On Wednesday 28 July 2010 17:05:26 R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
Moin Will!
Will Stephenson schrieb am Mittwoch, den 28. Juli 2010:
On Tuesday 27 July 2010 23:40:33 R. Tyler Ballance wrote:
Additionally,
Ubuntu
really stresses a GNOME-centric desktop, which means one of
openSUSE's core
strength's (a great KDE setup) is moot.
Do I read that correctly as "one of our core strengths is irrelevant and to compete with Ubuntu, one would have to use the same desktop"?
I can't believe that
attempting to imitate a larger and better marketed competitor which
Moin R Tyler! directly invests more in desktop engineering could be a successful
strategy. You can compete using a poorer product with a lower price,
which is moot for us, or by out-marketing the competitor, which is
unrealistic. Or you can compete with a recognisably different and
better product.
That's not entirely the point I was making, the point I was trying to make is that it's harder to sell somebody on something so different, even if it is better (the classic "But I know how to use Windows" argument).
That's exactly what I thought you might be trying to making, although I wasn't sure if you were making it to highlight a problem with "Ubuntu for now" because taking aim at Ubuntu underplays one of our "core strengths", but you've confirmed that you see one of our "core strengths" as a weakness. With the greatest respect, I feel you are wrong about "it's harder to sell somebody on something so different". If I rephrase my second paragraph above as "it's harder to sell somebody an inferior* example of the same thing as what they already have for the same money with worse marketing", do you see why?
I don't want to mire the discussoin on this point, I just think it's harder for an end-user to make a judgement call on "which is better" when comparing openSUSE KDE to Ubuntu (GNOME).
Neither do I, I'm sorry you brought it up to be honest since Stephenson's Law states that every *SUSE* thread since 2004 will degrade into a KDE vs GNOME slugfest if allowed to continue long enough, but neither can I stand by and let erroneous arguments go unchallenged, in case they become accepted as fact. In any case, and agreeing with the main point of your original post, I don't feel that aiming to become Ubuntu users' second distribution is a winning strategy either. cheers, Will * I don't actually think that our GNOME is significantly inferior to Ubuntu's implementation. However, Ubuntu is currently perceived by users as a GNOME Ieader and don't think we will be able to convince the masses that ours is no worse, let alone convince them that it is better enough to be worth switching. -- Will Stephenson, KDE Developer, openSUSE Boosters Team SUSE LINUX Products GmbH - Nürnberg - AG Nürnberg - HRB 16746 - GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org