Abandon "Default Desktop"

Nikolay Vladimirov nikolay at vladimiroff.com
Thu Apr 30 09:26:03 UTC 2009


2009/4/30 Roberto Ragusa <mail at robertoragusa.it>:
> Adam Williamson wrote:
>
>> We're circling. I already said that even if it doesn't really matter
>> which option you pick, making someone make a decision they don't
>> understand frustrates them. That's the problem, not the 'danger' that
>> they might pick the 'wrong choice'.
>
> Eh eh, the discussion is about giving a user the choice to select
> the desktop he wants.
>
> The GNOME desktop tries to avoid user choices.
> The KDE desktop tries to encourage user choices.
>
> And the decision on allowing a desktop choice divides people
> in two camps:
> 1) those that think the user should not choose
> 2) those that think the user should have to choose
>
> I'd bet people in 1) are GNOME users and people in 2) are KDE users.
>
> I'm in 2) and I'm a KDE user, I'd guess you instead use GNOME ;-)
>
> It is not a cliche, it is really a different way to approach things,
> and it is showing at the choice-about-choice level too.
>
> The no-choice position is intrinsically stronger, because
> it is in some way recursive:
> - no choice
> - no choice about having choices
> - no choice about the choice of having choices
> ...
>
> On the other way, the other approach is more aligned to
> the freedom ideal that Fedora wants to inspire.
>
> IMHO.
>
> :-)
>
> Best regards.
>
> --
>   Roberto Ragusa    mail at robertoragusa.it

It's not only about choices.
At the moment KDE is unstable crap and has been since 4.0 . Gnome is
somewhat stable and simple which is great and that's why it should be
the default desktop.
Don't get me wrong I use it on my home Fedora machine and with Kubuntu
in my day job and I do like it. Also one good thing I noticed in
Fedora's KDE is that the nm-applet is from gnome. In kubuntu there is
some replacement that looks prettier but it's total crap. In KDE you
don't get nice audio or video player. Amarok is worse than awful so
are most of the video players. And so on...

One thing that really must be addressed is that if I want to install
KDE I have to go trough all the trouble to remove all the gnome stuff
which is a lot of clicking. A different set of applications is needed
for every DE. And it will be good if there is some meta grouping of
the applications.

On the installation methods I always use netinstall since I have 6-8
MB/s bandwidth to my local fedora mirror. So I get all the stuff in
the anaconda package selection. It should be fairly easy to say: I
want "Minimal Install" or "I want [Gnome|XFCE|LXDE|SUGAR|KDE]" And all
the packages selected by that choice should intended for this DE. I
don't want rhythmbox in KDE or evolution.

-- 
NV




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