On 4/3/24 13:56, Adam Williamson wrote:
On Wed, 2024-04-03 at 20:24 +0200, Marc Deop i Argemà wrote:
Let's assume that we all agree with what you stated ( and I personally partly
do).
Why do we promote Workstation (with Gnome) over any other alternative that
might arise? (in this case, a Fedora Workstation KDE)
It's an interesting question. I would say my answer is "because it
works better if we promote *something*". Forcing the choice on people
who just want "desktop Fedora" is awkward. The reason we default to
GNOME is because we ~always have. To me, this is a reasonable
justification. Change is always uncomfortable and disruptive. If you
have two equally good options and you already picked one, you should
stick with it, not just switch between them every so often for the sake
of it. If Plasma were demonstrably, markedly and uncontroversially
*superior* to GNOME (please don't take this as an excuse to start a
holy war, I am positing for the sake of this post that neither of the
two is demonstrably, markedly and uncontroversially better than the
other), the case would be different.
Obviously it's going to be hard to make a point for either of the
desktops to be demonstrably (and especially uncontroversially!) better
than the other in general, because there is no such thing. There are
some situations where IceWM emerges as the absolute and clear winner
above everything else, that doesn't mean that the world's greatest DE is
IceWM. (Nor does it mean that IceWM is a DE but that's beside the point.)
Still, one could make some case for this. Plasma is, for one, obviously
going to be more familiar to newcomers to the Linux world simply by
virtue of the fact that the paradigms presented by its initial
configuration are more familiar to those coming from the Windows or
ChromeOS worlds, and (hopefully) those paradigms aren't sufficiently
different from MacOS to be too uncomfortable for a user coming from the
Apple world. GNOME is quite different from both, making a new user's
first reaction to the desktop more likely to be one of "what on earth is
going on, where is my taskbar? What happened to my minimize buttons?
What happened to my application menus? Where is the Start button? How do
I even turn off the computer?" That's not to say GNOME's paradigms are
bad - indeed, once you know what you're doing, they provide a nice
environment to work from. They're just really different for someone just
coming to Linux.
That's not to say that the goal of any Linux distro should be to appear
like Windows - no amount of effort will make Linux sufficiently close to
Windows to be fully usable with zero learning curve to a Windows user.
Trying too hard will just lead to confusion once a user digs deep enough
in. But if the end goal is higher download rate and better user
retention, giving the user a comfortable on-ramp into the new world of
Linux will likely fulfill that goal better than having them immediately
climb a mental cliff just to get started. The user will inevitably run
into the fact that drive letters don't exist, apps don't come from
random places on the Internet, new OS versions come out frequently,
etc., *but* they'll be more confident and have a better foundation to
work with if they have a semi-familiar workspace from which to learn all
these things.
Currently the way Fedora Workstation attempts to overcome this initial
learning curve with the desktop is by presenting a "Tour" app to tell
the user where things are. This is quite useful, but really it's kind of
like throwing a rope to the user to help them climb the initial mental
cliff. There's still a cliff to climb, and a steep one at that. KDE
Plasma has no such tour because it doesn't need one. A user can glance
at the desktop and figure out more-or-less what they're doing without
even touching it. Ubuntu tries to make this "understood-at-a-glance"
thing work with GNOME by adding some familiar elements (minimize and
maximize buttons, an app menu, a visible dock where apps are, etc).,
which *kinda* works, but I don't think that's the path Fedora
Workstation wants to take since it requires adding GNOME shell
extensions to make it happen. KDE Plasma, on the other hand, is familiar
and ready-to-use out of the starting gate, no extensions needed.
Is Plasma going to be the best for everyone? Absolutely not. Is it even
going to be the best for most? Debatable, controversial, let's not go
there. Is it the best for newcomers? I would argue yes, far better than
GNOME or any other major Linux desktop. Non-newcomers can find the spins
or alternate editions and have the setup that's perfect for them.
Newcomers can "just grab" the Workstation edition (which will be Plasma
with this Change Proposal) and have the setup that will be best to get
them started.
I understand that the Change Proposal is about switching the "Workstation"
concept to using Plasma KDE and that approach might have been flawed but... how
do we challenge the "status quo" where everybody assumes that Fedora's default
is Gnome?
Again personally, I would set a very high bar for this to happen,
purely on the grounds of conservatism. Don't change for the sake of
change. I would only support changing Fedora's default desktop if it
was very clear that the current default was sufficiently flawed that it
was hurting the project. I don't think we are at that point.
And I am not arguing for the sake of arguing. I genuinely want to know how to
make Fedora's default to be Plasma KDE because I do believe the whole *linux*
(and Fedora's) community will benefit from having a major distro like Fedora
not defaulting to Gnome.
There already is at least one. The most prominent download option for
openSUSE is their "Offline image" (equivalent of our old Everything
DVD), and the top item in the list of possible "roles" for the system
(effectively the choice we are discussing here) is "Desktop with KDE
Plasma" (at least in the screenshot in the install guide).
--
Aaron Rainbolt
Lubuntu Developer
Matrix: @arraybolt3:ubuntu.com
IRC: arraybolt3 on libera.chat and oftc.net
GitHub:https://github.com/ArrayBolt3
--
_______________________________________________
devel mailing list -- devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
To unsubscribe send an email to devel-le...@lists.fedoraproject.org
Fedora Code of Conduct:
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/
List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
List Archives:
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
Do not reply to spam, report it:
https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
