Proposed F19 Feature: Cinnamon as Default Desktop

[Eric Bergen]

I decided to check out Fedora again after a few years of using Kubuntu
after reading about the MySQL/MariaDB discussion. As a long time KDE
and Mac OS user I hope my first experience with gnome-shell will help
your discussion.

After getting Fedora installed and getting to the basic desktop I
honestly had no idea what to do. Not having a start menu or some kind
of applications or programs button is a bit confusing at first. The
only two things available to click that have any kind of meaning are
'Activities' on the left and my name on the right.

After figuring out that Activities brings up a menu of sorts and the
'dial pad' really means applications I was in business. The UI was
horribly slow while figuring this out. I eventually was able to get a
terminal up, run top, and see that gnome-shell is eating all the cpu.
After some painfully slow searching I got the nvidia driver installed
and gnome-shell started to behave.

I then went to work trying to figure out how to switch the default
desktop. I was able to get Cinnamon and MATE installed. Switching to
them was the next problem. Google returned some links about switchdesk
and system-switch-display manager both of which failed. Then I
remembered an old login screen from some other linux experience long
ago had the ability to switch the session manager.

Success! I've switched over to Cinnamon. The start style menu is back
and I am happy. I'm sure I could get used to gnome-shell but my first
experience wasn't a good one.

On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 8:51 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 2013-02-05 at 02:59 +0100, Kevin Kofler wrote:
>> Adam Williamson wrote:
>> > ...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.
>>
>> I don't think "distro XYZ did that" is a reasonable argument for doing
>> something in Fedora
>
> I didn't make it as an argument, I noted it as an aside. That's why it
> comes second and has "BTW" in it.
>
>> , but since you started it: OpenSUSE is doing just fine
>> doing exactly what I suggest (making people actually pick their download).
>> Their download button actually points to a selector, not directly to an ISO.
>
> That would be the SUSE that along with Mandriva got completely panned
> when Ubuntu showed up, then? To the point where they've since been sold
> two times and have never really recovered.
> --
> Adam Williamson
> Fedora QA Community Monkey
> IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
> http://www.happyassassin.net
>
> --
> devel mailing list
> devel at lists.fedoraproject.org
> https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel



-- 
Eric Bergen
eric.bergen at gmail.com
http://www.ebergen.net