will F18 allow simultaneous installation of more than one desktop?

Mon Jul 9 18:12:06 UTC 2012

On Mon, 2012-07-09 at 12:49 -0500, David Lehman wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-07-09 at 11:23 -0600, Christopher A. Williams wrote:
> > On Mon, 2012-07-09 at 11:52 -0500, David Lehman wrote:
> > > > Exactly what is so bad with "that practice" (of installing both desktops) as to "frown upon it"?
> > > > 
> > > > I am a KDE user and yet I still install Gnome on my machine. Exactly what crime do I commit?
> > > 
> > > Only being unwilling to choose a camp. Not even a crime, really.
> > 
> > And choosing a camp is good? Not choosing a camp or deciding to remain
> > flexible is bad? Not really.
> 
> I didn't say flexible is bad. What I am saying is that flexible is
> _hard_ (for those of us doing the work). Hard is not necessarily bad,
> either, but at some point one must begin to choose one's battles.

So... Lots of stuff is hard. But it's also worth it. We don't achieve
excellence by taking the simple route. I do really hard stuff both in my
job and on my own time as a volunteer most every day.

> > > > I am another _real_ data point showing that Fedora users actually do that (that = install both 
> > > > desktops to have access to packages from both of them).
> > > 
> > > There are plenty of very vocal minority groups here.
> > 
> > Please show researched statistics to support your claim and implication
> > that this is a minority group. I question and doubt you actually have
> > statistics on any of these groups.
> 
> Too busy trying to actually do work, but thanks for offering to help.

Nice try. I didn't offer to help on this one. You alleged something as a
point without anything to back it up. I just asked you to back up what
you're saying. If you can't do that, it's not my problem. It just means
I'm winning on this part of the argument.

> > > 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.
> > 
> > ...Wow - Talk about spin. Only something that's highly polished and
> > streamlined like MacOS...?
> 
> I don't have time to sit with you all day picking the fly shit out of
> the pepper. You should stop making assumptions and take a look at the UI
> before continuing to try and dictate its design from afar.

Must be getting you you since you're now resorting to ...umm "colorful"
language.

I guess you missed the part where I have been contributing in one way or
another to Fedora since its start (and RHL before that). While I'm not a
coder, I do understand a lot more about this than you want to imply.

> > 
> > Simple is not a requirement for highly polished, and neither simple nor
> > streamlined should prevent flexibility in options. Besides, if you
> > really want to emulate MacOS like that, why not just go buy a Mac?
> > 
> > I would submit there is a group who wants something highly polished,
> > with flexibility and the ability to easily control finer points of the
> > process along the way. None of these traits necessarily precludes the
> > others. Is that really too much to ask for?
> 
> No, of course not. We'll attain UI perfection while simultaneously
> arguing with you about it. Have you even looked at the UI we're working
> on? Read the blog posts about what we're doing?

...Well, actually... Yes I have, and I keep up on things quite
regularly. I just don't always chime in on things unless I clearly see
something truly problematic and have the cycles to engage on it.

> Just because I failed to spoonfeed you the entire essence of several
> man-years of work in a short email doesn't mean you're ahead of the game
> here.

Only several man-years? I was in Redomond a couple of weeks ago review
just the update to System Center 2012 and Hyper-V Windows Server 2008 (I
design and build cloud infrastructure by trade leading a practice for a
Fortune 500 company). Microsoft is quite proud of that they have more
than 6,000 man-years of work in the update to System Center 2012
alone...

> > > > "Applications programming is a race between software engineers, who strive to produce idiot-proof 
> > > > programs, and the universe which strives to produce bigger idiots. So far the Universe is winning."
> > > > 
> > > > Do you really strive to produce more and better idiots?
> > > 
> > > 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).
> > 
> > ...This is evidence of another misconception and misguided strategy
> > (albeit an honest one): We need to save the novice users from
> > themselves, while letting "geniuses" hack kickstart files. This is
> > pitting one extreme vs. another in a situation where neither is
> > realistically encountered. Just because I might be a genius doesn't mean
> > I should be required to hack kickstart files (although the choice to do
> > so should remain available at my own risk).
> > 
> > Why not instead have a good set of defaults in the installer, with a
> > "Don't try this at home unless you're a professional" button to open up
> > options for those who choose to do so, and then highly polish the whole
> > thing. Is that just too much to ask despite that reasonably good
> > versions of such have been successfully accomplished in the past?
> 
> Who said we wouldn't be using sane defaults and providing _some_ level
> of opt-in advanced capability? Nobody.

Well - Actually, that would be you. You further maintain a position that
applications from DEs should never be mixed, even post-install. And it
seems I'm not the only one you're arguing with about this.

Let's cut to the chase here: Your actual motivation for all of this is
that you want to limit the amount of work that you do. You're just
disguising it in all sorts of excuses. Why not just say that you don't
want to do it? Or, alternately, say that you don't have the cycles to do
it and, if people really want this done, you're going to need more
help/time/money, or similar. It's easier and it's a lot more honest. The
rest of us can then decide how we should adjust our priorities, ranging
from helping to find more resources willing to work on it, helping to
work on it ourselves, or even getting up and leaving.

Chris

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