Underlying DE for the Workstation product

Fri Jan 31 09:47:46 UTC 2014

So the way I have seen this working in my mind so far is like this.

We install the default Workstation product, which uses the GNOME Shell. Included in the workstation default install there are also some other major libraries that is commonly used, Qt for instance comes to mind here as a obvious one. We try to provide what integration we can for any included library so that the user doesn't ideally have to think about technical details such as toolkit used by a developer. We also need to make sure that our accessibility stuff, like the high contrast icons, is equally supported across toolkits shipped.

Through the Software installer there will be other options available for install, like KDE. These will be installed alongside the default package set. We will not have a replace default option, just an add one, in order to ensure that the default package set can be targeted by 3rd parties.

Of course for power users there is still the command line tools and we are not going to do anything to try stop people from using those command line tools to change their system however they want. Only thing I can see us doing is that if we at some point is to maybe cancel automatic bug reporting through brt on systems that have seen manual surgery (not sure how we detect that), to avoid distorting our bug statistics with user caused issues, but that is an issue for later times in the case we end up having data indicating that it actually is an issue.

Jaroslav mentioned the idea of formulas and while not exactly the same we are doing here for desktops it is in my opinion along the same line of thinking. We might want to consider doing something along these lines for other things than desktops too, like for instance having some kind of profile packs targeting specific user groups, but I guess it might be something we want to not put on the agenda right away, to have a chance to ponder a bit more what those packs would be and how we present them for installation. My main concern is that if we create to many 'meta' packages the installer will start looking rather cluttered, but maybe the Fedora and Desktop design teams has some input regarding this. Of course one could argue that the whole point of the software installer is to make it so easy to find stuff that we don't need this, and that having these kind of 'group' installs is as accurate as shooting a sparrow with a cannon.

I also took the liberty of adding a Technical Speification page to the wiki:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Technical_Specification

It is currently more of a skeleton than anything else and I don't think I am the right person to write it, but I know Matthias and others are interested in helping flesh it out and add details, and hopefully we can have a good discussion on this list about potential items to include, wording and scoping etc.

Christian

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Adam Williamson" <awilliam at redhat.com>
> To: "Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop" <desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Sent: Thursday, January 30, 2014 9:55:46 PM
> Subject: Re: Underlying DE for the Workstation product
> 
> On Thu, 2014-01-30 at 15:47 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > Since everyone else seems to be shy about kicking off some of the
> > threads for the next steps, I'll get this one going and get it out of
> > the way.
> > 
> > We need to settle on an underlying DE for the Workstation product.
> > The two major DEs in the Linux space are GNOME and KDE.  Fedora has
> > spins for MATE, XFCE, and one other (I think).  I've gathered that
> > there's a lot of assumption, both in the broader community and within
> > the WG, that Workstation will continue the Fedora trend and be based
> > on GNOME.  I would even venture to say that is a fairly sane
> > assumption to make.
> > 
> > With that in mind, would the WG like to officially settle on using
> > GNOME as the underlying DE for Workstation?
> > 
> > I will be perfectly honest and say I have no overwhelming preference
> > here personally.  My expertise extends to helping navigate through
> > Fedora process thus far, so I'm not sure I'd make a huge impact from
> > the technical side of things on whatever DE is picked.
> 
> 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.
> --
> Adam Williamson
> Fedora QA Community Monkey
> IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | XMPP: adamw AT happyassassin . net
> http://www.happyassassin.net
> 
> --
> desktop mailing list
> desktop at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop