elad wrote: --- "Also, I think we need a modern desktop that supports hi-dpi screens, touch interface (both are going to be fairly common in laptops very soon), with modern components (systemd's logind session management, wayland instead of Xorg).
Can Mate do hi-dpi? Or wayland? Does it support multi-seat configurations out of the box? Does it have a proper support for touch-based devices? An on-screen-keyboard? Integrated cloud services? Integrated web apps? The answer to all these questions is absolutely no." ---
Touchscreen's on a developer workstation? That sounds more like a tablet or media consumption all-in-one device. Also the Wayland is still in alpha on Gnome 3 Shell and nowhere near ready. You're talking about future events that haven't happened or things that aren't relevant to desktop workstations.
Recommend that you watch: "Why MATE?" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-2WSt5cbR4
awilliam wrote: --- You're playing word games, whereas it's pretty clear from the entire thrust of the Workstation effort on all levels that the definition of "workstation" you cite is not the one anyone involved (the WG, FESCo etc) is using. ---
Then the Workstation PRD is a misleading document. It describes the wrong target markets and ones that are incompatible with the Fedora Workstation according to whatever definition you happen to hold. In fact by that same token the Fedora Workstation PRD should be renamed CentOS Workstation and handed off to the CentOS community.
Also, awilliam please make sure to delete the following from the Fedora Workstation PRD:
Case 2: Independent Developer Case 3: Small Company Developer Case 4: Developer in a Large Organization
If you never actually intend on hitting these targets it's a waste of time. Just as much as it waste of time to attempt to sell Windows 8 Metro on laptop-tablet-hybrids to a bunch of traditional Windows workstation users who are dead set on using Windows 7 for the next 5-10 years which happens to be that entire market much to Microsoft's grief.
mcatanzaro wrote: --- Anyway, a modest proposal: I suggest installing GNOME Classic by default. GNOME Classic is a set of GNOME Shell extensions that are officially supported by GNOME. I don't suggest using it as the default session like RHEL is doing, but as an alternative that users could choose in gdm without having to install it themselves. ---
Gnome Classic is a band-aid, a temporary solution. If the demand exists for the classic Gnome 2 experience why not give the user the real thing, just upgraded slightly? The main problem is that Mate is transitioning to GTK3 and once that's done things will integrate properly with the rest of the Gnome applications.
Also, you haven't tried Mate with a proper compositor. I suggest trying Compton. It makes things smooth, tear free and is a really crisp experience. Arch Linux has a great guide that's been referenced in one of my previous emails. If you would like I can share my Compton configuration files and start-up script. Once you try Mate with Compton you won't go back to anything else.
lynn dixon wrote: --- I am one of the more traditional users whom prefer a normal task bar for managing my time between many different applications at once. Cinnamon is quite mature now and has been pretty stable for me. Its honestly the only reason my coworkers and I have any Gnome software on our machines. ---
liam.bulkley wrote: --- The intended audience for G3 is exactly the opposite of the user that Fedora Workstation is targeting. ---
Exactly, there's a huge pent-up demand for the traditional Gnome 2 experience just upgraded slightly. Oddly enough if you were to buy a Mac you could get the full Gnome 2 experience but if you use Gnome Shell or Unity you cannot. Even if you look at Chrome OS from Google it doesn't stray that far from the traditional desktop metaphor. Chrome OS is much closer to Gnome 2 than it is to Gnome 3 Shell. Google knows if it did something too radical the product wouldn't sell.
That's the whole point of my post. Make it easy for users from other Linux distributions or from Mac or Windows to transition easily to something they're familiar with and meets their expectations of what a desktop workstation should be like. Be ambitious, expand the Fedora user-base far beyond your own expectations, become a leader in the Mac/Unix/Linux workstation market.
On Feb 2, 2014 12:04 AM, "Alexander GS" alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
<snip>
liam.bulkley wrote:
The intended audience for G3 is exactly the opposite of the user that Fedora Workstation is targeting.
