will F18 allow simultaneous installation of more than one desktop?

[Andre Robatino]

David Lehman <dlehman <at> redhat.com> writes:

> I can tell you from personal experience that Fedora has both real and
> imaginary idiots. Just kidding. We have two opposing groups of users:
> Those who think the installer should have a knob for whatever their
> obscure pet option is, and those who believe it should be a
> highly-polished, streamlined interface along the lines of MacOS. These
> are fundamentally in opposition and it is impossible to please both
> camps entirely.

The interface for allowing an arbitrary set of DEs vs. exactly one is almost
exactly the same. You just use checkboxes for the first, and radio buttons for
the second. As far as internals go, doesn't the installer have to resolve
arbitrary dependencies on the DVD anyway (due to package customization)? Would
the installer code actually be simplified in any way by restricting to one DE?

> We strive to provide an environment in which the idiots can play in
> relative safety (the graphical installer) while also offering an
> alternative environment for the geniuses to do whatever crazy thing they
> think they need to do (kickstart).

If there's actual evidence that having multiple DEs installed is dangerous (and
I haven't seen any, having installed both Gnome and KDE for around 10 years
now), that should be expressed by conflicts (the packages shouldn't be
simultaneously installable at all). Then the existing QA tests keep them from
ending up together on the DVD at together. The installer doesn't need to impose
extra restrictions. It could pop up warnings, if you feel it's necessary. That's
all the protection users need. Having to learn to use kickstart isn't a
protection, it's a punishment. So is wasting bandwidth by downloading afterwards
when the packages are already on the DVD, and the QA tests verified that they're
compatible.

Another point that needs to be emphasized is that mixing applications from
different DEs isn't something that people can effortlessly avoid. It's hard
enough to write a good application for one DE, without duplicating that effort
for all of them. It is not and probably never will be the case that people can
always just find a substitute application. The benefit of mixing is clear, I
haven't heard any actual evidence of harm.