Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
Side note, I was at a loss of what you were getting at. There were
several
ways it could be interpreted and has been used by people in the past to
mean different things.
I think John's statement was pretty clear: The artificial distinction
between "Editions" and "Spins" needs to go away.
The problem is that there is an inherent conflict of resources here.
When
we put everything on the download pages, everyone including the spin
owners say it was too confusing.
What Spin owners have you asked? While I cannot officially speak for the KDE
SIG, I am almost certain (as a former member and a current passive follower
of the KDE SIG) that the KDE SIG has never said such a thing. To the best of
my knowledge, the KDE SIG's proposals to improve the download page have
always suggested listing ALL Spins, not just KDE/Plasma and
Workstation/Desktop/GNOME. (My suggestion has always been to order them by
decreasing download counts.)
But choosing which things get put on a special page or not ends up
getting
the opposite "You're oppressing me" or "Oh its ok if you drop everyone
but
MY spin". The opposite catch-22 is that the spin may only have 1-2 to
handle issues but they aren't getting more or less people because they
don't have more than 1-2 people on it. This leads to multiple spins only
getting looked at in the beta where someone sees "oh it won't get in the
next release.. ok I will see if I can get time to fix things"
So if that is your concern, the solution would be to define some minimum
formal requirements for a Spin to be listed on the get.fp.o front page. But
then those requirements should also apply to the 3 "Editions": if they don't
fit the criteria, they should be kicked out as well. (I could see that
possibly happenening for Server or Atomic/Silverblue at some point. The
Fedora user base is clearly desktop-centric. But I am NOT saying that they
should necessarily be delisted, just that they should be held to the same
maintenance standards as the Spins.)
That said, I am pretty sure that if the Spins were more prominently
advertised, they would be more likely to attract helping hands. As it stands
now, users not yet familiar with Fedora might not even realize that the
Spins even exist.
It is a complicated problem and doing the basic hand-waving of
"it is
because Fedora markets specifically GNOME they suck" just makes people
pissed off and entrenched versus coming up with a workable solution.
I would propose this mockup (mix of HTML and ASCII art, sorry – each '#'
sign stands for a nice colored icon, e.g., a notebook icon, an upstream
desktop project logo, etc.):
# fedora <h1>Welcome to Fedora, a GNU/Linux distribution entirely composed
of free and open source software, downloadable at no cost.</h1>
Fedora is an operating system that you can use, share, distribute, and
modify as you like, all completely for free. <a href=…>More information</a>.
What hardware (physical or virtual) do you want to install Fedora on?
<a href="#workstation"> | <a href="#server"> | <a
href="#container">
# Desktop | # Server | # Container
# Notebook/Laptop | # VPS | # Docker
# Workstation | # Server VM | # Kubernetes
</a> | </a> | </a>
<a name="workstation"><h2>Desktop, Notebook/Laptop,
Workstation</h2></a>
Fedora for the workstation: One operating system, many faces.
You can select between several different desktop workspace environments with
different looks, feels, and user experiences, while always being able to use
the full set of applications included with or shipped by third parties for
Fedora. <a href=…>More information</a>.
# GNOME – The default desktop environment in Fedora, recommended for new
users. <a href=…>Download now (x86_64 ISO image)</a>
# KDE Plasma – [description] <a href=…>Download now (x86_64 ISO image)</a>
# Xfce – [description] <a href=…>Download now (x86_64 ISO image)</a>
[all other Spins – the whole list should be ordered by decreasing download
counts]
Fedora also offers convenient Labs for some niche use cases, to save you the
trouble of manually installing your niche applications on one of the above
Spins:
# Astronomy (based on: # KDE Plasma) – [description] <a href=…>Download now
(x86_64 ISO image)</a>
# Design Suite (based on: # GNOME) – [description] <a href=…>Download now
(x86_64 ISO image)</a>
[all other Labs – the whole list should be ordered by decreasing download
counts]
<a name="server"><h2>Server, VPS, Server VM</h2></a>
Fedora for the server: […]
# Server – [description] <a href=…>Download now (x86_64 ISO image)</a>
<a name="container"><h2>Container, Docker,
Kubernetes</h2></a>
Fedora for containers: […]
# Silverblue – [description] <a href=…>Download now (x86_64 […] image)</a>
[end mockup]
This mockup can easily be extended with more columns in the hardware table
(and corresponding linked to page sections), e.g., a fourth column for ARM
mobile devices.
Kevin Kofler