"Default" spin of Fedora

[Karsten 'quaid' Wade]

On Thu, 2008-06-12 at 10:40 -0500, Juan Camilo Prada wrote:

> We are not hiding, I repeat... we are not hiding anything... all other
> medias are still provided in the get-fedora section! 

I've read over this thread, done some thinking, and have a single
usability suggestion that might start another way of viewing this
problem.

We may have all seen various "get" sites, such as getfirefox.com.  Those
sites parse the incoming browser and offer a download for the
presumptive operating system.  Most of the time they are right; someone
wants Firefox for the system they are downloading onto.  But there
really isn't an explanation as to why this choice was made, and perhaps
that is confusing in itself.  Making best guesses for folks is a
combination of art and science.

Looking at Juan's latest front page[1], I see there is a bit of text
around it.  What if we found a concise way to make fun/light of the
process of choosing for "newbies", while providing a link out to the
non-default Fedora desktop?  (Which happens to be KDE.)

        Download Fedora!
        => Single CD for Desktops and Laptops
                =>  We flipped a coin to choose this GNOME desktop as
                the default from amongst all the great single, live CDs.
                Who really knows best?  Maybe you want the equally
                fantastic [live KDE CD] instead ...
        => Ready to use operating system         /* not capitalized */
        => Use it, modify it, and distribute it  /* added ',' in serial list */
        => Latest free software technology       /* free and open are not cap'd */
        => More ...
        
        Download Torrent Direct Download

I'm making this suggestion with the consideration that these positions
are all "right" and we can continue to find ways to support them:

* Default desktop environment for Fedora could be any, it happens to be
GNOME, and because of the years of history there, headway for KDE is
harder.

* The usability trend that has excited people about the web in the last
few years is "fewer choices cluttering my screen."  Call it the, "Why do
we have N more links than google.com?" argument.  The point here is:

  1. We have to trust our usability experts, just as they trust us to
{code,package,document,administrate,etc.}.

  2. We don't have very many usability experts in Fedora (two?)
     - Pardon if there are more on the RHT Desktop team, I find them to
be a bit quiet across the project so I'm not aware if/where they are
leading.

  3. Some of our usability experts are in fact GNOME UI folks, so it is
no surprise if their philosophy matches GNOME.

  4. KDE has a chicken-egg problem when it comes to getting wider usage
in Fedora, one which was improved but not solved by the Core/Extras
merger and strength of the KDE SIG.

* For good or ill, we are battling over every single link on the
fedoraproject.org front page.

Kevin -- you may not be aware, but you are not the first part who has
come to this team looking for your particular focus in Fedora to be made
(more) prominent on the front page.  Perhaps we need a changing "focus
box" to bring such attention to SIG work, etc.  The usability folks +
some experience and stat tracking(?) has so far shown that we are in
fact confusing people with all the choices on the front page, when
choosing what to download, etc.

The simple method we've chosen is to make a choice for the page viewer,
at the same time making alternatives obviously available.  Compared to
"all links you might want on one page" and variations there-of, this
simple method is superior and the one we are proceeding with right now.

- Karsten

[1] http://jprada.fedorapeople.org/out/en/

Right?

BTW, I notice the 'Latest News' feeds are just FWN.  Still thinking
about doing the more feeds we've discussed previously?
-- 
Karsten Wade, Sr. Developer Community Mgr.
Dev Fu : http://developer.redhatmagazine.com
Fedora : http://quaid.fedorapeople.org
gpg key : AD0E0C41
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