Exactly, there's a huge pent-up demand for the traditional Gnome 2 experience just upgraded slightly. Oddly enough if you were to buy a Mac you could get the full Gnome 2 experience but if you use Gnome Shell or Unity you cannot. Even if you look at Chrome OS from Google it doesn't stray that far from the traditional desktop metaphor. Chrome OS is much closer to Gnome 2 than it is to Gnome 3 Shell. Google knows if it did something too radical the product wouldn't sell.
That's the whole point of my post. Make it easy for users from other Linux distributions or from Mac or Windows to transition easily to something they're familiar with and meets their expectations of what a desktop workstation should be like. Be ambitious, expand the Fedora user-base far beyond your own expectations, become a leader in the Mac/Unix/Linux workstation market.
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
I agree there is a demand for such a de but I don't think going back to that interface is a good idea. We're now at a place where there's demand for new interfaces. Ones that are more intuitive but also let you perform your work tasks more easily. Why should we be constrained by DEs designed thirty years ago when demands are different now? G3, W8, the various mobile OSs speak to this, I think. The mobile OSs have, more clearly I think, shown us how interfaces should be designed in tandem with new use patterns. In those cases there was no break in tradition but they helped people realize, for the first time, what a proper marriage of interface and technology can be and, what's more, how much easier it can be to interact with a computer. So, IMHO, we need G3. Even if not exactly as it is now, something that tries to make our jobs easier. Right now it doesn't but mobile technology has shown it should be possible. With regards to Fedora we are quite constrained so we have to carefully pick what we wish to pursue thus it makes most sense, to me, to make what changes we can to G3 and upstream them if possible. I think Gnome would benefit from an honest evaluation coming from those who they feel they can trust but who aren't involved with Gnome on a normal basis. The goal should be, again, IMHO, to create a DE that is at least as powerful as a Mac's. One that is designed with the target users of Fedora Workstation in mind. Not "Power Users" but content creators, "engineers", and the like. If you have an interface that they find makes their life easier, and not one that simply gets out of their way but one that helps them work both more efficiently and more effortlessly, you'll almost certainly have a superset of what the"average" user wants. That should be the long term goal, IMHO.
Best/Liam
liam.bulkley wrote: --- With regards to Fedora we are quite constrained so we have to carefully pick what we wish to pursue thus it makes most sense, to me, to make what changes we can to G3 and upstream them if possible. I think Gnome would benefit from an honest evaluation coming from those who they feel they can trust but who aren't involved with Gnome on a normal basis. ---
This is what I disagree with. The Fedora Workstation WG should never dictate design to the Gnome project. Gnome 3 is first an independent project and secondly perfectly suited for it's use-case a "mobile oriented and integrated Desktop used by tech savvy consumers and forward thinking business users". For this purpose I think Gnome 3 is excellent choice for many types of users. Fedora Workstation should stay out of Gnome's way and allow them to go on the journey they need to go on.
That's why Mate is a wise choice as the Workstation default as it allows for things to operate in parallel instead of getting Gnome's way and telling them how to do their job.
On Feb 2, 2014 1:23 PM, "Alex GS" alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
liam.bulkley wrote:
With regards to Fedora we are quite constrained so we have to carefully pick what we wish to pursue thus it makes most sense, to me, to make what changes we can to G3 and upstream them if possible. I think Gnome would benefit from an honest evaluation coming from those
who
they feel they can trust but who aren't involved with Gnome on a normal basis.
This is what I disagree with. The Fedora Workstation WG should never
dictate design to the Gnome project. Gnome 3 is first an independent project and secondly perfectly suited for it's use-case a "mobile oriented and integrated Desktop used by tech savvy consumers and forward thinking business users". For this purpose I think Gnome 3 is excellent choice for many types of users. Fedora Workstation should stay out of Gnome's way and allow them to go on the journey they need to go on.
That's why Mate is a wise choice as the Workstation default as it allows
for things to operate in parallel instead of getting Gnome's way and telling them how to do their job.
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
I'm a little confused how you got "dictate to" from "honest evaluation". I even specifically said "upstream if possible". I am completely aware of how the Gnome autonomy works with regards to Fedora. The point I am attempting to make is that it needs to be addressed that what Gnome is doing may not be completely what FW needs. Do we want to possibly compromise FW because of perceived obligations to Gnome?
