Ok, this puts you in a pretty small minority of tech users. It doesn't really bolster the position that what you like should be an indicator of what should be installed/enabled by default. Never said that. I would like a questionaire I can click on at install that makes it easier to disable crap. There already is http://en.opensuse.org/Disabling_Beagle I prefer my solution. Taboo Beagle during install. Then you don't have to worry with it. But it takes a lot of time to go through and weed out the crap from the basic install. Maybe we could have a list of packages sets designed for the casual users, the middle of the road and the power user. Something WOULD be nice, but since I would just remove stuff anyway, I guess I'm wishfully thinking. Or something where you can say, Hey, My machine is older and doesn't have resources to waste. Can we pare down the install to help me? I don't have a Core2 Quad and 8MB RAM. I have a P3/700 and 384MB RAM and just want to be able to do a little writing and check my email.
Hey! Then we finally come to something we can agree on; it would be nice to have a install category of "Minimal GNOME Desktop" / "Minimal KDE Desktop" in addition to the "[Default] GNOME Desktop", etc... I'd have no problem with that at all; I probably even use it in some cases. But the "[Default] GNOME Desktop" should install the reasonably-current-default-GNOME toolchain and not make people add an enable bits in order to get 'real' GNOME (or whatever). And the 'Default' should always target a reasonably current machine. But you run into a issue of scarce resources - someone would need to define and *test* that category on an *ongoing* basis. As a software developer I can tell you that *ongoing testing* is the most expensive [in resources] part of the entire process. Seriously. On projects I've worked on I've vetoed many a otherwise good feature/idea because "who is going to maintain it?" Testing requires *lots* of time from very [scarce] knowledgeable people. So, I agree, it would be very nice to have such a category but I can very much understand why it doesn't exist. As an aside: to further your argument calling this "broken", "bloated", "hog", "an excuse", etc... won't help. It just forces people to argue with you when they may not even disagree with *some* components of your actual premise. But inflammatory statements just disguise your actual premise.
No, they didn't, see the above URL (at least in the case of Beagle). And most new users probably have text messaging and use collaborative tools (like twitter, IM, etc...) No, I meant overall. The KDE devs decided it was their way or the highway, and it's taken a long time to get them to understand how broken v4 is compared to v3. There are other examples as well.
A project can't go every-way, again you have the scarce resources issue. Somebody has to make a decision, and that decision will possibly make a good number of people unhappy. But that is just how life is. I live in a democracy and I'm pretty unhappy about lots of things the government does.... but that's the breaks. However, I can [and have] used the appropriate channels and well-reasoned [calm] arguments to make small [I'm just one guy] changes in policies. Open Source isn't much different. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org