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this is only way to go, IMHO.

http://vizzzion.org/?blogentry=919

Short version (as I read it): this isn’t about treating Gnome unfairly, it is simply about acknowledging that openSUSE is a distribution used predominately by KDE users. It is about acknowledging the community. openSUSE is presenting itself as a community-run distribution. openSUSE set up polls to learn how it is used. openSUSE even set up openFATE to explicitly gage the will of the community.

So there is another issue to think about beyond how this will influence the gnome community on openSUSE. The question is how will ignoring the community now impact the overall perception about openSUSE amongst Linux users. Will users, Gnome or KDE, want to use openSUSE if they do not feel that they have any voice, or worse yet that openSUSE claims that users have a voice but in reality will just ignore them? This seems to me to be a critical time for openSUSE as a distribution, it is trying hard to move towards being community-oriented. This episode has the potential to completely derail that effort.

A couple of points I have not seen made elsewhere:

If people are really that upset about the notice being posted in planet KDE, then someone else can post a similar notice in planet GNOME. And I mean a good-faith notice like the original one on planet KDE asking people to vote for the idea if they think it will be good for gnome, good for openSUSE, and good for the users of either. We can then see how that influences the votes.

Second, openSUSE already discriminates against XFCE. Why is it justified with XFCE but not with Gnome? Is it because of relative popularity? If so, what is the cut-off for inclusion amongst the initially-visible desktop environment and window managers?

Picking a default desktop is bad for fanboys.
Gnome fanboys wanted nothing but Gnome and willing to come up with whatever reasons, same for KDE fanboys etc.

So depending if you care for openSUSE or your DE of choice.
I prefer openSUSE to default to fluxbox 😀

Defaulting to KDE would be an affront to our GNOME community; it would be disrespecting GNOME devs and throwing away all their efforts of the recent years.

Billing this is not being asking for KDE to be the favored son is just plain lying. This is favoring KDE at the expense of not just GNOME but everything else. It promises to bring with it less support and less discoverability for anything not KDE.

Now I do believe that picking a default is a good thing, Ubuntu e.g. does this beautifully by shipping just one thing under the Ubuntu name and then having separate distros with a fully polished stack for other tools. Maximum polish at minimal cost to the range of choice. However this is not the model openSUSE picked as a base and thus we must either reconsider that choice or let choices remain in the installer. This however is not the feature requested, it boils down to “kde for teh win!” (just look at the comments).

Onto my second big problem with this, the data used to back the proposal, it’s a webpoll. We are not talking about anything so far as I can see measured from real use by real average users. We have Smolt, it could easily be used to show which desktop people are actually using rather than relying on a poll. We do all realise I hope that webpolls are easily swayed towards either option by sheer encouragement from one side or by cheating. It is not a reliable datapoint at all. We can go back and debate what people are actually using when we have proper data.

Third point, this isn’t just an openSUSE decision, if we hope to also sway users to switch from other distributions, our defaults should reflect what they already use to aid migration. Fact remains, out of the 3 big distros (Ubuntu, openSUSE and Fedora),. two have declared a default and one has none. That means most users regardless of anything else coming from other distros will be used to GNOME. This is not to say GNOME should be the default just that there are costs not considered to making a different desktop the default.

So we have no good data to base the decision on, no plan to ensure support and choice in a world where we have a clear default. It’s irresponsible and dishonest.

Here is what I propose:

Looking at the way the general purpose desktop is becoming largely irrelevant I think the focus should be on providing a good JeOS plus X implementation and tools, this should be “openSUSE”. Additional specialized desktops, GNOME, KDE, Moblin and so on then go on top of that. On the website we provide the user with a well designed walkthrough of the choices – what machine is the target, what workflow is favored and then we can guide towards a subproject. These can be allowed polish on their selected target. I think this is the right way to go, especially since we have to acknowledge that the desktop as we know and love it is changing, embracing this early and ensuring that the different incarnations work well together and share a solid base and good tools is more important. Looking at things like Moblin we can already see that the market is fragmenting and openSUSEs strength should very well be adaption to this new world rather than a ridge choice of one size fits all default. No other distro really manages to pull this off well.