Practically we have to use Gnome but I see no reason why Fedora can't address some of the design short comings of Gnome that Gnome developers won't really touch. What you want just isn't feasible , in terms of resources and politics, and, IMHO, shouldn't even be desired. The Gnome Classic extensions are probably close enough on their own for people who aren't comfortable with changing their workflows but the focus, IMHO, should be on making small, self-contained design changes to Gnome that make our target users work easier than it was under G2/G3.
To the WG in general I'm a bit disappointed these comments haven't been more widely discussed. Having followed these various F.n discussions I don't recall having heard anyone make these suggestions which, to me, represent a very achievable compromise.
liam.bulkley wrote:
With regards to Fedora we are quite constrained so we have to carefully pick what we wish to pursue thus it makes most sense, to me, to make what changes we can to G3 and upstream them if possible. I think Gnome would benefit from an honest evaluation coming from those who they feel they can trust but who aren't involved with Gnome on a normal basis.
Right, I agree with this.
(I'd actually like to use Gnome Shell and tried Cinnamon too, but went back to Mate for its resource-lightness, stability, and applets .)
On Feb 3, 2014 4:16 AM, "Jens Petersen" petersen@redhat.com wrote:
liam.bulkley wrote:
With regards to Fedora we are quite constrained so we have to carefully pick what we wish to pursue thus it makes most sense, to me, to make
what
changes we can to G3 and upstream them if possible. I think Gnome would benefit from an honest evaluation coming from
those who
they feel they can trust but who aren't involved with Gnome on a
normal basis.
Right, I agree with this.
(I'd actually like to use Gnome Shell and tried Cinnamon too, but went
back to Mate for its resource-lightness, stability, and applets.)
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
Looks like we're the only two:)
I don't think anyone is dictating anything to anyone, but in general I think it is important to realize that when someone puts engineering resources on something, in this case Red Hat, it will invariable affect the upstream in some way. So for instance the people working on upstream X.org at Red Hat are the same that are working on X in Fedora and the same who are working on X in RHEL. The natural consequence of this is that the person working on X.org in these three context is not going to shot him or herself in the foot by doing something in a which will negatively affect something in b or c if it can be possibly avoided. The same is true of Red Hat engineers working on GNOME or KDE, or any other project where Red Hat has fulltime engineers involved. That said this doesn't of course mean that said engineers never do anything in a context that has zero value in some of the others, but they are extremely unlikely to work for a upstream solution which is going to make their life more difficult downstream. I think the current init system debate in Debian is probably a good example of this.
So in the case of the Fedora Workstation, the engineers allocated to this at Red Hat are also the same engineers allocated to upstream X, GNOME, KDE etc. and the same people assigned to RHEL. So it is quite inevitable that the requirements of the Fedora Workstation will colour their upstream work and thus colour upstream. And I don't think this is a bad thing, having a more direct link between the 'upstream' development and a consumable product. I think we all see how horribly wrong things can go if for example a library has been developed in isolation from the the graphical user experience, where you end up having to do a really clunky UI simply because the library API doesn't allow you to do a nice one.
Christian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex GS" alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com To: desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Sunday, February 2, 2014 7:22:47 PM Subject: Re: Underlying DE for the Workstation product, Desktop -vs- Workstation
liam.bulkley wrote:
With regards to Fedora we are quite constrained so we have to carefully pick what we wish to pursue thus it makes most sense, to me, to make what changes we can to G3 and upstream them if possible. I think Gnome would benefit from an honest evaluation coming from those who they feel they can trust but who aren't involved with Gnome on a normal basis.
This is what I disagree with. The Fedora Workstation WG should never dictate design to the Gnome project. Gnome 3 is first an independent project and secondly perfectly suited for it's use-case a "mobile oriented and integrated Desktop used by tech savvy consumers and forward thinking business users". For this purpose I think Gnome 3 is excellent choice for many types of users. Fedora Workstation should stay out of Gnome's way and allow them to go on the journey they need to go on.
That's why Mate is a wise choice as the Workstation default as it allows for things to operate in parallel instead of getting Gnome's way and telling them how to do their job.
