On 8/5/2009 at 10:12 AM, Kay Schenk
wrote: I understand that, but I beg to disagree. Try to remember a time when you were a new user, and ahd to make this kind of decision. Yes, it does take "guts" to switch to Linux, but I think you need to understand, that even people with "guts" need help and hand holding on these kinds of issues. I switched to SuSE in 2001, ver 7.1. I knew NOTHING about either KDE or Gnome at the time. I had to do a LOT of investigation on my own to figure all this out. What has been suggested if I'm reading all this correctly is to simply check a DE button for the installer, presumable KDE. Ok, if you are not willing to do that, I think you will need to provide some help icons for both. I don't think either approach is necessarily "bad", but I think you are really misreading your potential market of new users, who, by the way, are not ALL computer geeks.
Having supported openSUSE and SLED for many years I do think I understand the new users very well. I am not saying that they will know what gnome and kde are. I am not saying that simplifying the install is a bad thing. What I am saying it that by preselecting gnome or kde is not really giving them choice. If we really want the desktops to be equal then we shouldn't preselect for the very fact that our new users do NOT know what they want as far as KDE and GNOME are concerned. If KDE is preselected they will probably use and become familiar with KDE, but what if they would have liked GNOME better. Or vice versa. I have used both and found that I prefer one over the other. It really has nothing to do with the technology below but more to do with personal preference. Making a preselection shows a preference
I really think for new users, no doubt coming over from Windows, less is definitely more.
I think helping them understand what they are choosing is a really good thing. But making a preselection when they two desktops are "supposed" to be equal is not making them equal. The only thing I am arguing is that preselection is not the proper solution to simplifying the install when two desktops are supposed to be equal. Joe -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org