Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
Christian --------------------
Fedora Workstation Marketing
The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora Community. Instead of seeing ourselves primarily as passive packagers of any software we manage to find we are now instead picking the best components out there and doing a lot of of work to integrate and polish them, presenting you with something you will feel is a much more polished and targeted product than what you seen before from the Fedora community. We want our desktop operating system to solve your problems, not be your problem.
Easy access to all your Software The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is our Software installer application, or our appstore if you like.. It provides a modern and fast interface for finding all any kind of desktop software for your Fedora Workstation. In Fedora 21 we are using the new hawkeye backend which will ensure a responsive and fast user experience and our packagers have worked ardently with the relevant upstreams to greatly improve the amount of applications that provide the needed information to populate the Software installer.
Improvements to the Terminal application We want to make sure developers have a great experience and we do know that a strong terminal application is a core part of that. Due to this we have worked to integrate a set of new features in the terminal like support for transparent backgrounds, automatic title updates which will make identifying different terminals easier, allow you do easily toggle all system keybindings on and off in the terminal and in the GNOME desktop overview you can search for terminal running processes by name.
Experimental Wayland Support We have a usable Wayland session available in Fedora Workstation 21. Wayland is the new and exciting technology that will power the linux desktops going forward. With Fedora Workstation 21 we offer you a unique opportunity to trial this technology and see how well your applications work with it or to start experimenting with making your applications take advantage of some of the new abilities Wayland will enable. A lot of the core Wayland development has been done by Fedora Workstation contributors so this is your chance to try out this new exciting technology straight from the source.
Developer Assistant As a developer we recognize that you need to be able to set up a host of different development environments in an easy and straightforward manner. In Fedora Workstation we offer the Developer Assistant to help with this task. With the aid of the Developer Assistant you can quickly set up development environments for a long range of language runtimes and IDEs. And thanks to its integration of the new Fedora Software Collections multiple versions of the different languages are available to fit with your business requirements.
Ease of installation We want the installation of the Fedora Workstation to be as straightforward and simple as possible. For the Fedora Workstation we have distilled this down to selecting the layout of your physical media and then pressing install. Or if you want it even easier just let the installer choose the disk layout for you. We also realize that the future of installations is not optical disks which is why we ship with an easy to use tool for creating a bootable USB stick.
Toolkit integration You have a job to do and want to use whatever tools that let you get that job done. The Fedora Workstation recognize that which is why we have been hard at work making sure that applications using as many toolkits as possible feel as native as possible in your Fedora Workstation. Be that the new themeing for Qt which makes applications written using that toolkit feel native or the ability to run HTML5 webservices in a chromeless window, making them feel like a natural extension to your desktop.
HiDPI Support Technology never stands still and as a software developer you are used to using the best technology available. Which is why we have spent a lot of time and effort on making sure that we support the new generation of HiDPI displays well. Phoronix recently called our desktop the best of HiDPI.
Exciting roadmap This Fedora Workstaiton release is not the end, it is the beginning of a new era for Fedora on the desktop. We have an exciting roadmap lined up aiming to bring a range of exciting new technologies to the linux desktop like containers, smarter virtual machines, better development tools, more web integration and so on. So if you want to be part of the future of the linux desktop be sure to get on board now!
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Christian Schaller cschalle@redhat.com wrote:
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
Christian
Fedora Workstation Marketing
The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora Community. Instead of seeing ourselves primarily as passive packagers of any software we manage to find we are now instead picking the best components out there and doing a lot of of work to integrate and polish them, presenting you with something you will feel is a much more polished and targeted product than what you seen before from the Fedora community. We want our desktop operating system to solve your problems, not be your problem.
Easy access to all your Software The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is our Software installer application, or our appstore if you like.. It provides a modern and fast interface for finding all any kind of desktop software for your Fedora Workstation. In Fedora 21 we are using the new hawkeye backend [...]
That will trigger a "wtf is a hawkeye backend" to pretty much anyone that does not know the history here and/or about yum/dnf/PackageKit internals. So I'd rephrase it to say that its faster etc. without going into details like the name of the PK backend.
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 5:35 PM, drago01 drago01@gmail.com wrote:
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Christian Schaller cschalle@redhat.com wrote:
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
Christian
Fedora Workstation Marketing
The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora Community. Instead of seeing ourselves primarily as passive packagers of any software we manage to find we are now instead picking the best components out there and doing a lot of of work to integrate and polish them, presenting you with something you will feel is a much more polished and targeted product than what you seen before from the Fedora community. We want our desktop operating system to solve your problems, not be your problem.
Easy access to all your Software The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is our Software installer application, or our appstore if you like.. It provides a modern and fast interface for finding all any kind of desktop software for your Fedora Workstation. In Fedora 21 we are using the new hawkeye backend [...]
That will trigger a "wtf is a hawkeye backend" to pretty much anyone that does not know the history here and/or about yum/dnf/PackageKit internals. So I'd rephrase it to say that its faster etc. without going into details like the name of the PK backend. -- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
Yep, I agree, leave implementation details out of this. Also, I'm pretty sure the library is called hawkey and not hawkeye
On 9 September 2014 14:46, Christian Schaller cschalle@redhat.com wrote:
The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is our Software installer application, or our appstore if you like..
