Proposed F19 Feature: Cinnamon as Default Desktop

[Ralf Corsepius]

On 02/05/2013 05:37 AM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> On Mon, 2013-02-04 at 20:35 -0500, Jon VanAlten wrote:
>
>> 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*.
>
> It's not really a straw man, though. Just about every popular distro
> doesn't make the user pick a desktop before they can download.
You should ask "why"?

As I feel, this is primarily for one reason: The enterprises behind a 
major distros usually finance a DE and wants to see their works promoted 
as "unique feature".

This is what SUSE/Novell did with KDE, Ubuntu did with Unity and Red Hat 
does with Gnome - You may or may not share this opinion, fact is, this 
is how people perceive it.

However, fact also is, all these DE's developments have driven off 
larger groups of their former users, leading to what I call "the Linux 
DE crisis" and to an increase of "alternatives", such as MATE, Cinnamon 
or the revitalization of some "almost forgotten" "undead DEs" (xfce, 
enlightenment).

To cut a long story short: I'd recommend to embrace these "alternative 
DEs" as equal partners and not to continue classifying them as "second 
class".

Ralf