On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 9:24 AM, Joe Harmon
On 8/21/2009 at 01:47 AM, jdd
wrote: I think these two are absolutely good. We have to have a default. It's Kde because most openSUSE users use Kde. If ever Gnome become the prefered choice, the change in the default seems to be obvious
I have been staying out of these for a little bit but I don't agree with this statement. We > don't HAVE to have a choice, we are choosing to have a choice. And I don't see gnome > becoming the preferred choice with KDE selected as the default.
I agree. I've stayed out of this thread so far, mainly to see where it goes. I'm happy that there is discussion about videos and giving users more information about the two desktops, which is what I and several others were pushing for in the original discussion threads about this topic. That would be much more beneficial to the project than what we ended up with, a political statement that tells the GNOME contributors "thanks for your contributions to our project, but we're gonna tell new users to use KDE". This, as it was brought up, was a completely political discussion. Even several KDE contributors (and I realize that this was the vocal minority of KDE contributors, I'm not trying to blame everyone by any means) said that this was to repair what they had felt was them being wronged by the Project because GNOME was "allowed" to be on the same level as KDE. Let's take a realistic look at what could be done to solve this issue. Problem: We prompt users to select a desktop environment, even though many will have little idea as to what they should choose. Solutions: 1) Dump one desktop, or relegate it to the "Other..." screen and make it clear that openSUSE will support one desktop only. Consequences: will completely drive out the dumped desktop's community and alienate their userbase. 2) Endorse a desktop while still technically supporting both. Pre-select the endorsed desktop in the Installer, and suggest new users use the endorsed desktop. Consequences: Current users of desktop unaffected immediately, contributors may feel alienated and uncomfortable, ultimately leaving the desktop to a less-maintained status, harming users. May lead to same consequences as the first, but perhaps slower. In addition, new users will have no reason to choose the desktop, as the endorsed desktop is suggested. (Obviously, the Project heads have chosen this one for us, at least right now) 3) Don't endorse either desktop, provide quick tours (video, text, even interactive) of the two desktops prior to downloading (or in the installer, if technically possible) that give users much more information about which desktop could be good for them. Allows each community to continue working on their desktops and making them better, and gives the user extra information going into the install. Consequences: Although we're still forcing the user to make a choice, this time they have some extra information going in that can make it easier to choose. Those that don't have time to read or watch ANYTHING (and we're talking two minutes for both, max) aren't really likely to be moving off of their current OS anyway. I liked Dean's idea of something similar to SUSE Studio's Testdrive feature, with stock KDE and GNOME Live CD editions (or even scaled down a little) to give new users a chance to poke around. Perhaps someone familiar with how SUSE Studio does this can give some more info as to whether this is feasible or not... -- Kevin "Yeaux" Dupuy openSUSE Project Member http://www.twitter.com/KevinYeaux -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org