Eeek. Don't call it an "appstore" else the lawyers get all jumpy. I've been referring to it all the time as an "application installer" as I don't fancy fighting that fight.
Richard
Richard Hughes píše v Út 09. 09. 2014 v 15:50 +0100:
On 9 September 2014 14:46, Christian Schaller cschalle@redhat.com wrote:
The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is our Software installer application, or our appstore if you like..
Eeek. Don't call it an "appstore" else the lawyers get all jumpy. I've been referring to it all the time as an "application installer" as I don't fancy fighting that fight.
Richard
I thought Apple's lawsuit against Amazon over "appstore" trademark had been dismissed. Moreover we don't use the keyword in the official name of the product, just just as a description in the marketing materials. But I understand that lawyers are a special kind and may have objections to... anything.
Jiri
On Wed, 10 Sep 2014 10:45:56 +0200 Jiri Eischmann eischmann@redhat.com wrote:
Richard Hughes píše v Út 09. 09. 2014 v 15:50 +0100:
On 9 September 2014 14:46, Christian Schaller cschalle@redhat.com wrote:
The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is our Software installer application, or our appstore if you like..
Eeek. Don't call it an "appstore" else the lawyers get all jumpy. I've been referring to it all the time as an "application installer" as I don't fancy fighting that fight.
Richard
I thought Apple's lawsuit against Amazon over "appstore" trademark had been dismissed. Moreover we don't use the keyword in the official name of the product, just just as a description in the marketing materials. But I understand that lawyers are a special kind and may have objections to... anything.
"In January 2013, Apple's claims were rejected by a US District judge (...) In July 2013, Apple dropped the case."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App_store
You could also go with app marketplace.
My two cents, pk
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Richard Hughes hughsient@gmail.com wrote:
Eeek. Don't call it an "appstore" else the lawyers get all jumpy. I've been referring to it all the time as an "application installer" as I don't fancy fighting that fight.
I have to agree here -- not so much because I don't want any sort of a legal trouble, but because there's no "store" to speak of. (Unless, of course, you use "store" to mean "storage", and not "a place to buy things".) Since we don't charge money for any of the applications, I have a hard time calling it a store. Let's call it an "application installer" or a "software installer", but not an application store, please.
-- Jared Smith
Jared K. Smith píše v St 10. 09. 2014 v 14:09 -0400:
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Richard Hughes hughsient@gmail.com wrote: Eeek. Don't call it an "appstore" else the lawyers get all jumpy. I've been referring to it all the time as an "application installer" as I don't fancy fighting that fight.
I have to agree here -- not so much because I don't want any sort of a legal trouble, but because there's no "store" to speak of. (Unless, of course, you use "store" to mean "storage", and not "a place to buy things".) Since we don't charge money for any of the applications, I have a hard time calling it a store. Let's call it an "application installer" or a "software installer", but not an application store, please.
What about calling it an "app catalog"? It doesn't imply we sell apps and the name is not currently used or claimed by anyone AFAIK (HP used to have App Catalog for their webOS, but that's dead now). Frankly, I don't like calling it an installer because there is a qualitative difference between an installer and the kind of application GNOME Software is trying to be. What comes to my mind when I hear the word "installer" is a program that installs whatever you ask it to install, but I think GNOME Software is more than that. It shows in a fashionable way what the platform offers app-wise. And it also takes care of updates btw.
Jiri
Michael Catanzaro píše v Čt 11. 09. 2014 v 11:27 -0500:
On Thu, 2014-09-11 at 17:40 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
What about calling it an "app catalog"?
How about "software center?"
That's also a good option. A little downside could be that it's used by Ubuntu already (Ubuntu Software Center).
Jiri
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 1:50 PM, Jiri Eischmann eischmann@redhat.com wrote:
Michael Catanzaro píše v Čt 11. 09. 2014 v 11:27 -0500:
On Thu, 2014-09-11 at 17:40 +0200, Jiri Eischmann wrote:
What about calling it an "app catalog"?
How about "software center?"
That's also a good option. A little downside could be that it's used by Ubuntu already (Ubuntu Software Center).
There are only so many names you can call a thing that actually describe that thing. We shouldn't be afraid to use a generic term just because Ubuntu uses it.
josh
On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 11:40 AM, Jiri Eischmann eischmann@redhat.com wrote:
What about calling it an "app catalog"?
I'm fine with calling it an "App Catalog" or "Application Catalog" or "Software Center". I'm just not comfortable with "store" or "market" or "marketplace" since we're not selling anything.
-- Jared Smith.
On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 09:46 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora Community. Instead of seeing ourselves primarily as passive packagers of any software we manage to find we are now instead picking the best components out there and doing a lot of of work to integrate and polish them, presenting you with something you will feel is a much more polished and targeted product than what you seen before from the Fedora community. We want our desktop operating system to solve your problems, not be your problem.
