I think we need a discussion

[Peter G.]

David L. Gehrt wrote:

> I  am a  long  time  user of... RedHat, Fedora
me2

> I am of  the opinion that Linux may be at or close
> to  a  crossroad moving  from  a  computing genre  in  which  the users 
> and
> developers make  cooperative decisions  on alternative development  paths
> to
> one in which changes are imposed  by developers.
did consumers ever have a say in development? Wasn't it always just providing 
what apple and windows had, or racing to keep up with hardware developments? 
people seemed to be satisfied with this.

> For me it is  not just that the Gnome2 environment is  being replaced with
> a
> new version,  it is that this  new version, Gnome3,  was seemingly
> developed without much consideration of how the former version, Gnome2,
> was being used and then imposed on users.
Does a desktop environment have to remain static? Cannot it evolve with time 
and with the developments in the greater world of computing? There are those 
who think that the pinnacles were reached with kde3 and gnome2. I am not among 
them.

> What this seems to imply is that in the future the mainline Linux UI will
> be
> characterized features  imposed, and by  lack of flexibility.
There are also countless other window managers/desktop environments in the 
fedora repos, the most evolved being xfde and lxde.

> This  lack
> of flexibility means that users are presented with a computing environment
> with
> features thought desirable by developers  and which provide little or no
> way
> for  users to modify  their computing  environment in  ways that  meet
> their needs and preferences.
You want to modify? I guess you haven't tried kde! I love it.

> I suspect without knowing that this is someones idea of how to turn a
> profit
> by moving  Linux to more profitable  place on corporate desktops.
Unlikely. Most corporations use windows and even more rarely update their 
software. My last employer was still using windows 2000 and a subsequent one 
windowsXP, without any of the service pack updates, for fear of a need for an 
expanded IT department.

> The bottom line is that in he
> absence
> of consultation with  users s/w developers are not very  good at meeting
> the needs of users
Such consultation is certainly welcome, but I as a user am sometimes stumped 
when asked what I would like to see, as I don't know what is possible and I 
have no way to imagine the not yet realized.

> As  a  country is  the  US  becoming  incompetent?
no comment