Abandon "Default Desktop"

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at> wrote:
> That's a piece of opinion by one of our X11 developers. I don't agree with the
> "Linux is not about choice" statement, or at least its implied meaning. (Maybe
> GNU/Linux is not _about_ choice, but that doesn't mean choice shouldn't be
> _part_ of the experience.)

The underlying issue is how to expose choice. And its a really really
tough issue from a user experience and interface design perspective.
I don't think anyone has a really good handle on how to do that for
the website yet.  I can't easily dismiss out of hand the statements
that the website was redesigned to minimize confusion. I wasn't
confused, but I live in the %0.1 technically literate tail of the
general population...my personal experience is by definition
abnormal..quite possible not even categorized has a human experience
at all.  I don't know what the best answer is for the website. I'd
love to throw a team of UI experts into a room..lock the door...video
tape the discussion..and then not let them out until the come to
consensus on how to handle the website spin choice interface...and
then we all just live with the result of their consensus opinion.

Now I think there might be more hope for the idea of re-engineering
comps such that on user selection of DE sets a better set of default
package selections in the DVD installer.  Sadly I don't know enough
about comps conditionals to make a strongly informed statement or to
build a toy comps that demonstrates it in action.

-jef