Well it sounds good, but it's hardly true... Fedora Workstation is pretty much the same as F20, asides from having software that is one year newer. There are no fundamental differences, besides the "developer focus" which prompted the inclusion of devassistant.
In Fedora 21 we are using the new hawkeye backend
It used to be named hawkey (not hawkeye), but it got renamed to hif for some reason.
I wouldn't mention terminal transparency either. That was added in a post-release F20 update, so it would be misleading to advertise it as a new feature, and it doesn't exist in F21 anyway. (If you were using transparency in F20, that's going to be removed when you update.)
And proper Qt themeing... I don't remember hearing about progress on this; did it ever happen? Testing a few Qt apps in rawhide, they do look decent, but I'm not sure what they looked like before.
Michael
On 9 September 2014 15:51, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
Well it sounds good, but it's hardly true... Fedora Workstation is pretty much the same as F20, asides from having software that is one year newer.
I'm not sure that's fair, comparing the feature list from F20 gnome-software to F21 is huge. People using the COPR have got a sneak peak of some of the juicy stuff, but in f20 software was kinda dull.
It used to be named hawkey (not hawkeye), but it got renamed to hif for some reason.
The PackageKit backend used to indeed be called "hawkey", but it was at best misleading as the hawkey backend actually used {lib}hawkey+librepo+librpm and huge chunk of what used to be zif. Hence hif.
Richard
On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 16:05 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:
I'm not sure that's fair, comparing the feature list from F20 gnome-software to F21 is huge. People using the COPR have got a sneak peak of some of the juicy stuff, but in f20 software was kinda dull.
Well, with respect to gnome-software, yes, that is much improved. Let me try to rephrase my point.
F21 has mostly the same applications as F20 did. We're not "picking the best components out there" any more than we were before, and we're not "doing a lot of work to integrate and polish them" any more than we were before. It is not a "much more polished and targeted product than what you seen before from the Fedora community." Fedora already had a good set of default applications, the new set is pretty much the same as it used to be (exception: devassistant), and improvements in applications since F20 are all upstream improvements, not Fedora-specific integration (exception: the PackageKit backend).
Fedora Workstation is pretty much the same as Fedora Desktop was. It's not some dramatic new product. Christian's intro sounds like a good marketing pitch, so maybe we want to use it anyway, but it's not very realistic. It reminds me of the Dominos commercials that made fun of how much bad their old pizza recipe was to sell their new pizza, but their new pizza really was different from their old pizza. Our pizza is surely a bit nicer than it was before, but it's the same incremental improvement you would expect after one year, not anything radically new.
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org wrote:
On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 16:05 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:
I'm not sure that's fair, comparing the feature list from F20 gnome-software to F21 is huge. People using the COPR have got a sneak peak of some of the juicy stuff, but in f20 software was kinda dull.
Well, with respect to gnome-software, yes, that is much improved. Let me try to rephrase my point.
F21 has mostly the same applications as F20 did. We're not "picking the best components out there" any more than we were before, and we're not "doing a lot of work to integrate and polish them" any more than we were before. It is not a "much more polished and targeted product than what you seen before from the Fedora community." Fedora already had a good set of default applications, the new set is pretty much the same as it used to be (exception: devassistant), and improvements in applications since F20 are all upstream improvements, not Fedora-specific integration (exception: the PackageKit backend).
I completely disagree with that. We do a lot of integration work, and the default set did change a lot, for example the firewall allowing incoming connections to high ports out of the box and there's much less useless stuff installed by default. We also install git by default, for example, which we didn't do before.
Overall Fedora 21 comes almost ready for developers to use out of the box.
What you're saying effectively tries to diminish all the hard work we've done this cycle, and I don't like this at all.
Fedora Workstation is pretty much the same as Fedora Desktop was. It's not some dramatic new product. Christian's intro sounds like a good marketing pitch, so maybe we want to use it anyway, but it's not very realistic. It reminds me of the Dominos commercials that made fun of how much bad their old pizza recipe was to sell their new pizza, but their new pizza really was different from their old pizza. Our pizza is surely a bit nicer than it was before, but it's the same incremental improvement you would expect after one year, not anything radically new.
It's 2 cycles worth of improvements compared to F20 due to the long cycle we've had, plus a lot of integration work and polish both upstream and downstream. You can't just ignore this.
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 18:32 +0300, Elad Alfassa wrote:
I completely disagree with that. We do a lot of integration work, and the default set did change a lot, for example the firewall allowing incoming connections to high ports out of the box and there's much less useless stuff installed by default.
Less useless stuff installed by default? I can't think of anything major that's been dropped besides firewall-config? In fact we seem to have picked up openjdk8 policy editor; that's got to go.
I know we've ADDED a few apps that were not in F20, like Image Viewer and Boxes, but I'm having a hard time thinking of what's been removed? Anyway, F20 shipped with mostly core GNOME apps, F21 will ship with mostly core GNOME apps... there hasn't been any revolution here.
We also install git by default, for example, which we didn't do before.