-- desktop mailing list desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop
On 02/03/2014 12:27 PM, Christian Schaller wrote:
I don't think anyone is dictating anything to anyone, but in general I think it is important to realize that when someone puts engineering resources on something, in this case Red Hat, it will invariable affect the upstream in some way. So for instance the people working on upstream X.org at Red Hat are the same that are working on X in Fedora and the same who are working on X in RHEL. The natural consequence of this is that the person working on X.org in these three context is not going to shot him or herself in the foot by doing something in a which will negatively affect something in b or c if it can be possibly avoided. The same is true of Red Hat engineers working on GNOME or KDE, or any other project where Red Hat has fulltime engineers involved. That said this doesn't of course mean that said engineers never do anything in a context that has zero value in some of the others, but they are extremely unlikely to work for a upstream solution which is going to make their life more difficult downstream. I think the current init system debate in Debian is probably a good example of this.
So in the case of the Fedora Workstation, the engineers allocated to this at Red Hat are also the same engineers allocated to upstream X, GNOME, KDE etc. and the same people assigned to RHEL. So it is quite inevitable that the requirements of the Fedora Workstation will colour their upstream work and thus colour upstream. And I don't think this is a bad thing, having a more direct link between the 'upstream' development and a consumable product. I think we all see how horribly wrong things can go if for example a library has been developed in isolation from the the graphical user experience, where you end up having to do a really clunky UI simply because the library API doesn't allow you to do a nice one.
I dont see any correlation between individuals working for Red Hat maintaining application or application upstream in RHEL being able to dictate and decide what happens in Fedora no more then any other individual working for another company and are the Gnome and KDE upstream and it's community aware that they are being "colored" by Fedora and it's workstation group?
JBG
<SNIP>
I dont see any correlation between individuals working for Red Hat maintaining application or application upstream in RHEL being able to dictate and decide what happens in Fedora no more then any other individual working for another company and are the Gnome and KDE upstream and it's community aware that they are being "colored" by Fedora and it's workstation group?
JBG
As I said I don't think there is any dictating going on, as for communities being aware that they priorities are influenced by the priorities of their contributors, I have yet to meet anyone in any community not understanding this.
Christian
On 02/03/2014 01:07 PM, Christian Schaller wrote:
<SNIP> > >I dont see any correlation between individuals working for Red Hat > >maintaining application or application upstream in RHEL being able to > >dictate and decide what happens in Fedora no more then any other > >individual working for another company and are the Gnome and KDE > >upstream and it's community aware that they are being "colored" by > >Fedora and it's workstation group? > > > >JBG As I said I don't think there is any dictating going on
Really why is the "workstation working group" dictating and decided that..
a) it's an single product b) a single desktop environment c) which desktop environment it is
As opposed to say
This is the baseline,expectation and criteria we have agreed upon for an desktop environment to be considered an workstation product and then simply have the DE* and their surrounded sub-community's do what needs to be done to meet the workstation criteria and become a workstation "product".
Instead you have chosen the path of deliberately causing friction between different desktop environment maintainers and the user base surrounding their already existing community product and continue to fuel debate that dates back all the way to RHL 6 thus well beyond the entire existence of Fedora.
Why because Red Hat and employees are dictating that's why what other logical explanation can there be?
JBG
On 3 February 2014 13:26, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Really why is the "workstation working group" dictating and decided that.. a) it's an single product b) a single desktop environment c) which desktop environment it is
The reality is, what we've done for the last 19 releases isn't working. People don't know what "Fedora" is. Ubuntu has done a much better job of marketing themselves, and I'm sure it's no small amount due to the lack of confusion about their brand and offering. At the moment people wanting a Fedora desktop are shown this: http://fedoraproject.org/en_GB/get-fedora#desktops which is confusing as hell. All desktops that look somewhat similar with different subtle architectural, cultural or package changes in each. Compare to http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop which clearly has one product. Ubuntu still has a KDE version, it's just not called "Ubuntu KDE" and placed with the same prominence as "Ubuntu The-one-most-people-are-actually-using"
If people want to go and build Kedora or MATEora that's fine for me, and probably makes sense to share infrastructure and base package sets. To allow users to choose a "spin" for our workstation product? Crazy.
Richard.
