Underlying DE for the Workstation product

[Dan Mashal]

On Sun, Feb 2, 2014 at 1:25 PM, Lynn Dixon <boodaddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think what he was saying is that the traditional desktop has already been
> defined, and accepting by the mass audience.  It's just that Windows was the
> pioneer that happened to be prevelant when the desktop was being defined.
> The statistics he provided shows us that even though Microsoft is trying to
> shift to a more mobile and touch centric inteface with Windows 8 and 8.1,
> their audience is refusing to make the jump, because they favor that
> traditional interf?ace. Heck Microsoft is even changing things back to more
> traditional interface because their customers are not liking this new "way
> of doing things", hence some of the changes from Win8 to Win8.1 and there
> are rumors of even more traditional approaches coming up in the next
> iteration of whatever Win8* will be.
>
> We have been trying to push this same transition onto our Linux users for
> quite sometime now, and its just not being accepted well by the majority of
> the market, otherwise Gnome would not have become so fragmented with
> off-shoots like MATE, Cinnamon, and the others.
>
> I am one of those long time Linux users whom prefer the traditonal ways of
> interacting with my machine that Gnome 2 provided.  So, I would say we
> shouldn't focus on making our product more "Windows  like" but rather more
> "Gnome 2 like".  Now, I know I will get barraged (as people like me whom
> speak against Gnome 3 always do) with the "You need to move forward and stop
> being stuck in the past" comments.  But thats how I actually feel.  I admin
> a decent sized RHEL environment at work, and I do it by using Fedora,
> because I apprecaite the similarities between the two (yum, system-config-*,
> etc), but I aboslutely hate trying to use Gnome 3 because it so ineffecient
> for someone like me whom prefers the traditional interface. Every time I
> stare at the big bar at the top of the screen I cant help but feel like all
> that useful real-estate being wasted for a clock (in the middle) and only
> showing me one application of the many I have running (and its the one I am
> presently working in.... I already know which one I am in....useless).
>
> That's why I awlays install Cinnamon and use it as my primary workspace. So,
> instead of trying to shoehorn MATE into GTK3 standards, why not use Cinnamon
> which already uses GTK3 and still gives the traditional desktop experience
> for its users?  If Fedora and Red Hat were to start spending resources on
> Cinnamon, I honestly think it would be the desktop that unified the Linux DE
> market.  Not only that, I think it would be an attractive desktop for people
> that don't want to switch to Windows 8 from Windows 7 (My mother is the
> perfectly example, she loves Cinnmon because her new laptop shipped with
> Windows 8).  When I setup Fedora 19 for my mother using default Gnome DE,
> she hated it and WANTED Windows 8 back.  Once I installed Cinnamon, and let
> her try it, she instantly was able to use it with no re-learning.  If my 58
> year old mother can learn how to navigate Cinnamon within 5 minutes of
> using, that speaks volumes to its marketability.
>
> Again, I am not very technical when it comes to the development involved in
> building Gnome3, Cinnamon, and MATE, but I can tell you from honest to
> goodness experience, that literally everyone I introduce to Cinnamon,
> aboslutely loves it.  Those same folks when introduced to Gnome will often
> say "why?"  and "how do I do X?".  I teach a few introductory Linux courses
> at a local college, and when we disuss DE's I always have my students
> install several (KDE, Gnome, Cinnamon, MATE, etc) and write reports over
> which they prefer, and my top two results are usually KDE or Cinnamon. These
> are students whom have little to no experience with Linux mind you. This is
> empirical evidence that I have gathered on my own.

You are right about Microsoft.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9245965/Leak_hints_Microsoft_will_recant_make_them_eat_Metro_strategy_for_Windows_8

Countless users want new features, but they don't want to give up
their traditional desktop experience.

For example, if Microsoft had introduced Metro without completely
destroying the classic Windows 7 interface people loved, Windows 8
would have been a lot more successful. To this day, Windows 8.1 is
still not 100% what Windows 7 was, and until it is, it will continue
to have issues with adoption.

Microsoft is finally realizing that they are shooting themselves in
the foot by killing their desktop market. Nobody cares about the
surface or Windows phone OS. Windows as a desktop OS is popular, so
when they try to force a mobile oriented OS on the desktop they end up
with the failure that is Windows 8.

The article also notes that Windows 9 will probably be even less "Metroish".

Dan