On Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:50:07 +0200, Martin Schlander wrote:
Fredag den 7. august 2009 00:41:25 skrev Jim Henderson:
So it's reasonable to assume that people who aren't active in the community (which may include many new users) wouldn't know about those surveys or have taken the time to participate in them.
Stop trying to raise doubt about the vastness of the KDE majority in openSUSE - the picture is quite clear and consistent no matter if you look at surveys, build services stats, iso download stats, mailing lists subscriptions or whatever data we have - or simply hang out in the online community.
You misunderstand my point. I don't doubt that there are more KDE users than GNOME users, but I wonder if the gap isn't less large than it seems. While you can look at download stats, mailing lists, etc, the fact of the matter is that unless you survey every user who runs openSUSE, you can't have an accurate picture of what the balance *is*. Yes, you can have a good idea, or a high degree of certainty. That's not the same as knowing the precise distribution of choices. And then there are those who use both, or use applications built on both. Like me. I use things like k3b, k9copy, and Quantas+, but use a GNOME desktop. There are those who use both desktops as well. How do they fit in the picture, when you look at the picture as either/or?
Are you sure that it's not desktop choice? And more to the point, what does it matter why people choose a particular desktop? If Ubuntu accounts for say 30% of Linus desktops out there, then that's a pretty significant GNOME base for Linux overall. You can't say "KDE is more popular than GNOME so we should show a preference for GNOME" and then when the counter back is that across all Linux distributions, it's about equal and say "well, the desktop isn't the important thing". Either it is or it isn't.
Ubuntu users don't do support in openSUSE forums or IRC channels, they don't build packages for openSUSE, don't write howtos for openSUSE, and they don't know anything about openSUSE at all.
Excuse me, I came here from being a RedHat user, and I think I knew a thing about openSUSE when I started using it, because both are Linux. I don't think it helps us to pretend that other distros don't exist.
And the last three or so years of (subtly) pushing GNOME haven't exactly been very succesful have they? Have Ubuntu and Fedora GNOME users flocked to our distribution?
And yet the threat of not having KDE be the default selection is so great....because? There again, you can't have it both ways. I still stand by my earlier proposal (ie, that as long as the KDE camp concedes that it's OK for GNOME to be on that selection menu in the installation and won't push for it to be removed from the menu or the distro in the future, I'm OK with a KDE default selection and even having KDE listed first), but this debate reminds me a lot of another rather politically charged debate currently going on in the US because the side with the stronger opinions expresses those opinions by applying two inherently contradictory sets of principles. In this case, either GNOME isn't "good enough" and will never exceed KDE in <whatever>, therefore it shouldn't be presented/shouldn't be selected/ shouldn't be listed first; or GNOME is "good enough" and thus is a "threat" to the continued dominance that KDE enjoyes in the distribution, so making KDE the default selection/only selection/only option is the only way to ensure the continued dominance of KDE on the openSUSE desktop. (That's an extreme view of this debate, yes, but to make a point here - that you can't have GNOME be perceived to be so unpopular that it's not an issue and yet it's a threat that has to be 'prevented from taking over'. Those are diametrically opposed ideas and both have been used to some degree to defend this idea of making KDE the default, which as I've said, I'm OK with because it really doesn't matter to me as long as GNOME is a choice and users see it during the installation).
Imitation of Ubuntu or Fedora won't work. A differentiation strategy is more likely to be succesful, and Kubuntu and Fedora KDE users (being second class citizens) are much easier to sway than their GNOME counterparts.
Well, we agree that a differentiation strategy is more likely to be successful, we just disagree on what that differentiation should be. I think that the strength of openSUSE in the DE area is the presentation of choice - be a KDE user, be a GNOME user, we don't care, we'll accept you and support you equally.
We are not worried about servicing the entire linux community, we are however worried about servicing the openSUSE community and as such should base decisions on their opinions.
So we're not concerned about growing the openSUSE community or user base?
In my mind it's a matter of balancing the interests of the existing community and new users. And leveraging the existing community to become more succesful, instead of working against it, as has been the practice in recent years.
I don't see how a default selection of DE is "leveraging the existing community" and how not doing so is "working against the existing community". But like I said earlier, if the default setting of KDE will make the KDE camp happy, then by all means do it. It's one radio button or check box in the installation screen, and personally I don't think it makes that much difference either way. Just leave the option for GNOME there so those of us who choose to use GNOME primarily don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops to install our DE and preferred apps. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org