Overall Fedora 21 comes almost ready for developers to use out of the box.
OK, git is new. devassistant is new. I think we have man-pages now as well? If so, that's great.
What you're saying effectively tries to diminish all the hard work we've done this cycle, and I don't like this at all.
Well I'm not saying I don't like the changes. I think you're doing a good job with the default package set. I just think "much more polished and targeted product than what you seen before from the Fedora community" is a big exaggeration. (But that's how marketing's supposed to work, right?) F20 was pretty good, too; the firewall and gnome-software were the big warts, and those would have been fixed regardless of whether we call this release Fedora Desktop or Fedora Workstation.
Michael
Hi Elad,
On Sep 9, 2014 11:33 AM, "Elad Alfassa" elad@fedoraproject.org wrote:
On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 6:27 PM, Michael Catanzaro mcatanzaro@gnome.org
wrote:
On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 16:05 +0100, Richard Hughes wrote:
I'm not sure that's fair, comparing the feature list from F20 gnome-software to F21 is huge. People using the COPR have got a sneak peak of some of the juicy stuff, but in f20 software was kinda dull.
Well, with respect to gnome-software, yes, that is much improved. Let me try to rephrase my point.
F21 has mostly the same applications as F20 did. We're not "picking the best components out there" any more than we were before, and we're not "doing a lot of work to integrate and polish them" any more than we were before. It is not a "much more polished and targeted product than what you seen before from the Fedora community." Fedora already had a good set of default applications, the new set is pretty much the same as it used to be (exception: devassistant), and improvements in applications since F20 are all upstream improvements, not Fedora-specific integration (exception: the PackageKit backend).
I completely disagree with that. We do a lot of integration work, and the default set did change a lot, for example the firewall allowing incoming connections to high ports out of the box and there's much less useless stuff installed by default. We also install git by default, for example, which we didn't do before.
Overall Fedora 21 comes almost ready for developers to use out of the box.
What you're saying effectively tries to diminish all the hard work we've done this cycle, and I don't like this at all.
I don't think that's what he intended. What I understood Michael to be saying was that this particular release hasn't radically changed the usability, from our target's perspective, not that much work wasn't done.
IMHO, f21 shouldn't be the release where great effort is made to introduce the world to Fedora: The Workstation as that's a type of messaging which can really only be used once (until the next f.N). At a minimum, we should wait to see the results of the targeted user testing, and possibly even after that when any changes suggested by that effort are integrated. You get one chance to make a first impression;)
Best/Liam
On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 06:32:46PM +0300, Elad Alfassa wrote:
What you're saying effectively tries to diminish all the hard work we've done this cycle, and I don't like this at all.
I don't read it that way. It's just that previous releases required lots of hard work, too. Without that, there would be no F21 today. It's an incremental improvement. There's nothing negative about it.
----- Original Message -----
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
Christian
Fedora Workstation Marketing
<snip>
Improvements to the Terminal application We want to make sure developers have a great experience and we do know that a strong terminal application is a core part of that. Due to this we have worked to integrate a set of new features in the terminal like support for transparent backgrounds, automatic title updates which will make identifying different terminals easier, allow you do easily toggle all system keybindings on and off in the terminal and in the GNOME desktop overview you can search for terminal running processes by name.
That last sentence's construct is horrible. I thought we could turn off system keybindings from gnome-shell's overview, and then not.
<snip>
HiDPI Support Technology never stands still and as a software developer you are used to using the best technology available. Which is why we have spent a lot of time and effort on making sure that we support the new generation of HiDPI displays well. Phoronix recently called our desktop the best of HiDPI.
Could we avoid mentioning Phoronix by name? It's not a website I'd like Fedora Workstation to be associated with.
Exciting roadmap This Fedora Workstaiton release is not the end, it is the beginning of a new
Workstation.
era for Fedora on the desktop. We have an exciting roadmap lined up aiming to bring a range of exciting new technologies to the linux desktop like containers, smarter virtual machines, better development tools, more web integration and so on. So if you want to be part of the future of the linux desktop be sure to get on board now!
I'd say: Shorter sentences, more commas, and more bullet points.
The GNOME release notes and the OSX feature lists on Apple's website are good examples of how to list features without overwhelming users: https://help.gnome.org/misc/release-notes/3.12/ http://www.apple.com/osx/whats-new/features.html
Cheers
On Tue, 2014-09-09 at 09:46 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
Experimental Wayland Support We have a usable Wayland session available in Fedora Workstation 21. Wayland is the new and exciting technology that will power the linux desktops going forward. With Fedora Workstation 21 we offer you a unique opportunity to trial this technology and see how well your applications work with it or to start experimenting with making your applications take advantage of some of the new abilities Wayland will enable. A lot of the core Wayland development has been done by Fedora Workstation contributors so this is your chance to try out this new exciting technology straight from the source.
Shouldn't this be at the end as a bonus talking point? It doesn't even count as a "nice to have" in my book - it provides little or no functionality to the workstation product. It just gives that specific subgroup of the target audience that is interested in Wayland development a simple way to try it out, but I don't think it interests a majority of the target audience. Complete features that people want to use should be higher up in the list. What do you think?