Dne 3.2.2014 14:38, Richard Hughes napsal(a):
On 3 February 2014 13:26, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Really why is the "workstation working group" dictating and decided that.. a) it's an single product b) a single desktop environment c) which desktop environment it is
The reality is, what we've done for the last 19 releases isn't working. People don't know what "Fedora" is. Ubuntu has done a much better job of marketing themselves, and I'm sure it's no small amount due to the lack of confusion about their brand and offering. At the moment people wanting a Fedora desktop are shown this: http://fedoraproject.org/en_GB/get-fedora#desktops which is confusing as hell. All desktops that look somewhat similar with different subtle architectural, cultural or package changes in each. Compare to http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop which clearly has one product. Ubuntu still has a KDE version, it's just not called "Ubuntu KDE" and placed with the same prominence as "Ubuntu The-one-most-people-are-actually-using"
If people want to go and build Kedora or MATEora that's fine for me, and probably makes sense to share infrastructure and base package sets. To allow users to choose a "spin" for our workstation product? Crazy.
Richard.
I've yet to see the correlation between their marketing and confusion about the brand, and the impact on our "product". Perhaps it's just the marketing, not the freedom of choice, maybe we're offering the wrong desktop as the default choice, who knows... and what if we go their way of just offering our workstation product and people say "hey, this is not Fedora anymore, we might as well go with Ubuntu".
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 8:48 AM, Lukáš Tinkl ltinkl@redhat.com wrote:
Dne 3.2.2014 14:38, Richard Hughes napsal(a):
On 3 February 2014 13:26, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Really why is the "workstation working group" dictating and decided that.. a) it's an single product b) a single desktop environment c) which desktop environment it is
The reality is, what we've done for the last 19 releases isn't working. People don't know what "Fedora" is. Ubuntu has done a much better job of marketing themselves, and I'm sure it's no small amount due to the lack of confusion about their brand and offering. At the moment people wanting a Fedora desktop are shown this: http://fedoraproject.org/en_GB/get-fedora#desktops which is confusing as hell. All desktops that look somewhat similar with different subtle architectural, cultural or package changes in each. Compare to http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop which clearly has one product. Ubuntu still has a KDE version, it's just not called "Ubuntu KDE" and placed with the same prominence as "Ubuntu The-one-most-people-are-actually-using"
If people want to go and build Kedora or MATEora that's fine for me, and probably makes sense to share infrastructure and base package sets. To allow users to choose a "spin" for our workstation product? Crazy.
Richard.
I've yet to see the correlation between their marketing and confusion about the brand, and the impact on our "product". Perhaps it's just the marketing, not the freedom of choice, maybe we're offering the wrong desktop as the default choice, who knows... and what if we go their way of just offering our workstation product and people say "hey, this is not Fedora anymore, we might as well go with Ubuntu".
I think that's a fair observation, but I would urge the WG to set aside marketing for a minute and focus on what they feel is the best positioned DE from a technical and resource perspective to build the product from. We can play "what if" games on market uptake all day long, but that is something we won't be able to observe until we have a product that actually works, works well, and is consistent.
I'd also like to remind people that other Spins can and will still exist. If the teams working on those spins produce a high quality release over a consistent period of time and they get a lot of uptake, Fedora the _project_ still wins.
josh
On 02/03/2014 02:08 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
I think that's a fair observation, but I would urge the WG to set aside marketing for a minute and focus on what they feel is the best positioned DE from a technical and resource perspective to build the product from.
When you speak of resource perspective are you referring to downstream resources or upstream resources because the former does not matter just the latter...
JBG
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 3:11 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 02:08 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
I think that's a fair observation, but I would urge the WG to set aside marketing for a minute and focus on what they feel is the best positioned DE from a technical and resource perspective to build the product from.
When you speak of resource perspective are you referring to downstream resources or upstream resources because the former does not matter just the latter...
Both matter.
On 02/03/2014 02:32 PM, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 3:11 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 02:08 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
I think that's a fair observation, but I would urge the WG to set aside marketing for a minute and focus on what they feel is the best positioned DE from a technical and resource perspective to build the product from.
When you speak of resource perspective are you referring to downstream resources or upstream resources because the former does not matter just the latter...
Both matter.
