I have been following this for a while now, and I would like to voice an opinion.

I am a Systems Admin, who happily supports Red Hat RHEL in my environment at work.
However, I want a desktop that allows me to get my work done, is stable, and has no annoyances.  With the current state of GNOME and Fedora, I just cant meet those goals.  I do run F19, but the first thing I do is setup either Cinnamon or KDE.  I have tried to use GNOME, but the workflow differences between it and I are just to much.  I don't have time or patience enough to "force" myself to learn a whole new dogma of proper GUI use just to make GNOME work.

I was hoping that the Workstation group would be the best compromise for people like me, SysAdmins whom want to use a Distro that is in line with the Server OS they support.  Meaning, the package manager is similar, CLI structure is similar, etc.  The GNOME desktop just doesnt "fit" for me.  

If the list cares to hear more input from someone whom does SysAdmin work, I'd be pleased to speak more.

Thanks!
Lynn


On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 2:16 PM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org> wrote:
On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 02:04:51PM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Matthew Garrett <mjg59@srcf.ucam.org> wrote:
> > If there are no desktop users running GNOME then there's no incentive
> > for developers to target it. Targetting developers is going to change
> > our marketing message, which is going to filter out as "Fedora isn't a
> > good choice for an average end user". Users end up running Unity or
> > Cinnamon or MATE or KDE instead, developers shift to targetting them and
> > we end up with no suite of well integrated applications to ship.
>
> If that happens, I would expect Workstation to look at this and say
> GNOME isn't the correct fit.  As Matthias said a while ago,
> Workstation isn't GNOME.  Sticking with something the broader group
> you're targeting isn't using is pointless.

If that's a conscious decision then it's fine, but it's an inevitable
consequence of the current focus. That should be made explicit.

> > The PRD makes it pretty clear that, as far as the WG is concerned, it's
> > "ignore". That's not our current message.
>
> The word ignore is not in the PRD.  Please choose a different word.

There's nothing in the PRD to indicate that the working group will put
any effort into satisfying normal user requirements unless it happens as
a side effect of satisfying the requirements of the target audience. So,
indifferent?

> > Decisions *have* been made. They're not necessarily final, but offering
> > alternatives isn't useful unless there's any desire to revisit them.
>
> Can you point me to where any decision on anything has been made aside
> from Governance?  We have 4 drafts of a PRD that Christian has come up
> with.  The entire WG hasn't even commented on it, let alone voted.  If
> you're basing your statement on the implication that silence is
> agreement, that's understandable but people need to realize that NOW
> is the time to make alternative suggestions rather than assumptions
> that this is done by fiat.

We have four drafts of a PRD that's been written by the manager of the
group that's going to be responsible for providing most of the
workstation development effort. If he's committed to providing a
developer-focused product then it seems likely that that'll be the
outcome. If that's not the case, I'm happy to work on an alternative
proposal.

--
Matthew Garrett | mjg59@srcf.ucam.org