----- Original Message -----
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
Christian, thanks for help - for release announcement, once the WG is ok with this draft, feel free to edit https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F21_Alpha_release_announcement
I'm really happy to see this activity happening in working groups, really working towards the best product marketing materials! Thank you very much!
Jaroslav
On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 09:46:07AM -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
I took a shot at revising Christian's notes, using the feedback from the thread thus far. With this revision I tried to reduce the level of formality, the amount of technical terminology, and overall sentence length and complexity. I also introduced some bullet points where I felt it made the text more readable. I also renamed the Software tool here to "App Catalog" because the ease of the tool does remind me of e.g. a retail store catalog.
Presented here for your (most welcome!) slings and arrows:
* * *
The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora Community. Our goal is to pick the best components, and integrate and polish them. This work results in a more polished and targeted product than you've previously seen from the Fedora desktop. We want our desktop operating system to solve your problems, not be your problem.
Easy access to all your software
The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is the App Catalog, which lets you find all kinds of applications quickly and easily. The improvements to the App Catalog in Fedora 21 provide a responsive and fast user experience. In addition, Fedora packagers have worked with developers around the world to greatly improve the number of featured applications.
Improvements to the Terminal application
We want developers to have a great experience, so a strong Terminal application is absolutely important. We've integrated a set of additional features in the Terminal, such as:
* Support for transparent backgrounds * Automatic title updates to help you identify different terminals * A simple toggle for system keybindings in both the Terminal and GNOME desktop overview to help you search for Terminals by name
Experimental Wayland Support
Wayland is a new and exciting technology that will power Linux desktops of the future. With Fedora Workstation 21 you can visit the future now, and see how well your applications work with Wayland. You can also experiment with making your applications take advantage of Wayland's new capabilities. Much of the core Wayland development comes from Fedora Workstation contributors, so this is your chance to try out Wayland straight from the source.
Developer Assistant
We recognize developers need an easy and straightforward way to set up many different programming environments. In Fedora Workstation, we offer the Developer Assistant, which takes care of this setup for a large number of language runtimes and IDEs. And now, thanks to its integration with new Fedora Software Collections, multiple versions of different languages are available to suit your needs.
Ease of installation
We want the installation of the Fedora Workstation to be as straightforward and simple as possible. In Fedora Workstation we've distilled this process down to selecting the layout of your physical media, and then pressing "Install." (In fact, you can even let the installer choose the disk layout for you.) And because the future of installations is not optical disks, we ship with an easy to use tool to help you create bootable USB sticks.
Toolkit integration
We recognize you have a job to do, and you want to use the tools that let you get it done. That's why we've been working hard to make all your applications in Fedora Workstation look and feel the same. From the new theming for Qt to the ability to run HTML5 web services in a chromeless window, we want all your apps to feel like a natural extension to your desktop.
Support for extremely high resolution displays (HiDPI)
Technology never stands still, and as a software developer you're used to using the best technology available. So we've spent a lot of time and effort on supporting the new generation of HiDPI displays. That's probably why Fedora has been called "the best of HiDPI."
Exciting roadmap
This Fedora Workstation release is not the end. It's the beginning of a new era for Fedora on the desktop. We have a roadmap lined up to bring a range of exciting new technologies to the Linux desktop:
* Containers * Smarter virtual machines * Better development tools * More web integration * ...and much more
So if you want to be part of the future of the Linux desktop be sure to get on board now!
* * *
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 09:46:07AM -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
I took a shot at revising Christian's notes, using the feedback from the thread thus far. With this revision I tried to reduce the level of formality, the amount of technical terminology, and overall sentence length and complexity. I also introduced some bullet points where I felt it made the text more readable. I also renamed the Software tool here to "App Catalog" because the ease of the tool does remind me of e.g. a retail store catalog.
Hi Paul, thanks - as we're now Go for Fedora 21 Alpha, please move it to the announcement wiki. For Alpha, I'd probably limit the scope of WS notes a bit, not to create a huge document nobody reads and add more details for final release. As we plan for final release to have own page for all products.
Ideally on Monday, so then we can prepare text formatted version to be announced on Tuesday morning US time.
Thanks Jaroslav
Presented here for your (most welcome!) slings and arrows:
The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora Community. Our goal is to pick the best components, and integrate and polish them. This work results in a more polished and targeted product than you've previously seen from the Fedora desktop. We want our desktop operating system to solve your problems, not be your problem.
Easy access to all your software
The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is the App Catalog, which lets you find all kinds of applications quickly and easily. The improvements to the App Catalog in Fedora 21 provide a responsive and fast user experience. In addition, Fedora packagers have worked with developers around the world to greatly improve the number of featured applications.
