Proposed F19 Feature: Cinnamon as Default Desktop

[Jon VanAlten]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Adam Williamson" <awilliam at redhat.com>
> To: "Development discussions related to Fedora" <devel at lists.fedoraproject.org>
> Sent: Monday, February 4, 2013 6:53:20 PM
> Subject: Re: Proposed F19 Feature: Cinnamon as Default Desktop
> 
> On Mon, 2013-02-04 at 06:56 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> > Adam Williamson wrote:
> > > 2. Can't we just not have a default?
> > > 
> > > Not really. Others have touched on this, but the websites team
> > > really
> > > wants the simplicity of a straightforward 'Download' link that
> > > gets you
> > > a live image, and that pretty much requires a default desktop.
> > 
> > And just because the websites team "wants" that nonsense, we have
> > to keep
> > it? Seriously? That one-click download is utter nonsense: No matter
> > what you
> > pick, it will always be the wrong thing for many people. The step
> > to
> > actually pick the correct download cannot be skipped.
> 
> ...and forcing a choice - possibly between several things they are
> not
> familiar with either in detail or in nature - is equally wrong for
> many
> people. Probably *more* people. Lots of people don't really care what
> desktop they get, and lots of people don't know what a desktop is or
> what are the differences between GNOME and KDE and Xfce and LXDE and
> and
> and and...
> 
> You're a new Linux user, you go to our download page, and instead of
> a
> simple big green Download button, it starts asking you questions
> about
> what 'desktop environment' you want? What the hell is this crap?
> 
> Getting this right was one of the simple things Ubuntu did that
> helped
> its initial surge in popularity over other distros at the time, BTW.
> They didn't make you pass a test to download the product.
> 

There's a lot of things that Ubuntu does that Fedora will probably
never do, so that's not really an argument.

I don't have a horse in the default desktop race, being one of
those weirdo tiling window manager users, which is possibly the
exact reason why the idea of not having a default appeals to me.
Maybe, if your objection is that the choice is too hard, you are
making it too hard artificially?  For those who really are brand
new and won't really have any idea what's going to be under the
hood of any one DE, wouldn't a simple screen shot highlighting
some of the primary interfaces of the home screen be enough for
that person to say, "Hey that one looks pretty (or maybe similar
to my current desktop, or some other property that motivates my
software choices).  Now I shall click the download button below
the picture, and presumably I will get something that will look
like the picture"?  I think this is a "test" that most people
can handle (and if they can't, I frankly don't want to be the
one to support them!).  And beside the download button for each
DE can be a "more info" link, for those (possibly majority?) of
users who are more interested in learning about the image they
are about to download.  I haven't yet met a linux user who was
not driven in part by curiosity.  Maybe I don't get out enough.

This is just one idea of how a selection of different DE can be
presented without it being an onerous choice, I'm sure the most
excellent UI-oriented people we have contributing to Fedora can
come up with something much much better.

tl'dr: Please leave the straw man "new users won't be able to
decide" argument at the door, there's a way around it if we can
think about the *best* way to do it, rather than the *worst*.

cheers,
jon

ps: the horse I *do* have a race in is which ever one can stop
this endless "mine is better and should be the default"
argument (not that this is the position I think you're taking,
Adam!!).  The way it seems to be going now, there will be some
group(s) left offended at the end of F19 release cycle, and
then we'll have the same thread during F20, rinse, repeat.