Underlying DE for the Workstation product

[Adam Williamson]

On Thu, 2014-01-30 at 16:08 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:

> > Given the tension between the definition of a "Workstation Product" and
> > the multiple desktop spins that I've identified on devel@ - i.e. that a
> > "Workstation product" built around a single desktop occupies the
> > 'desktop space', without accounting for alternative desktops - do you
> > definitely want to go ahead with the model where the WS product is
> > specifically associated with a single desktop and makes no attempt to
> > somehow 'include' alternative desktops, or is it worth considering
> > possible approaches that somehow account for alternatives? I realize it
> > might be quite late to do that, but it seemed worth asking the question.
> 
> The PRD already has a section that speaks to working with various
> toolkits to make them inter-operate with each other.  The idea behind
> that is so that applications from various toolkits have the same
> look-and-feel on the Workstation regardless of their primary
> DE/toolkit.  While I realize that isn't specifically answering your
> question, it does at least speak to the fact that there isn't ONE
> TOOLKIT TO RULE THEM ALL.

The bit of the PRD that seems significant is "The Workstation working
group will define a set of packages that are considered required be
installed in order for the system to qualify as a Fedora Workstation.
Through policy users will be strongly advised against uninstalling any
of these packages and there will also be no option in the graphical
software installer to uninstall them."

I was kinda reading that as essentially mandating that the default
desktop must be installed. It doesn't preclude installing another
alongside it, but the effect seems to be to define a standard
environment which is always going to be assumed and prioritized.

> As to whether we want Workstation to be a "pick your own DE" product,
> I personally don't feel that's a great way to start.  Seems somewhat
> confusing.  There's a lot of work to be done, and having a single
> underlying toolkit/platform to work from at least helps to focus on
> where the initial work goes.  I also don't think it excludes the
> possibility of different Workstation DEs in the future.  If we'd like
> to rephrase as "initial Workstation DE" to allow for that possibility,
> I'm OK with that.

That wasn't necessarily what I was suggesting, it was more of an open
suggestion than a specific implementation idea. There are probably
approaches that don't involve the "Workstation product" per se being a
choose-your-own-adventure, but somehow allow for the existence of
alternatives. I think someone floated the idea of some kind of
sub-product system already, for instance.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
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