I disagree and require further explanation from you since I question the current thought of upstream role in downstream distributions after exploring the communities surrounding both to better understand the eco system of thoughts and the effects of those thoughts that residing in both of them.
The conclusion after that exploration of thought is that the role of upstream in downstream distributions should be a role of an consultant for upstream application or application stack him or her is developing and if time allows become a co-maintainer for a completely different application or application stack ( outside their "comfort zone" ) then what he or she is developing in the community for the distribution he or she uses.
In other much simpler words upstream maintainers are distracted from what they do best which is working on their code by maintaining their component in downstream distribution and that distraction is not helpful to end user, not helpful for those us in QA and does not expand those maintainers as individuals.
The more time the maintainer has to focus on his code the better we and other downstream distribution are as an result of that.
JBG
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 3:52 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 02:32 PM, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 3:11 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 02:08 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
I think that's a fair observation, but I would urge the WG to set aside marketing for a minute and focus on what they feel is the best positioned DE from a technical and resource perspective to build the product from.
When you speak of resource perspective are you referring to downstream resources or upstream resources because the former does not matter just the latter...
Both matter.
I disagree and require further explanation from you since I question the current thought of upstream role in downstream distributions after exploring the communities surrounding both to better understand the eco system of thoughts and the effects of those thoughts that residing in both of them.
Simply because of expertise you want to have people that know how the stuff works including the code to some extent. Just shifting everything to upstream that might have different release schedules and priorities makes no sense and does not work. Having upstream developers "in house" also allows you to influence upstream directions to some extend and better deal with bugs encounter.
Also to handle cases like "bug xxx is a blocker bug we have y days left to fix it" ... upstream might not care much about your schedule but having someone from upstream being part of the community (= he/she has interests in fixing it in time) definitely helps.
In other much simpler words upstream maintainers are distracted from what they do best which is working on their code by maintaining their component in downstream distribution and that distraction is not helpful to end user, not helpful for those us in QA and does not expand those maintainers as individuals.
(This is a different topic but as I stated elsewhere we should focus more on code and less on packing because the latter can be automated in many cases while the former requires man power. Letting "robots" do the packing work (for instance the "mclazy" script used for gnome-updates) frees time and resources for more useful stuff like adding features, fixing bugs etc.)
So to go back to your statement having a dead upstream is bad, having a dead downstream is bad. Having a low on resources upstream is bad. Having a low on resources downstream is bad. Having an active upstream where you have some influence (and that means you contribute enough and not just demand stuff) with a working downstream is what you should aim for if you want to create a successful product.
On 02/03/2014 03:41 PM, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 3:52 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
I disagree and require further explanation from you since I question the current thought of upstream role in downstream distributions after exploring the communities surrounding both to better understand the eco system of thoughts and the effects of those thoughts that residing in both of them.
Simply because of expertise you want to have people that know how the stuff works including the code to some extent. Just shifting everything to upstream that might have different release schedules and priorities makes no sense and does not work. Having upstream developers "in house" also allows you to influence upstream directions to some extend and better deal with bugs encounter.
Also to handle cases like "bug xxx is a blocker bug we have y days left to fix it" ... upstream might not care much about your schedule but having someone from upstream being part of the community (= he/she has interests in fixing it in time) definitely helps.
Which is why I said the role of the upstream in downstream distribution should be the role of an consultant which provides all that without any negatives or distractions.
In other much simpler words upstream maintainers are distracted from what they do best which is working on their code by maintaining their component in downstream distribution and that distraction is not helpful to end user, not helpful for those us in QA and does not expand those maintainers as individuals.
(This is a different topic but as I stated elsewhere we should focus more on code and less on packing because the latter can be automated in many cases while the former requires man power. Letting "robots" do the packing work (for instance the "mclazy" script used for gnome-updates) frees time and resources for more useful stuff like adding features, fixing bugs etc.)
So to go back to your statement having a dead upstream is bad, having a dead downstream is bad. Having a low on resources upstream is bad. Having a low on resources downstream is bad. Having an active upstream where you have some influence (and that means you contribute enough and not just demand stuff) with a working downstream is what you should aim for if you want to create a successful product.
