On Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:16:02 +0200, Andreas Jaeger wrote:
After reading all emails and having many discussions about the default desktop topic, I've wrote up the following draft proposal (at the end of my long email) and propose to enact it.
Looks good to me. A couple of thoughts (after reading much of the discussion on this proposal): 1. "Most popular" is a difficult metric. Some suggest that KDE is the most popular based on the older user survey, and that because the openFATE request mirrors this, that makes it a valid figure. However, I'm sure that not all users are aware of the openFATE request or the user survey (this is the first I'd heard of either of them, in fact). At best the survey and the request represent the opinions of the majority of people who know about them, which may or may not be a reasonable sampling of the user community at large. 2. Having used both KDE and GNOME (GNOME much, much more than KDE, admittedly), it seems that saying "KDE is most popular" has the potential to scare new users off. Much of the openSUSE community is made up of highly experienced Linux users, and KDE is an excellent desktop choice for users who have a lot of experience and like the flexibility that KDE provides. However, that flexibility comes at a cost of complexity that can (not necessarily "is", but "can") be daunting to a new user. So if the argument is to make a choice for new users, shouldn't we look not at the use case for "the popular choice in the community" but rather "what suits a new user coming from Windows or another platform best"? We talk a lot about the success Ubuntu has had with a single desktop model (with GNOME as their choice) in attracting new users, so it seems that there is a consensus that new users benefit from using GNOME. If we want to grow the community, we have to attract new users as well as experienced users. Something to think about. 3. Perhaps rather than look at the user base/potential user base as "those who currently use openSUSE", we should look broader at how the desktops are split amongst all Linux distributions. If we're interested in *growth*, then we have to look beyond the current user base and at who we wish to attract to using the distribution. This also ties into the point someone (I apologise, I forget who) who mentioned the accessibility needs he has being better met by GNOME than KDE. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org