On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 10:25:48PM +0200, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On Tuesday, 2009-07-28 at 19:25 +0200, Lars Müller wrote:
On Tue, Jul 28, 2009 at 06:13:41PM +0200, Graham Anderson wrote: [ 8< ]
You can vote for this either way at the openFATE feature request Frank created. https://features.opensuse.org/306967
Please vote _and_ provide reasons/ arguments.
I see a main advantage in having a preselected desktop. It is one question less. This is no advantage to a long time Linux user. But it is one annoying question less to a new user.
I don't.
I much prefer openSUSE to remain agnostic, as it is now, same as I prefer the state to remain agnostic.
I find the idea of having a default desktop - any desktop - almost offensive.
Sounds like said by a dogmatist. Bash is enough! vim or emacs? Why do we nedd it we have printf. ;)
And about new users... let them choose! Linux is about freedom, and freedom requires choices. The sooner they start choosing, better.
Users new to an operating system don't care about the name or type of the desktop. With the install they intend to get a working system. Any extra question causes an extra hurdle. That's one reason why Apple is successfull while we on the Linux side still keep going on with the discussion(s). Instead of focusing to the real issues we discuss the 20th rename of a package. And so on. It is a very small minority of new users which intend, need, and like the freedom of window manager choise. And this freedom still would be there. Even if we would implement some type of default window manager preselection - maybe depending on the geographical location or the used language. It's a very, very basic task for a non Linux beginner to change this to the preferred alternative. But it is a sucking hard question to someone new to Linux or Open Source Software at all. At this level the majority of users does't know nor care about Gnome, KDE, fvwm2, or xfce. Install fast and give me a browser. That's what the majority needs. I don't get the offensive part of making it easier to newcomers. The only 'offense' I'm able to see is if I'm a long time Gnome guy from Italy and the default for Europe would be KDE. But even in this example I currently must switch from none preselected window manager to Gnome. Oh well, this is a small step for the mankind but a big one to a dogmatist. :) But on the other side we would provide a well fitting default to 60 or 70% of the users of a region. And it would be one question, one hurdle less to a newcomer. Hey dogma, sorry for trying to drive this in a more userfriendly direction. Dudes, I'm not ready nor willing to switch to Mac OS. Let us try to make this Linux as user-friendly and easy to use as possible to new users. If we're not able to manage this task I fear we'll keep stalling at this low point of market shares. Lars -- Lars Müller [ˈlaː(r)z ˈmʏlɐ] Samba Team SUSE Linux, Maxfeldstraße 5, 90409 Nürnberg, Germany