Ramblings and questions regarding Fedora, but stemming from gnome-software and desktop environments

[Rich Mattes]

On 01/04/2015 06:46 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote:
> Gary Scarborough wrote:
>> Is workstation being aimed at new users or developers?  And is the goal
>> the same for Gnome?  If Gnome is aiming to cater to new users, then is it
>> the right primary DE for fedora?  There seems to be a misalignment here.
>
> I've been pointing out that misalignment from day 1. Nobody seems to care.
>
> IMHO, developers are much better served with the KDE Spin:
> * Plasma is more configurable and more adapted to the power users that
>    developers inevitably are,
> * Apper (the package management GUI installed by default on the KDE spin)
>    does not hide development packages the way GNOME Software (the package
>    management GUI installed by default on the Workstation product) does,
> * Qt and kdelibs / KDE Frameworks are a better development platform than
>    GTK+ (and yes, I've used both),
> * KDevelop is a better IDE than anything GNOME has to offer.
>
> The choice of GNOME as a desktop environment completely contradicts the
> claimed target of "developers".
>
>          Kevin Kofler
>

The Workstation product is generally aimed at developers as per the 
Target Audience section of the Workstation PRD[1], and the Workstation 
working group decided on GNOME as the desktop to use to accomplish the 
goals laid out in the PRD.  Although the Workstation PRD sets out a lot 
of developer-centric goals, the choice of GNOME as the default desktop 
and the discussion around the not-so-devleoper-centric GNOME Software 
app and other GNOME features make it seem like the Workstation product 
is kind of awkwardly straddling the line between a shiny new 
developer-centric "Workstation" product and the old "Desktop" default 
GNOME-based spin (whose goals are not really enumerated in the PRD.)  In 
that light I can see how it may look like the choice of GNOME for the 
Workstation product seem contradictory.

Are there any plans to promote the KDE spin to a product?  Reading the 
Workstation PRD and taking into account their choice of GNOME as the 
default environment, it looks like there are wide open "Average User," 
"Power User," and "Cross-Platform Development (via Qt)" target audiences 
that a new KDE-based "Fedora Desktop" or similar product could easily 
cater to.

Rich

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Workstation/Workstation_PRD