Improvements to the Terminal application
We want developers to have a great experience, so a strong Terminal application is absolutely important. We've integrated a set of additional features in the Terminal, such as:
- Support for transparent backgrounds
- Automatic title updates to help you identify different terminals
- A simple toggle for system keybindings in both the Terminal and GNOME desktop overview to help you search for Terminals by name
Experimental Wayland Support
Wayland is a new and exciting technology that will power Linux desktops of the future. With Fedora Workstation 21 you can visit the future now, and see how well your applications work with Wayland. You can also experiment with making your applications take advantage of Wayland's new capabilities. Much of the core Wayland development comes from Fedora Workstation contributors, so this is your chance to try out Wayland straight from the source.
Developer Assistant
We recognize developers need an easy and straightforward way to set up many different programming environments. In Fedora Workstation, we offer the Developer Assistant, which takes care of this setup for a large number of language runtimes and IDEs. And now, thanks to its integration with new Fedora Software Collections, multiple versions of different languages are available to suit your needs.
Ease of installation
We want the installation of the Fedora Workstation to be as straightforward and simple as possible. In Fedora Workstation we've distilled this process down to selecting the layout of your physical media, and then pressing "Install." (In fact, you can even let the installer choose the disk layout for you.) And because the future of installations is not optical disks, we ship with an easy to use tool to help you create bootable USB sticks.
Toolkit integration
We recognize you have a job to do, and you want to use the tools that let you get it done. That's why we've been working hard to make all your applications in Fedora Workstation look and feel the same. From the new theming for Qt to the ability to run HTML5 web services in a chromeless window, we want all your apps to feel like a natural extension to your desktop.
Support for extremely high resolution displays (HiDPI)
Technology never stands still, and as a software developer you're used to using the best technology available. So we've spent a lot of time and effort on supporting the new generation of HiDPI displays. That's probably why Fedora has been called "the best of HiDPI."
Exciting roadmap
This Fedora Workstation release is not the end. It's the beginning of a new era for Fedora on the desktop. We have a roadmap lined up to bring a range of exciting new technologies to the Linux desktop:
- Containers
- Smarter virtual machines
- Better development tools
- More web integration
- ...and much more
So if you want to be part of the future of the Linux desktop be sure to get on board now!
-- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ The open source story continues to grow: http://opensource.com -- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 09:46:07AM -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
I took a shot at revising Christian's notes, using the feedback from the thread thus far. With this revision I tried to reduce the level of formality, the amount of technical terminology, and overall sentence length and complexity. I also introduced some bullet points where I felt it made the text more readable. I also renamed the Software tool here to "App Catalog" because the ease of the tool does remind me of e.g. a retail store catalog.
Hi Paul, thanks - as we're now Go for Fedora 21 Alpha, please move it to the announcement wiki. For Alpha, I'd probably limit the scope of WS notes a bit, not to create a huge document nobody reads and add more details for final release. As we plan for final release to have own page for all products.
Ideally on Monday, so then we can prepare text formatted version to be announced on Tuesday morning US time.
I forgot to link wiki - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F21_Alpha_release_announcement
Jaroslav
Thanks Jaroslav
Presented here for your (most welcome!) slings and arrows:
The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the Fedora Community. Our goal is to pick the best components, and integrate and polish them. This work results in a more polished and targeted product than you've previously seen from the Fedora desktop. We want our desktop operating system to solve your problems, not be your problem.
Easy access to all your software
The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is the App Catalog, which lets you find all kinds of applications quickly and easily. The improvements to the App Catalog in Fedora 21 provide a responsive and fast user experience. In addition, Fedora packagers have worked with developers around the world to greatly improve the number of featured applications.
Improvements to the Terminal application
We want developers to have a great experience, so a strong Terminal application is absolutely important. We've integrated a set of additional features in the Terminal, such as:
- Support for transparent backgrounds
- Automatic title updates to help you identify different terminals
- A simple toggle for system keybindings in both the Terminal and GNOME desktop overview to help you search for Terminals by name
Experimental Wayland Support
Wayland is a new and exciting technology that will power Linux desktops of the future. With Fedora Workstation 21 you can visit the future now, and see how well your applications work with Wayland. You can also experiment with making your applications take advantage of Wayland's new capabilities. Much of the core Wayland development comes from Fedora Workstation contributors, so this is your chance to try out Wayland straight from the source.
Developer Assistant
We recognize developers need an easy and straightforward way to set up many different programming environments. In Fedora Workstation, we offer the Developer Assistant, which takes care of this setup for a large number of language runtimes and IDEs. And now, thanks to its integration with new Fedora Software Collections, multiple versions of different languages are available to suit your needs.
Ease of installation
We want the installation of the Fedora Workstation to be as straightforward and simple as possible. In Fedora Workstation we've distilled this process down to selecting the layout of your physical media, and then pressing "Install." (In fact, you can even let the installer choose the disk layout for you.) And because the future of installations is not optical disks, we ship with an easy to use tool to help you create bootable USB sticks.
Toolkit integration
We recognize you have a job to do, and you want to use the tools that let you get it done. That's why we've been working hard to make all your applications in Fedora Workstation look and feel the same. From the new theming for Qt to the ability to run HTML5 web services in a chromeless window, we want all your apps to feel like a natural extension to your desktop.
