Feature changed by: Jos Poortvliet (jospoortvliet) Feature #312959, revision 5 Title: Make the best working desktop default openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Stefan Seyfried (seife) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: For every distribution, make the best working desktop default. Right now, KDE is default even though it is obviously broken. Let's decide for each release, which desktop is the best working and give that one the honor of being the default. Which metrics to apply to decide which desktop is good working and which one is not is open to debate, we could go for things like "open bug count" for example. Maybe we should limit the selection to "general purpose desktops" and leave out the more esoteric ones like awesome, larswm and such, but decide at least among * KDE * GNOME * LXDE * XFCE Which are all full featured desktops ready for end users. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: An actually working desktop + Discussion: + #1: Jos Poortvliet (jospoortvliet) (2011-11-12 17:05:23) + We could indeed settle on LXDE as default desktop (I'm fairly sure the + lowest common denominator in terms of features offers the least bugs) + but I'm not sure if that'll make many users happy. + Surely each desktop has its issues but for new users GNOME and KDE both + do a reasonable job despite their greater number of bugs and + inconveniences compared to XFCE and LXDE. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/312959

Feature changed by: Joseph Mitzen (duncreg) Feature #312959, revision 7 Title: Make the best working desktop default openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Stefan Seyfried (seife) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: For every distribution, make the best working desktop default. Right now, KDE is default even though it is obviously broken. Let's decide for each release, which desktop is the best working and give that one the honor of being the default. Which metrics to apply to decide which desktop is good working and which one is not is open to debate, we could go for things like "open bug count" for example. Maybe we should limit the selection to "general purpose desktops" and leave out the more esoteric ones like awesome, larswm and such, but decide at least among * KDE * GNOME * LXDE * XFCE Which are all full featured desktops ready for end users. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: An actually working desktop Discussion: #1: Jos Poortvliet (jospoortvliet) (2011-11-12 17:05:23) We could indeed settle on LXDE as default desktop (I'm fairly sure the lowest common denominator in terms of features offers the least bugs) but I'm not sure if that'll make many users happy. Surely each desktop has its issues but for new users GNOME and KDE both do a reasonable job despite their greater number of bugs and inconveniences compared to XFCE and LXDE. #2: Stanley Miller (stan_qaz) (2011-11-12 21:27:29) One of the key reasons I give OpenSuse to new* users is because it defaults to KDE. I don't use other desktops and have difficulty supporting new users that pick one of the other offerings. *New to Linux, most are 60+ years old and need click by click help for a lot of tasks. + #3: Joseph Mitzen (duncreg) (2011-11-12 23:18:17) + OpenSUSE 11.3 and KDE pulled me, a lifelong Windows user, away from XP + and the Windows 7 upgrade I was contemplating instead. I've been using + KDE 8+ hours a day since then. Have I just missed the fact that KDE is + "obviously broken"? I'm still finding new features of KDE 16 months + later and still haven't even made the plunge into "activities" yet + .... -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/312959

Feature changed by: Tim Edwards (tk83) Feature #312959, revision 10 Title: Make the best working desktop default openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Stefan Seyfried (seife) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: For every distribution, make the best working desktop default. Right now, KDE is default even though it is obviously broken. Let's decide for each release, which desktop is the best working and give that one the honor of being the default. Which metrics to apply to decide which desktop is good working and which one is not is open to debate, we could go for things like "open bug count" for example. Maybe we should limit the selection to "general purpose desktops" and leave out the more esoteric ones like awesome, larswm and such, but decide at least among * KDE * GNOME * LXDE * XFCE Which are all full featured desktops ready for end users. