On Friday 31 July 2009 15:52:58 Will Stephenson wrote:
On Friday 31 July 2009 15:27:15 Andreas Jaeger wrote:
[...] But openSUSE is also a great GNOME distribution - how can we point out
On Friday 31 July 2009 15:23:17 Lubos Lunak wrote: properly that openSUSE has both?
I'm sure we now do a better job of promoting that than Canonical do for Kubuntu and that would not change.
For me this feature is about 2 things -
First, the project taking the obvious step to recognise what the majority of our users want and give them that. This would go a long way to undoing the 'Novell is evil' smell that we can't shake off.
Secondly, giving openSUSE a very strong distinctive feature as a first- rank distribution that says 'We offer KDE by default because it's what our users want' compared to other first-rank distributions. Kubuntu and Pardus aren't in that category and our current "The distro that offers great KDE and GNOME desktops" position isn't perceived by many people outside our close circle of contributors - they take Ubuntu because it's highly successful, or Kubuntu because it's related to Ubuntu.
This should not weaken our support for GNOME, XFCE or anything else. Look at Kubuntu, which has become a successful project in its own right despite initial hostility and neglect from Canonical, or Fedora-kde, which has a contributor community that is of the about the same size as the openSUSE-kde community.
To me a switch to KDE default looks like putting GNOME one row to the back. Can we find a better solution than we currently have without giving out this message? Or is this no great alternative? I'm just brainstorming loud below, perhaps somebody else gets a great idea: For example, we can also change the wording on the desktop selection dialog. * Saying "openSUSE strives to have the best GNOME and KDE desktops" doesn't sound helpful. * We say right now "As desktop selection is a matter of taste, we do not give a recommendation.". What about "Desktop selection is a matter of taste - and GNOME and KDE are both first-class desktops in openSUSE. Right now two thirds of our users prefer KDE and a quarter GNOME"? Andreas -- Andreas Jaeger, aj@{novell.com,opensuse.org} Twitter: jaegerandi | Identica: jaegerandi SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg) Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany GPG fingerprint = 93A3 365E CE47 B889 DF7F FED1 389A 563C C272 A126