On Saturday 12 June 2010 20:04:14 Atri Bhattacharya wrote: ...
It is not just in look that the GNOME and KDE DE's differ.
It can be different set of rules for applications, but not for system tool. Toss the coin and use the winner, but then keep it in a good health. I really mean when I say I don't care about peculiarities of GUI guidelines for either of desktops. I used Linux when there was no GNOME and KDE and any even remote attempt for unification, so I learned to read the button label before I press. For me button order is irrelevant; it is a nitpicking on behalf of people that are unable to read faster then they move hand. Another feature "search as you go", that you mentioned in another post, is another obstacle. It requires additional sentence to explain how it works to people that are used to see search box. When I'm in a helper role, I'm delighted with any additional sentence that I have to type to explain what to do.
question without silly question "GNOME or KDE?".
Asking a user if he is using GNOME or KDE is not silly. There are different channels on the IRC for openSUSE-gnome and openSUSE-kde. People who use one of these DE's have to reach out to the appropriate IRC channel and for that they have to know whether they use GNOME or KDE. Based on which channel he is in, he gets help accordingly. The only people who face a problem with this are those who use both desktops.
So, I'm in a trouble - where to go? :) Well, Atri not quite correct. New users often have no idea what they use, or they have no idea that KDE or GNOME are desktops, and specially confusing (close to 100%) is to call that "desktop environment". New users coming with Windows experience assume that there is one, and question "which one" sounds silly. To me it sounds silly because majority of users that are brave enough to play with their computer know that they installed Linux, type openSUSE, and desktop awareness does not exist (which is good). I'm in IRC every day and I was present many times when people were redirected to #suse for support, or ignored completely. In #suse we have to ask "What desktop you use", then when nothing comes back, or we see "?" then to repeat "KDE or GNOME", then we get some answer. For some time I got both installed just to be able to find answer for GNOME users, then later switched to VirtualBox, but I'm getting tired of this. In short, in ideal world people will get help as you say, in a real there is limited number of volunteers willing and able to help, and fragmenting them obviously brings unwanted consequences. In #suse you get help, in #opensuse- gnome and #opensuse-kde only if you are lucky and find some good soul that is not busy.
The "Help" in both the interfaces are also good and useful I think.
It is in some modules, but it confused me, or it was useless, so many times in the past that I'm conditioned to use it when all alternatives failed. I can't recall when it was last time I attempted to use Help button. Maybe that is only Qt.
Otherwise we can create 20 Ubuntu style distros and live each in its own corner, watching openSUSE sinking in inability to do the simplest tasks.
I don't understand what this means.
See above about fragmentation, and that is not only IRC problem. It is present overall in openSUSE. Communication is split in many channels and to do something one has to be subscribed to a lot of them. You'll see how (badly) that works when you start moving GNOME pages from old to new wiki. The communication infrastructure is easy when you are insider, try to drop in that new guy that has some experience with forums, and that is about it. It is arcane hell, like it was designed by BOHF himself. -- Regards Rajko, -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-factory+help@opensuse.org