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: An actually working desktop Discussion: #1: Jos Poortvliet (jospoortvliet) (2011-11-12 17:05:23) We could indeed settle on LXDE as default desktop (I'm fairly sure the lowest common denominator in terms of features offers the least bugs) but I'm not sure if that'll make many users happy. Surely each desktop has its issues but for new users GNOME and KDE both do a reasonable job despite their greater number of bugs and inconveniences compared to XFCE and LXDE. #2: Stanley Miller (stan_qaz) (2011-11-12 21:27:29) One of the key reasons I give OpenSuse to new* users is because it defaults to KDE. I don't use other desktops and have difficulty supporting new users that pick one of the other offerings. *New to Linux, most are 60+ years old and need click by click help for a lot of tasks. #3: Joseph Mitzen (duncreg) (2011-11-12 23:18:17) OpenSUSE 11.3 and KDE pulled me, a lifelong Windows user, away from XP and the Windows 7 upgrade I was contemplating instead. I've been using KDE 8+ hours a day since then. Have I just missed the fact that KDE is "obviously broken"? I'm still finding new features of KDE 16 months later and still haven't even made the plunge into "activities" yet .... #4: Eduard Huguet (eduardhc) (2011-11-13 11:52:23) Please, stop the "KDE is broken" crap. Seriously. + #5: Tim Edwards (tk83) (2011-11-14 10:00:44) + Whoever the administrator of openFATE is please close these continuous + attempts by one or two people to re-hash the KDE-as-default decision. + There are already openFATEs open for this, and the decision to have KDE + as default got overwhelming support + (https://features.opensuse.org/306967) while the one for default GNOME + got heavily voted down (https://features.opensuse.org/307495). -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/312959

Feature changed by: Stefan Seyfried (seife) Feature #312959, revision 12 Title: Make the best working desktop default openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Stefan Seyfried (seife) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: - For every distribution, make the best working desktop default. Right - now, KDE is default even though it is obviously broken. Let's decide - for each release, which desktop is the best working and give that one - the honor of being the default. Which metrics to apply to decide which - desktop is good working and which one is not is open to debate, we - could go for things like "open bug count" for example. Maybe we should - limit the selection to "general purpose desktops" and leave out the - more esoteric ones like awesome, larswm and such, but decide at least - among * KDE * GNOME * LXDE * XFCE + For every distribution, make the best working desktop default. + Let's decide for each release, which desktop is the best working and + give that one the honor of being the default. Which metrics to apply to + decide which desktop is good working and which one is not is open to + debate, we could go for things like "open bug count" for example. Maybe + we should limit the selection to "general purpose desktops" and leave + out the more esoteric ones like awesome, larswm and such, but decide at + least among + * KDE + * GNOME + * LXDE + * XFCE Which are all full featured desktops ready for end users. + Edit: to stop the kids crying, I removed the mention of the current + default. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: An actually working desktop Discussion: #1: Jos Poortvliet (jospoortvliet) (2011-11-12 17:05:23) We could indeed settle on LXDE as default desktop (I'm fairly sure the lowest common denominator in terms of features offers the least bugs) but I'm not sure if that'll make many users happy. Surely each desktop has its issues but for new users GNOME and KDE both do a reasonable job despite their greater number of bugs and inconveniences compared to XFCE and LXDE. #2: Stanley Miller (stan_qaz) (2011-11-12 21:27:29) One of the key reasons I give OpenSuse to new* users is because it defaults to KDE. I don't use other desktops and have difficulty supporting new users that pick one of the other offerings. *New to Linux, most are 60+ years old and need click by click help for a lot of tasks. #3: Joseph Mitzen (duncreg) (2011-11-12 23:18:17) OpenSUSE 11.3 and KDE pulled me, a lifelong Windows user, away from XP and the Windows 7 upgrade I was contemplating instead. I've been using KDE 8+ hours a day since then. Have I just missed the fact that KDE is "obviously broken"? I'm still finding new features of KDE 16 months later and still haven't even made the plunge into "activities" yet .... #4: Eduard Huguet (eduardhc) (2011-11-13 11:52:23) Please, stop the "KDE is broken" crap. Seriously. #6: Kjetil Kilhavn (kjetil_kilhavn) (2011-11-14 10:38:02) (reply to #4) The "KDE is broken" isn't crap - it is just very unprecise. There are features of KDE that are broken from time to time. For instance, I lost access to my KMail e-mail archive after I upgraded to KDE 4.7 in openSUSE 11.4 - I had to use webmail access which only lets me access messages received after the upgrade. I reported the bug and got a "fixed in 4.7.1 reply quite