Feature changed by: Daniele Tombolini (Kailed) Feature #307495, revision 6 Title: GNOME default openSUSE-11.3: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Christian Jäger (eet) Description: I propose to make GNOME the default desktop in openSUSE. It has been decided that users are overly challenged by having to decide between the GNOME and KDE desktop environments during the installation procedure. If this is true, such users will be overly challenged by the KDE desktop environment which is now planned to be the default choice. This proposal is meant to solve this problem by changing the default desktop environment for openSUSE to GNOME. These are the reasons why GNOME should be defaulted in openSUSE, not KDE: 1) By default an easy-to-use desktop environment should be installed: The way it is planned now, users who are uncertain about what desktop- environment they want because they are not tech-savvy or who don't know either KDE nor GNOME will end up with KDE because it will be defaulted. This basically means that those users who are most in need of a newbie- friendly desktop will get KDE. This clearly is wrong. KDE is an expert- desktop; it's strength is that its highly configurable. This is not what new and/or non-tech-savvy users want, nor is it what they need. KDE users are usually technically advanced and will know how to click the 'KDE' tickbox, while newbies should get GNOME. 2) Consistency with the NOVELL SUSE LinuxEnterprise Linux releases: Users who have heard about SLED/SLES will expect openSUSE to resemble those enterprise-level distributions. They will feel short-changed if they are presented with the unfamiliar KDE-desktop after an openSUSE install 3) GNOME is the world's standard Linux desktop environment: In order to compete on a global level, we should adopt the world's favored Linux desktop environment. The mainly regionally (Germany/Europe) successful KDE is not the solution for international success but a niche product. All globally successful distributions use GNOME; such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Fedora, Debian and most prominently Ubuntu. 4) Ubuntu: We must present a strong alternative to Ubuntu. This can NOT be a KDE desktop as we can see by the relatively low popularity of Kubuntu. KDE can never attract more than a minority of expert users. We must build on the innovations that won SLED awards and popularity. 5) Innovation: To say it outright, KDE had its chance to innovate and failed. KDE 4 was a massive disappointment even to hard-core KDE users in that it produced no enhancement to user-experience nor stability. With the upcoming GNOME 3 release openSUSE has the chance to present revolutionary user experience by the introduction of Gnome-shell as an alternative UI, while still providing users with the option to continue using the traditional GNOME UI. 6) Attracting developers: What openSUSE already has is an abundance of contributors to KDE. We now urgently need to attract more GNOME developers by focusing on GNOME development and showing commitment to success in our competition with Ubuntu. openSUSE should, of course, also ship and support KDE. So experienced users can choose it. But new users should have GNOME as a default. Please note that I would have preferred if openSUSE had remained with its policy of treating both desktop-environments as equals, but unfortunately, following a request by some KDE-proponents, that policy has been changed to a popularity contest between both DEs by statistics and voting-contests in openFATE. This feature request is nothing but a neccessary reaction to proposal #306967, so that users have a choice to vote for either KDE or GNOME to be defaulted. Discussion: #1: jimbo bigcreed (dimble_thricefoon) (2009-08-24 11:04:56) lol. + #2: Daniele Tombolini (kailed) (2009-08-24 11:15:35) + Sorry but it seems an childs game... -1 -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/307495