Support for extremely high resolution displays (HiDPI)
Technology never stands still, and as a software developer you're used to using the best technology available. So we've spent a lot of time and effort on supporting the new generation of HiDPI displays. That's probably why Fedora has been called "the best of HiDPI."
Exciting roadmap
This Fedora Workstation release is not the end. It's the beginning of a new era for Fedora on the desktop. We have a roadmap lined up to bring a range of exciting new technologies to the Linux desktop:
- Containers
- Smarter virtual machines
- Better development tools
- More web integration
- ...and much more
So if you want to be part of the future of the Linux desktop be sure to get on board now!
-- Paul W. Frields http://paul.frields.org/ gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233 5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717 http://redhat.com/ - - - - http://pfrields.fedorapeople.org/ The open source story continues to grow: http://opensource.com -- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 03:15:01AM -0400, Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
----- Original Message -----
----- Original Message -----
On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 09:46:07AM -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
I took a shot at revising Christian's notes, using the feedback from the thread thus far. With this revision I tried to reduce the level of formality, the amount of technical terminology, and overall sentence length and complexity. I also introduced some bullet points where I felt it made the text more readable. I also renamed the Software tool here to "App Catalog" because the ease of the tool does remind me of e.g. a retail store catalog.
Hi Paul, thanks - as we're now Go for Fedora 21 Alpha, please move it to the announcement wiki. For Alpha, I'd probably limit the scope of WS notes a bit, not to create a huge document nobody reads and add more details for final release. As we plan for final release to have own page for all products.
Ideally on Monday, so then we can prepare text formatted version to be announced on Tuesday morning US time.
I forgot to link wiki - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/F21_Alpha_release_announcement
I understood these longer notes were intended for final release. Maybe the WG members can confirm, and I'll fix/post as needed.
On Tue, Sep 09, 2014 at 09:46:07AM -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora Workstation release. Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it out to these two lists for further review and suggestions.
Hi Christian,
to be perfectly honest: the text tickled my bullshit detector multiple times. While that's a common occurence when being confronted with advertisements I don't think it's a good match for Fedora. We need to be honest with our users.
We are held to a higher standard than our proprietary competition, and rightly so. When folks place their trust in free software projects they shouldn't feel like they're watching commercials.
Nevertheless, the text serves well as a base to build on. And now that Paul took the, err, unique opportunity to rework it we've got a considerable result. So thanks for writing it up!
Lars
On Fri, 2014-09-12 at 01:25 +0200, Lars Seipel wrote:
to be perfectly honest: the text tickled my bullshit detector multiple times. While that's a common occurence when being confronted with advertisements I don't think it's a good match for Fedora. We need to be honest with our users.
I agree. Here are the things that caught my eye:
* The bullet point about support for transparent terminals is flatly untrue. * The ease of installation section describes an installer that has virtually no similarity to anaconda. * The Qt theming section describes a theme that to my understanding was never written.
Other than that, besides my already-expressed reservations with what I perceive to be exaggerations in the first paragraph, the announcement seems good to me.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Catanzaro" mcatanzaro@gnome.org To: "Discussions about development for the Fedora desktop" desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Cc: "Christian Schaller" cschalle@redhat.com, marketing@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2014 9:24:05 PM Subject: Re: Some suggestions for Marketing notes for FW 21
On Fri, 2014-09-12 at 01:25 +0200, Lars Seipel wrote:
to be perfectly honest: the text tickled my bullshit detector multiple times. While that's a common occurence when being confronted with advertisements I don't think it's a good match for Fedora. We need to be honest with our users.
I agree. Here are the things that caught my eye:
- The bullet point about support for transparent terminals is flatly
untrue.
Not sure what you are saying here, but there is a patch and it will be in the gnome-terminal-3.13.90-2 package.
- The ease of installation section describes an installer that has
virtually no similarity to anaconda.
Because we are using the live image as our installer, which of course rely on Anaconda, but still has a very different use experience from the traditional installer.
- The Qt theming section describes a theme that to my understanding was
never written.
http://copr.fedoraproject.org/coprs/mbriza/qt-gtk/
Christian
On Mon, 2014-09-15 at 11:31 -0400, Christian Schaller wrote:
Not sure what you are saying here, but there is a patch and it will be in the gnome-terminal-3.13.90-2 package.
Great! It looks like this work actually occurred the day after I wrote my mail, so I'm going to pretend that my comment provided some of the motivation to get transparency working. :)
- The ease of installation section describes an installer that has
virtually no similarity to anaconda.
Because we are using the live image as our installer, which of course rely on Anaconda, but still has a very different use experience from the traditional installer.
But here is what you described:
"We want the installation of the Fedora Workstation to be as straightforward and simple as possible. For the Fedora Workstation we have distilled this down to selecting the layout of your physical media and then pressing install. Or if you want it even easier just let the installer choose the disk layout for you."
It sounds like you're advertising the absence of UI for language selection, timezone selection, keyboard layout selection, hostname selection, setting the root password, and initial user creation, all of which are still present in the live installer. It's true that most are optional steps, but language selection is not, and you also have to either create a root password or a user account.