quickly. I'm now at 4.7.3 and still can't access KMail as it crashes after a few questions about which duplicate e-mail to keep. I'm sure this could be fixed by me manually changing the configurations or removing files. Now I'm waiting for 12.1 and will reinstall and spend hours and hours getting my system back in normal working condition. It's my own fault though. I took the KDE people's word for it when they reported KMail 2 was "ready". So, clearly parts of KDE have been broken for early adopters, but on my work laptop from which I am posting this SUSE (first SLED 10 and now openSUSE.org) and KDE has served me well since 2007. There I have stayed rather conservative and am still using 11.3 - but have upgraded KDE to 4.6. I've been using SUSE at home for ten years, since SUSE 7.1 - and I've stuck with KDE all the time. I originally chose it because it gave an easy transition for a former OS/2 user (and before that a Windows) user. Gnome would perhaps be a better choice for someone migrating from Mac OS. These days I'm sticking with KDE due to the many excellent solutions that exist and the exciting new technologies on the horizon. Obligatory Frustration: I wish I could buy a KTab, but it seems it's not possible (yet). I am not about to pay for another Windows license so unless some device manufacturer ships a tablet with Plasma Active I'm going to be an iPad user instead since my wife has one. I think "X is broken" is true for both Gnome and KDE from time to time - I can not speak for the other two desktops mentioned as I have little experience with them. I also think the original poster left out some important information. Does he/she think that KDE as delivered in openSUSE's repositories are broken? I disagree completely. Were there problems with KDE 4.0 - yes indeed there was, but the KDE team themselves said it's not ready for production yet and recommended it only for early adopters, it certainly wasn't the default in openSUSE - they kept to the stable 3.5 branch. Bug count is as efficient a measure as the number of lines of code - it says very little about the user friendliness/completeness of features of the solution. I agree with Joos here, not many new users would keep openSUSE on their systems if LXDE was what met them. I've tried LXDE on an old laptop, but I found it to unfamiliar (other people would also use this machine, and even if it would mainly be used to access a local web server application everything was so unfamiliar I judged they would need help with any little problem). Xfce was far better in this respect. LXDE has its use cases, but winning over new Linux users certainly can't be one of them. Xfce as set up in DreamLinux can be beautified at least, but I'd still argue that to win over new users it is Gnome and KDE that currently are the only choices. Everyone must learn to crawl before starting to run. #5: Tim Edwards (tk83) (2011-11-14 10:00:44) Whoever the administrator of openFATE is please close these continuous attempts by one or two people to re-hash the KDE-as-default decision. There are already openFATEs open for this, and the decision to have KDE as default got overwhelming support (https://features.opensuse.org/306967) while the one for default GNOME got heavily voted down (https://features.opensuse.org/307495). -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/312959

Feature changed by: Karl Cheng (qantas94heavy) Feature #312959, revision 14 Title: Make the best working desktop default - openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed + openSUSE Distribution: Rejected by Karl Cheng (qantas94heavy) + reject reason: openSUSE does not officially favour any particular DE. Priority Requester: Important Requested by: Stefan Seyfried (seife) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: For every distribution, make the best working desktop default. Let's decide for each release, which desktop is the best working and give that one the honor of being the default. Which metrics to apply to decide which desktop is good working and which one is not is open to debate, we could go for things like "open bug count" for example. Maybe we should limit the selection to "general purpose desktops" and leave out the more esoteric ones like awesome, larswm and such, but decide at least among * KDE * GNOME * LXDE * XFCE Which are all full featured desktops ready for end users. Edit: to stop the kids crying, I removed the mention of the current default. Business case (Partner benefit): openSUSE.org: An actually working desktop Discussion: #1: Jos Poortvliet (jospoortvliet) (2011-11-12 17:05:23) We could indeed settle on LXDE as default desktop (I'm fairly sure the lowest common denominator in terms of features offers the least bugs) but I'm not sure if that'll make many users happy. Surely each desktop has its issues but for new users GNOME and KDE both do a reasonable job despite