Martin Schlander wrote:
Tirsdag den 4. august 2009 14:16:02 skrev Andreas Jaeger:
Desktop Policy
0. The following text uses GNOME and KDE in alphabetical order. These rules apply to development of openSUSE only, not for any other Novell products.
1. Both GNOME and KDE are first class desktops in openSUSE: neither is technically superior to the other. openSUSE should be known as the distribution with the best GNOME desktop and the best KDE desktop!
2. We make it easy to choose between these two desktops during installation, install both of them - or install others as well.
3. On the relevant screen during installation the most popular desktop is preselected, the desktops are listed in alphabetical order.
4. This screen will explain that both GNOME and KDE are first class desktops and the default is based on popularity.
5. Let's sit together at the openSUSE conference and decide what both GNOME and KDE beeing first-class desktops signifies and how all desktop development teams can work together.
Looks pretty good to me. Have two comments.
* I think that the most popular desktop should also be listed first. Or we risk continuing to send a mixed and confusing message to new users and other "outsiders".
* What would the text in the desktop selection screen say? A summary of the above?
Speaking as a SUSE user since v9.1 came out in the year dot, i have to agree that historically suse has been a KDE distro, and this has been maintained in spite of Novell's attempt to wean users away from KDE. To the people who claim that the user survey is outdated, and that decisions should await more recent results i would say the following: 1) we have new results (the openfate request), and they mirror the survey results from last year 2) delaying a decision for no good reason comes across as very Yes Minister On the issue of Gnome support in opensuse: It absolutely should be maintained at its current excellent quality, and it will continue to be so given that Novell have chosen it for the commercial SLES product On the issue of default DE selection: Having seen people slip away to ubuntu because of the perception of user-friendliness, i support a default desktop choice, even if this perception of user-friendliness is as facile as being able to tell someone; "yeah, just press next five times and it's all installed for you". It matters. On the issue of which DE to default to: Nearly 70% of opensuse users are KDE users, in spite of Novell attempts to make the distro visibly equal AND the flakiness of kde4 up until now. On the issue of how to present this default DE selection: Part of opensuse's appeal that it is a solid choice of distro for the consumer regardless of whether they wish to use Gnome or KDE, that should be maintained. Therefore i suggest the following - [*] KDE [ ] Gnome [ ] Other On why this would be appreciated by the KDE community: Opensuse has always been populated by KDE users, therefore many were dismayed by various attempts (or the appearance thereof) by Novell to relegate KDE to a secondary status. This perception has persisted, and i am willing to bet (in the absence of hard figures) that opensuse has lost users who swapped to a distro that they considered had better support for their DE of choice. On why this shouldn't matter to the Gnome community: Opensuse has a stated policy of equal support for both DE's Novell are committed to Gnome for their commercial suse product Gnome users are a minority at and a default install choice is a desirable feature There you have it, my thoughts on this openfate debate. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org