website mockups, what is fedora?

[Mike McGrath]

On Fri, 21 Aug 2009, Rex Dieter wrote:

> Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> > On 08/21/2009 10:04 AM, Rex Dieter wrote:
> > > Then, look at the new website mockups.
> > >
> > > (perceived) Answer: Fedora is the fedora-desktop spin
> >
> > Well, I think the point here is that for the new, uninformed user, we
> > need to present them with a single default choice.
> >
> > Forcing them to choose between:
> > GNOME, KDE, Games, LXCE, EDU, Electronics, Security
>
> One can still offer options, but have a choice pre-selected by default, akin
> to how some other distros are doing.
>
> But let's not get muddled in details.
>
> Let me be brutally honest:  withholding choice and options here and/or
> diminishing kde's visibility *will* disenfranchise a lot of people. We'll lose
> out PR-wise big time, especially in light of opensuse's recent work that is
> largely perceived as doing right by the community.
>
> Is that a price the board is willing to pay?
>

<Proud kde guy and on the board>

I'm totally willing to admit that from an initial look it seems like the
KDE guys are being screwed.  This is _not_ the intention but is incidental
to what we're trying to do.  The board all agreed that the
get.fedoraproject.org page was just a mess.

The solution was to simplify it.

In this simplification we decided to pick one default install (the same
one we've always had).  Even SuSE has now picked one default.

Now the 'vision' stuff.  We're kind of hoping the spins page (which will
include KDE, the gnome spin and others) will become a strong way for the
individual sigs to give a better indication on what the spin is, why one
should download it, include pictures, videos, whatever to better market
it.

I'd ask the various spins, KDE included, to give this a solid shot.
Imagine if the KDE spin was the _only_ spin.  Now think about what that
download page would look like.  What types of information would be
included with it.  What types of marketing banners would you create, what
kinds of marketing materials would you send out?  Now, use that, work with
the design team if you guys aren't able (I know I'm not).  Give it an
honest shot and lets see how it all works out for F12.

If it's a complete failure (and it very well might be), lets look at why,
what could be done to make it better.  If there's nothing else to make it
better, bring it back to the board and state why and we'll re-think it.

</Proud kde guy and on the board>

Also, I feel I should say that I've never actually download the kde spin.
I've always just selected it at install time from the netinstall media.

	-Mike