Abandon "Default Desktop"

[Trever Fischer]

On Thursday 30 April 2009 5:18:30 am Rahul Sundaram wrote:
> On 04/30/2009 02:22 PM, Roberto Ragusa wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Not really. Users clearly already have the choice. If you like KDE, pick
> the KDE Live CD which is prominently highlighted in the download page.
You mean that tiny "KDE fans, go here!" box on the side? Compared to the main 
"desktop edition" download link, its hardly visible.
>
> This discussion is about forcing the user to pick one by emphasizing
> political correctness by not picking defaults which is the worst of all
> possible choices. I don't see why I shouldn't ask for Xfce and ratpoison
> as among the choices offered if we are going to take this line of
> argument further. What about offering the choice of emacs or vi and
> asking the user to pick one before proceeding with the installation?
Its already been discussed that adding Xfce and an "other" choice to the list 
is reasonable. A clueless newbie won't know what ratpoison is (and in all 
honesty, probably will have no idea how to use it) so hiding it behind a "I 
know exactly what I'm doing, so don't give me one. Just let me pick exactly 
the packages I want" option is best.

Please don't try and make this into another pointless argument thread. Keep 
emacs and vi out of it. The whole idea of this thread is to give a new user 
the choice to pick between a desktop environment. Chances are, the terminal 
will scare them so a text-based editor won't matter much. Either way, my 
experience dictates that most new users start out with nano before jumping to 
vi or emacs. Before this turns into another pulseaudio/c-a-b thread, consider 
that point moot.
>
> > 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 ;-)
>
> This is a broad misgeneralization especially since these desktop
> environment learn from each other all the time and have even converged
> on a look and feel or some standards or share implementation details in
> many cases. The personal choice of a desktop environment is far more
> nuanced than can be adequately described in a installer (ie) that is the
> wrong place to describe them.
Oxygen and Clearlooks look pretty different to me. At any rate, giving the user 
a choice is many times better than not. If we force the GNOME desktop down the 
throats of everyone, it ends up reducing KDE4 to a second-class citizen. I 
personally think adding a kind of 'Take a tour' section to the installer for 
KDE and GNOME, complete with screenshots, is a good way to go. We'll let each 
desktop highlight the key points and features of why a user should use one 
over the other. Picking a desktop shouldn't be a quick and impulsive "ooh, 
shiny screenshot" action with only two lines of text to back it up.
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