Also, the installer's user interface has changed very little since F18, so there's really no point in advertising installer improvements as a Fedora Workstation feature.
- The Qt theming section describes a theme that to my understanding
was
never written.
Awesome!
Michael
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 09/09/2014 07:46 AM, Christian Schaller wrote:
Hi everyone, Here are some draft notes I prepared to try to help our marketing team build up some release notes and press material on the Fedora
Workstation release.
Already sent it to the Working Group members, but I thought I send it
out to these two
lists for further review and suggestions.
Christian
Fedora Workstation Marketing
The Fedora Workstation is a new take on desktop development from the
Fedora
Community. Instead of seeing ourselves primarily as passive packagers
of any
software we manage to find we are now instead picking the best
components out
there and doing a lot of of work to integrate and polish them,
presenting you
with something you will feel is a much more polished and targeted product than what you seen before from the Fedora community. We want our
desktop operating
system to solve your problems, not be your problem.
Easy access to all your Software The cornerstone of the Fedora Workstation is our Software installer
application, or
our appstore if you like.. It provides a modern and fast interface for
finding all
any kind of desktop software for your Fedora Workstation. In Fedora 21
we are using
the new hawkeye backend which will ensure a responsive and fast user
experience and our
packagers have worked ardently with the relevant upstreams to greatly
improve the
amount of applications that provide the needed information to populate
the Software
installer.
Improvements to the Terminal application We want to make sure developers have a great experience and we do know
that a strong
terminal application is a core part of that. Due to this we have
worked to integrate
a set of new features in the terminal like support for transparent
backgrounds, automatic
title updates which will make identifying different terminals easier,
allow you do easily
toggle all system keybindings on and off in the terminal and in the
GNOME desktop overview
you can search for terminal running processes by name.
Experimental Wayland Support We have a usable Wayland session available in Fedora Workstation 21.
Wayland is the new and
exciting technology that will power the linux desktops going forward.
With Fedora Workstation 21
we offer you a unique opportunity to trial this technology and see how
well your applications work
with it or to start experimenting with making your applications take
advantage of some of the new
abilities Wayland will enable. A lot of the core Wayland development
has been done by Fedora
Workstation contributors so this is your chance to try out this new
exciting technology straight
from the source.
Developer Assistant As a developer we recognize that you need to be able to set up a host
of different development
environments in an easy and straightforward manner. In Fedora
Workstation we offer the
Developer Assistant to help with this task. With the aid of the
Developer Assistant you can
quickly set up development environments for a long range of language
runtimes and IDEs. And
thanks to its integration of the new Fedora Software Collections
multiple versions of the
different languages are available to fit with your business requirements.
Ease of installation We want the installation of the Fedora Workstation to be as
straightforward and simple as possible.
For the Fedora Workstation we have distilled this down to selecting
the layout of your physical
media and then pressing install. Or if you want it even easier just
let the installer choose the
disk layout for you. We also realize that the future of installations
is not optical disks which
is why we ship with an easy to use tool for creating a bootable USB
stick.
Toolkit integration You have a job to do and want to use whatever tools that let you get
that job done. The Fedora Workstation
recognize that which is why we have been hard at work making sure that
applications
using as many toolkits as possible feel as native as possible in your
Fedora Workstation. Be that the
new themeing for Qt which makes applications written using that
toolkit feel native or the ability
to run HTML5 webservices in a chromeless window, making them feel like
a natural extension to your desktop.
HiDPI Support Technology never stands still and as a software developer you are used
to using the best technology available.
Which is why we have spent a lot of time and effort on making sure
that we support the new
generation of HiDPI displays well. Phoronix recently called our
desktop the best of HiDPI.
Exciting roadmap This Fedora Workstaiton release is not the end, it is the beginning of
a new era for Fedora on the desktop. We have an
exciting roadmap lined up aiming to bring a range of exciting new
technologies to the linux desktop like containers,
smarter virtual machines, better development tools, more web
integration and so on. So if you want to be part of the
future of the linux desktop be sure to get on board now!
I had a thought churning around while following this thread; there isn't a most appropriate place to reply so I'll go back to the beginning :)
I had a vision of Fedora Workstation as being made for developers in two contexts. First, targeting developers by providing a functional and reliable enviroment for their workstation. Second, providing a target *for* developers by making the environment more stable, providing stable APIs, and generally giving developers a platform that they can expect their applications to predictably coexist with in ways I don't have the expertise to list out :P
Am I making a bad inference here? If not, and being a target for developers' own products is a product-level goal, the idea should be developed in the marketing copy.
- -- - -- Pete Travis - Fedora Docs Project Leader - 'randomuser' on freenode - immanetize@fedoraproject.org
desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Ankur Sinha -
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Christian Schaller -
drago01 -
Elad Alfassa -
Jared K. Smith -
Jaroslav Reznik -
Jiri Eischmann -
Josh Boyer -
Lars Seipel -
Liam -
Michael Catanzaro -
Paul W. Frields -
Pete Travis -
Petr Kovar -
Richard Hughes