Hi Sankar, others, In advance, sorry for my long email. On Tuesday 03 August 2010 20:56:24 Sankar P wrote:
With all due respect, Make "openSUSE the number 1 KDE distro" should be the goal/strategy of openSUSE KDE team and not the entire openSUSE project. For instance, it is foolish to ask the GNOME team to adhere to this strategy, given our perennial problem of desktop-wars. Already people in #opensuse-gnome aren't happy with the kde-default decision and this thread is a split-widener imho ;-)
We have to ask ourselves here if these "desktop wars" you talk of is something that should keep defining what openSUSE is and how it works now and in the future, or if this whole discussion is about given direction to openSUSE and thus making it a successful operating system. Now my answer might differ from yours in this, but as far as I understand, people very much agree that the status quo is not satisfying, and that the root problem is the lack of focus and direction in openSUSE. By starting this process of "let's think what we are and what we should be", we, the openSUSE community has created this unique opportunity to define ourselves, to give focus where focus has been lacking -- and this is a very good start for what I think can be a new era in openSUSE and finally make an excellent system take off as it should. Now the "but it won't make everyone happy" is very understandable, but it's also at the very root of the problem. Making everyone happy has caused the impasse openSUSE is currently in. By refocusing on what openSUSE is really good at, and by allowing yourself to take decisions that can be hard, we can regain this focus. Otherwise it keeps being the "Jack of all trades, master of None", and will eventually be surpassed by operating systems that do one thing, and do it really well. I think a stated commitment to and focus on KDE could be the wonderful thing that gets the openSUSE community really going, and at the same time it can provide the focus that "openSUSE The Product" is currently lacking, while keeping future routes into the mobile space open. The KDE project is actively moving into the mobile space, with the Netbook shell being part of the official Plasma release, a mobile phone shell being in the works. My experience as a user of openSUSE is that this focus on the user experience is clearly lacking, things work, but the product is missing the Wow. (And I'm not talking about the "Wow, my harddisk is properly recognized" that we Linux geeks are so used to, I'm talking about the Wow a new user could experience when first trying openSUSE. It could well be that we fail to walk the last mile in terms of user experience, because we do not focus but rather spread the little energy we have, and thereby missing the opportunity. Besides that, when seeing how much energy is poured into delivering different UIs on the same system, it simply makes me cry. And it makes me wonder how much longer this is sustainable. It might come as a surprise, but it's completely braindead to support two (or more) full UI stacks, with different applications, desktop interfaces and all that. It's in my not so humble opinion one of the major weak points of most Linux-based Operating Systems out there. One particular point that I think comes very handy is the status of both openSUSE and KDE. Both have changed important parts of their infrastructure, and have taken the hit from users which had higher expectations than anything based on new infrastructure can provide. Now both projects have recovered from this hit, and both openSUSE and KDE are in a position where every release gets better and better. openSUSE and KDE actually align very well, and I think we get some impression of that from the last two releases already. By all means, let's choose one UI stack and do that one well. As it currently stands, openSUSE is being marginalised more and more: among the Linux desktop by distros who know how to spread their limited resources better (I'm not just thinking about Ubuntu here, but also about Pardus, a turkish Linux team which shows how much easier and faster development is if you just focus on one UI and do that well).
Just curios, why is Meego considered close to KDE, when its default mail client is Evolution, music player is Banshee, browser is Chrome etc.
Wether in the transition phase MeeGo is in right now some applications are based on GTK is not the point. MeeGo will, going forward move to Qt, that's not a secret. GTK is being phased out, and likely not be part of the MeeGo core platform anymore in the future. MeeGo development means that you write software based on Qt in the future, and Nokia and Intel are being pretty clear on that and have been from the beginning.
For the record, I don't hate KDE (or for that matter anything). There are some awesome KDE tools like kcachegrind, kscope, kompare etc. that I use almost everyday.
OTOH, "Should do more upstream work such that we can have a say in the direction of the projects" (irrespective of kde/gnome/kernel) is a much more meaningful strategy imho.
Yes, I think that goes both ways though. Just like projects such as KDE need to take part in distro development (which they do, there's quite a bit of overlap between KDE developers and people active in openSUSE), openSUSE is greatly benefited by actively taking part in upstream development (which we also do, quite some core KDE people are also active in openSUSE, like Dirk, Will, Lubos, me and many others). I don't see this one as a concern particularly right now, but it's surely something that should not be forgotten. Cheers, -- Sebastian Kügler Open-SLX : Linux convenient, simple, secure and complete http://open-slx.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org