop them, but most people don't, so it
> doesn't make sense to install them by default either.
>
>> This has nothing to do with KDE, I just think that asking the user
>> tons of question "what would you like to use" is simply wrong its OUR
>> (ie. the distro) job to do this choice.
>
> And I have to disagree with this statement. It's our choice what exactly to
> offer on each of the "flavors" (though it's conditioned by integration
> considerations: for example, it doesn't make sense to ship Sugar activities
> on the KDE spin, it should default to KDE apps!), but I don't see why
> letting the user choose between 2 primary "flavors" is bad. GNOME and KDE
> are approximately equally popular in the GNU/Linux world and they primarily
> target different user bases (GNOME wants to make things "just work" with as
> little configuration as possible, KDE focuses on configurability). It makes
> sense to offer both.

So the question is which kind of user is our primary target?
For this user we should make the default choice while still providing
the option for other users.