Dead upstream is bad ( irrelevant if that upstream is within the distribution itself or outside )
Upstream being low on resources is bad even worse if downstreams distracts them ( Again irrelevant if that upstream is within the distribution itself or outside it )
Having an active upstream is what matters ( again irrelevant if that upstream is within the distribution itself or outside it )
Our contribution as an downstream distribution is to delivering that feed back we receive as well as package maintaining and integrating the component or stacks of components downstream here with us ( which makes us not demanding anything for upstream ) is that successful beneficial relationship.
So if an upstream maintainer is in any other role then "consultant" within distribution(s) it becomes no longer successful beneficial relationship for anybody it becomes a distraction for everybody.
Image how further the software center work could have gone if Richard would not have been distracted having to integrate it and dealing with ( to put it mildly ) less then perfectly maintained component with us ( as opposed to him be in the role of an consultant and say this is whats happening and this is what I would like you as an downstream distribution to do and then just continue work on upstream ) image how not so far or not so successful systemd had become if for example Kay and or Lennart would have been spending all their time migrating legacy sysv initscript to native systemd units in downstream distributions.
JBG
On Mon, Feb 03, 2014 at 04:15:53PM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
On 02/03/2014 03:41 PM, drago01 wrote: Having an active upstream is what matters ( again irrelevant if that upstream is within the distribution itself or outside it )
Wrong. Having a working component is what matters. It is completely irrelevant who makes that happen.
Our contribution as an downstream distribution is to delivering that feed back we receive as well as package maintaining and integrating the component or stacks of components downstream here with us ( which makes us not demanding anything for upstream ) is that successful beneficial relationship.
This is purely your opinion. I disagree totally.
So if an upstream maintainer is in any other role then "consultant" within distribution(s) it becomes no longer successful beneficial relationship for anybody it becomes a distraction for everybody.
This is just your illusional "premise" reversed. It does not relate to reality any more than the premise itself.
Image how further the software center work could have gone if Richard would not have been distracted having to integrate it and dealing with ( to put it mildly ) less then perfectly maintained component with us ( as opposed to him be in the role of an consultant and say this is whats happening and this is what I would like you as an downstream distribution to do and then just continue work on upstream )
That he had to do it himself means there was noone sufficiently interested to help. Why do you think that would have been otherwise had he not participated at all?
image how not so far or not so successful systemd had become if for example Kay and or Lennart would have been spending all their time migrating legacy sysv initscript to native systemd units in downstream distributions.
But they are not maintainers of all these packages in all these distros. So this argument is off topic.
D.
On Mon, Feb 03, 2014 at 02:52:18PM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
On 02/03/2014 02:32 PM, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 3:11 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 02:08 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
I think that's a fair observation, but I would urge the WG to set aside marketing for a minute and focus on what they feel is the best positioned DE from a technical and resource perspective to build the product from.
When you speak of resource perspective are you referring to downstream resources or upstream resources because the former does not matter just the latter...
Both matter.
I disagree and require further explanation from you since I question the current thought of upstream role in downstream distributions after exploring the communities surrounding both to better understand the eco system of thoughts and the effects of those thoughts that residing in both of them.
The conclusion after that exploration of thought is that the role of upstream in downstream distributions should be a role of an consultant for upstream application or application stack him or her is developing and if time allows become a co-maintainer for a completely different application or application stack ( outside their "comfort zone" ) then what he or she is developing in the community for the distribution he or she uses.
While you conduct thought experiments, the rest of us live in the real world.
In other much simpler words upstream maintainers are distracted from what they do best which is working on their code by maintaining their component in downstream distribution
Citation required.
and that distraction is not helpful to end user, not helpful for those us in QA
The only thing that is dedicedly not helpful for anyone is your inclination to split contributors into little fiefdoms (upstream, downstream, subcommunities, etc.) with strictly defined "responsibilities" and "privileges".
and does not expand those maintainers as individuals.
Huh?
The more time the maintainer has to focus on his code the better we and other downstream distribution are as an result of that.
And who are you to decide what is the best way I spend my time?
D.