their greater number of bugs and inconveniences compared to XFCE and LXDE. #2: Stanley Miller (stan_qaz) (2011-11-12 21:27:29) One of the key reasons I give OpenSuse to new* users is because it defaults to KDE. I don't use other desktops and have difficulty supporting new users that pick one of the other offerings. *New to Linux, most are 60+ years old and need click by click help for a lot of tasks. #3: Joseph Mitzen (duncreg) (2011-11-12 23:18:17) OpenSUSE 11.3 and KDE pulled me, a lifelong Windows user, away from XP and the Windows 7 upgrade I was contemplating instead. I've been using KDE 8+ hours a day since then. Have I just missed the fact that KDE is "obviously broken"? I'm still finding new features of KDE 16 months later and still haven't even made the plunge into "activities" yet .... #4: Eduard Huguet (eduardhc) (2011-11-13 11:52:23) Please, stop the "KDE is broken" crap. Seriously. #6: Kjetil Kilhavn (kjetil_kilhavn) (2011-11-14 10:38:02) (reply to #4) The "KDE is broken" isn't crap - it is just very unprecise. There are features of KDE that are broken from time to time. For instance, I lost access to my KMail e-mail archive after I upgraded to KDE 4.7 in openSUSE 11.4 - I had to use webmail access which only lets me access messages received after the upgrade. I reported the bug and got a "fixed in 4.7.1 reply quite quickly. I'm now at 4.7.3 and still can't access KMail as it crashes after a few questions about which duplicate e-mail to keep. I'm sure this could be fixed by me manually changing the configurations or removing files. Now I'm waiting for 12.1 and will reinstall and spend hours and hours getting my system back in normal working condition. It's my own fault though. I took the KDE people's word for it when they reported KMail 2 was "ready". So, clearly parts of KDE have been broken for early adopters, but on my work laptop from which I am posting this SUSE (first SLED 10 and now openSUSE.org) and KDE has served me well since 2007. There I have stayed rather conservative and am still using 11.3 - but have upgraded KDE to 4.6. I've been using SUSE at home for ten years, since SUSE 7.1 - and I've stuck with KDE all the time. I originally chose it because it gave an easy transition for a former OS/2 user (and before that a Windows) user. Gnome would perhaps be a better choice for someone migrating from Mac OS. These days I'm sticking with KDE due to the many excellent solutions that exist and the exciting new technologies on the horizon. Obligatory Frustration: I wish I could buy a KTab, but it seems it's not possible (yet). I am not about to pay for another Windows license so unless some device manufacturer ships a tablet with Plasma Active I'm going to be an iPad user instead since my wife has one. I think "X is broken" is true for both Gnome and KDE from time to time - I can not speak for the other two desktops mentioned as I have little experience with them. I also think the original poster left out some important information. Does he/she think that KDE as delivered in openSUSE's repositories are broken? I disagree completely. Were there problems with KDE 4.0 - yes indeed there was, but the KDE team themselves said it's not ready for production yet and recommended it only for early adopters, it certainly wasn't the default in openSUSE - they kept to the stable 3.5 branch. Bug count is as efficient a measure as the number of lines of code - it says very little about the user friendliness/completeness of features of the solution. I agree with Joos here, not many new users would keep openSUSE on their systems if LXDE was what met them. I've tried LXDE on an old laptop, but I found it to unfamiliar (other people would also use this machine, and even if it would mainly be used to access a local web server application everything was so unfamiliar I judged they would need help with any little problem). Xfce was far better in this respect. LXDE has its use cases, but winning over new Linux users certainly can't be one of them. Xfce as set up in DreamLinux can be beautified at least, but I'd still argue that to win over new users it is Gnome and KDE that currently are the only choices. Everyone must learn to crawl before starting to run. #5: Tim Edwards (tk83) (2011-11-14 10:00:44) Whoever the administrator of openFATE is please close these continuous attempts by one or two people to re-hash the KDE-as-default decision. There are already openFATEs open for this, and the decision to have KDE as default got overwhelming support (https://features.opensuse.org/306967) while the one for default GNOME got heavily voted down (https://features.opensuse.org/307495). #7: Ruediger Meier (rudi_m) (2011-11-14 17:12:52) Regardless whether the current default is the best one or not I don't like the idea of having potentially every release default settings changed. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/312959