"Default" spin of Fedora

[Juan Camilo Prada]

On Sun, 2008-06-15 at 08:04 -0700, Karsten 'quaid' Wade wrote:
> 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 think it would be good to provide the correct arch in the front page
link depending on the user visiting the site, but I'm not sure about
showing there all other options as it will end up being like the current
get-fedora section, a bunch of links with names without enough
information maybe leading the user to select something he/she doesn't
want (correct me if i am wrong but that's what i understood ^^)


> 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:
> 

This is something i would like to change. As mentioned on earlier
discussions on this ml, we have different approaches as google.com, The
web is made of links, and without links+information an informative
website (which fp.o happens to be) is nothing. I dont want to get to the
point where there are so many links that it looks disordered or
overwhelming for a user to navigate on the site, but i do want to reach
the point in where there are as many links directing to specific
information about the project as a new user would probably need in order
to find a way to start with fedora

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

no discussion here...


>   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?

Yup, about the news column i just happened to build the site with only
one RSS feed, but of course... the more news about fedora the better (i
was thinking on adding there some info about Events... so it would be
more like a 'Lates News & Events' column :P... not sure about that
though )


-- 
Juan Camilo Prada <jprada at fedoraproject.org>