Underlying DE for the Workstation product

[Josh Boyer]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-01-30 at 16:08 -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
>
>> > Given the tension between the definition of a "Workstation Product" and
>> > the multiple desktop spins that I've identified on devel@ - i.e. that a
>> > "Workstation product" built around a single desktop occupies the
>> > 'desktop space', without accounting for alternative desktops - do you
>> > definitely want to go ahead with the model where the WS product is
>> > specifically associated with a single desktop and makes no attempt to
>> > somehow 'include' alternative desktops, or is it worth considering
>> > possible approaches that somehow account for alternatives? I realize it
>> > might be quite late to do that, but it seemed worth asking the question.
>>
>> The PRD already has a section that speaks to working with various
>> toolkits to make them inter-operate with each other.  The idea behind
>> that is so that applications from various toolkits have the same
>> look-and-feel on the Workstation regardless of their primary
>> DE/toolkit.  While I realize that isn't specifically answering your
>> question, it does at least speak to the fact that there isn't ONE
>> TOOLKIT TO RULE THEM ALL.
>
> The bit of the PRD that seems significant is "The Workstation working
> group will define a set of packages that are considered required be
> installed in order for the system to qualify as a Fedora Workstation.
> Through policy users will be strongly advised against uninstalling any
> of these packages and there will also be no option in the graphical
> software installer to uninstall them."
>
> I was kinda reading that as essentially mandating that the default
> desktop must be installed. It doesn't preclude installing another
> alongside it, but the effect seems to be to define a standard
> environment which is always going to be assumed and prioritized.

I was speaking more to these two sections:

"

Work towards standardizing and unifying the Linux desktop space

We want to use and develop technologies that can be widely shared with
the rest of the community and we want to allow developers to use the
tools they prefer for their application development yet make them all
feel like a natural fit into our integrated desktop experience. This
would include items like theming and making sure we offer a consistent
accessibility story across different development toolkits. The product
will reach out and collaborate with the Fedora Design team and other
relevant groups on such items.

Develop application guidelines and designs

The working group will develop guides and style recommendations for
applications that target the workstation. These guidelines will be
mandatory for the core apps that are specifically developed for the
workstation, but 3rd party software developers will be encouraged to
follow them too.

"

which reads more like what I was referring to.  Collaboration with
other applications and toolkits to make sure a wide variety of
software works as expected on Workstation.

>> As to whether we want Workstation to be a "pick your own DE" product,
>> I personally don't feel that's a great way to start.  Seems somewhat
>> confusing.  There's a lot of work to be done, and having a single
>> underlying toolkit/platform to work from at least helps to focus on
>> where the initial work goes.  I also don't think it excludes the
>> possibility of different Workstation DEs in the future.  If we'd like
>> to rephrase as "initial Workstation DE" to allow for that possibility,
>> I'm OK with that.
>
> That wasn't necessarily what I was suggesting, it was more of an open
> suggestion than a specific implementation idea. There are probably
> approaches that don't involve the "Workstation product" per se being a
> choose-your-own-adventure, but somehow allow for the existence of
> alternatives. I think someone floated the idea of some kind of
> sub-product system already, for instance.

If people want alternatives to exist, there's no reason to somehow
prohibit them from doing that.  Nor do I think we'd want to even think
about preventing them.  I don't necessarily think those alternatives
should be grouped or branded under Workstation though.

I feel like I'm not understanding what you're asking.  Could you maybe
try to elaborate a bit more with examples?

josh