will F18 allow simultaneous installation of more than one desktop?

[Christopher A. Williams]

On Mon, 2012-07-09 at 23:59 +0800, Ed Greshko wrote:
> On 07/09/2012 11:43 PM, David Lehman wrote:
> > On Sun, 2012-07-08 at 07:49 -0600, Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> >> Agreed. And I fear the universe, in this case, may be winning by
> >> producing "bigger idiot" developers.
> > Indeed -- "bigger idiot" developers who seek to simplify their software
> > by eliminating limited-value features that bring needless complexity and
> > therefore bugs. All you have to do is run 'yum groupinstall <whatever>'
> > or use the graphical package manager to install your additional DEs.
> > This should not be prohibitively difficult.
> >
> >
> Point taken.....
> 
> However, I think the concern is that users new to Linux and/or Fedora may be coming
> from the Windows world and not aware they have a choice in the DeskTop.  So, they
> install....don't see a choice....get GNOME and assume that is it. 
> 
> Maybe those users will eventually find out that they have a choice.
> 
> Or, they may find themselves unhappy with GNOME and leave Fedora without ever having
> known or looked for help.

Precisely. Add to this that my comment, in its full context (of which
some was deleted), also was referring to a position advocating that
application selection should also be limited based on DE choice.

And I would further posit that, since the position has been taken that
you can override all of this post-install, the potential complexity is
only reduced in the installation process. The installed system remains
just as complex and would still require (in proper methodology) testing
of all components in the overall repository in any case. Thus the
overall workload on developers is not really reduced at all.

So we have a proposed change that provides little benefit to perhaps a
small group of developers on what should be shared components
(Installer / Package Manager) which results in a loss of function to
users, and increases the risk of bifurcating the distro on at least a
social level (if not a technical one).

In all (quoting "Ghost Busters") this just sounds like "...an
extraordinarily bad idea".

Chris

-- 
Christopher A. Williams <chriswfedora at cawllc.com>