Proposed F19 Feature: Cinnamon as Default Desktop

[inode0]

On Mon, Jan 28, 2013 at 9:47 AM, Máirín Duffy <duffy at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On 01/28/2013 02:06 AM, Dan Mashal wrote:
>> You don't see the point of MATE or Cinnamon? How long did you play with
>> them 5 minutes?
>
> Do you remember the GNOME 1.x => 2.x transition? Similarly to how there
> are forks of GNOME now to 'keep the GNOME 2 candle burning,' there were
> forks of GNOME 1.x to 'keep the GNOME 1 candle burning.'
>
> Do you remember what they were called? I didn't; I had to look 'em up.
> Do you ever wonder what happened to them? Dead projects nobody seems to
> remember. Do we really want to switch to a desktop that history has
> shown is likely to become a dead project in a few years?
>
> http://osdir.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1295

There are lots of reasons to not choose a desktop as the default and
lacking a demonstrable history of dedication and success is among
them.

> It also doesn't seem smart to switch from a desktop on the basis that
> Linus Torvalds and Alan Cox - kernel developers, not UI experts or even
> typical desktop users by any means - don't like it. I think switching
> the desktop that has been our default for over 10 years and 18 releases
> requires just a bit more research and reason than that.

A couple of observations here. UI experts aren't the target audience
of the default desktop either and while I agree that we need very
clear reasons for switching I don't accept that we have used X for 10
years as a reason to not change it.

What concerns me isn't that Linus and Alan don't like it. What
concerns me is where about 2 million of our users went after F14.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Statistics#Total_repository_connections

There are probably a number of reasons why people stopped using Fedora
at that time and what we can do to recover isn't at all clear. Even if
they all left because of dislike of the default desktop (which surely
isn't the case) changing it now won't bring them back.

I'm happy to see renewed discussion about the future of the Fedora
desktop. After four releases it isn't bad to step back and take a look
at how things are working out. I hope we can do that with an eye to
where we want to go in the future rather than looking to the past.

John