Proposed F19 Feature: Cinnamon as Default Desktop

[Michael Scherer]

Le lundi 28 janvier 2013 à 09:56 +0100, Michał Piotrowski a écrit :
> 
> Maybe it should be something like "defaultless" desktop. Just install
> Gnome and display desktop ballot screen "Yes, we know that Gnome 3
> sucks for 85% of population. Here you got an alternatives."

For one, if there is 85% of a group that do not use a software, that
doesn't mean it sucks for them. I do not use KDE, I do not consider it
to sucks. You cannot use 2 DE at the same time, so obviously, you have
to chose at a moment.

Personally, I do not think that's a great idea from a UI point of view
to ask to new users ( cause the non new users are aware they can install
something else, so the ballot would be useless for them, and maybe even
annoying in the long run ) with choice they may not care about at all.
Non technical users I see at work have already enough trouble to choose
between zimbra and thunderbird, I can only imagine the result on asking
them to choose a whole DE, a concept that will be alien to most of them.


But let's set aside the objections for a while and imagine that this is
the way to go. Unless we want offer a reduced quality, all desktop must
have the same level of polish and focus.

- this has some implication on the QA point of view, because you have to
do the same level of QA on all projects presented ( and given the fact
that some old gnome-shell bugs are still present on cinnamon, I am
pretty sure that cinnamon didn't get the same level of QA and testing by
the community ). So the first step would be to make sure there is enough
people doing the QA, for enough time. 

- This also have a impact on the documentation, unless people volunteer
to write X docs for the X DE. So for the same reason as QA, any desktop
that want to be part of the ballot screen should have a sustained
community documentation team.

- last but not least, having enough coders and developers upstream, and
packagers in Fedora. I was less than impressed by Cinnamon code and
design, and afaik, there is only 2 packagers to take care of, and one of
them is already doing lots of work on another DE. So for the same reason
and to offer a good quality, I think any desktop part of the ballot
screen should have a track of sustainability regarding packaging.

And of course, if people want that, someone need to volunteer to
coordinate that, and make the work on the website.

So even before deciding if this is a good idea or not, people should
work to raise the quality. And even without the ballot screen, having
enough QA and documentation, coders and packagers will be a good idea
( aka, no excuse "but if there is no ballot, I will not do any work" )

-- 
Michael Scherer