On Mon, Feb 03, 2014 at 06:08:28PM +0100, David Tardon wrote:
On Mon, Feb 03, 2014 at 02:52:18PM +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
On 02/03/2014 02:32 PM, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 3:11 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 02:08 PM, Josh Boyer wrote:
I think that's a fair observation, but I would urge the WG to set aside marketing for a minute and focus on what they feel is the best positioned DE from a technical and resource perspective to build the product from.
When you speak of resource perspective are you referring to downstream resources or upstream resources because the former does not matter just the latter...
Both matter.
I disagree and require further explanation from you since I question the current thought of upstream role in downstream distributions after exploring the communities surrounding both to better understand the eco system of thoughts and the effects of those thoughts that residing in both of them.
The conclusion after that exploration of thought is that the role of upstream in downstream distributions should be a role of an consultant for upstream application or application stack him or her is developing and if time allows become a co-maintainer for a completely different application or application stack ( outside their "comfort zone" ) then what he or she is developing in the community for the distribution he or she uses.
Here is another argument against this, made by Jóhann B. Guðmundsson: "You do realize we are an distribution that represents "upstream" in the larger GNU/Linux eco system and as such our "target users" are users that participate and contribute *back* to the community ..."
It of course implies that the participation does not end at end users, but that also maintainers should contribute upstream. IMHO having upstream developers as maintainers fulfills that eminently.
D.
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 14:48 +0100, Lukáš Tinkl wrote:
Dne 3.2.2014 14:38, Richard Hughes napsal(a):
On 3 February 2014 13:26, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Really why is the "workstation working group" dictating and decided that.. a) it's an single product b) a single desktop environment c) which desktop environment it is
The reality is, what we've done for the last 19 releases isn't working. People don't know what "Fedora" is. Ubuntu has done a much better job of marketing themselves, and I'm sure it's no small amount due to the lack of confusion about their brand and offering. At the moment people wanting a Fedora desktop are shown this: http://fedoraproject.org/en_GB/get-fedora#desktops which is confusing as hell. All desktops that look somewhat similar with different subtle architectural, cultural or package changes in each. Compare to http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop which clearly has one product. Ubuntu still has a KDE version, it's just not called "Ubuntu KDE" and placed with the same prominence as "Ubuntu The-one-most-people-are-actually-using"
If people want to go and build Kedora or MATEora that's fine for me, and probably makes sense to share infrastructure and base package sets. To allow users to choose a "spin" for our workstation product? Crazy.
Richard.
I've yet to see the correlation between their marketing and confusion about the brand, and the impact on our "product". Perhaps it's just the marketing, not the freedom of choice, maybe we're offering the wrong desktop as the default choice, who knows... and what if we go their way of just offering our workstation product and people say "hey, this is not Fedora anymore, we might as well go with Ubuntu".
I don't think we necessarily need to pursue this debate any further in this context - I just don't think it's necessary for either point of view.
The Workstation "product" WG gets to define the lines that bound the Workstation product. But:
* it doesn't get to define anything in particular about the non-Workstation space * it doesn't get to decide precisely how our marketing is going to work
I'd say that given those two things, it's fairly unnecessary to discuss this whole topic area in the context of the Workstation WG. There is more than enough space outside the Workstation product 'space' to handle other desktops: as other Products, as spins, as something else entirely. We're already discussing that on devel@.
Ditto the question of how precisely we describe and communicate whatever arrangement of Products and other deliverables we ultimately decide on: that's not a discussion that is specific to a single Product, it's an area we have not yet finalized or even really started thinking seriously about, and we have a huge range of possibilities.
Basically, nothing about any decision that has been made by FESCo, the Board, or the Workstation WG so far as I can see places any particular restrictions on us at all as to how we decide to define, describe and deliver desktops outside the one the Workstation WG decides to choose as the basis of their product.
On 02/03/2014 08:06 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
I don't think we necessarily need to pursue this debate any further in this context - I just don't think it's necessary for either point of view.
The Workstation "product" WG gets to define the lines that bound the Workstation product. But:
- it doesn't get to define anything in particular about the
non-Workstation space
- it doesn't get to decide precisely how our marketing is going to work
So KDE and rest can come up with their own product and related Fedora brand or are you saying that WG's own those "spaces" and related brands ( cloud/server/workstation ) and no one can competed with them?
JBG
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 20:29 +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
On 02/03/2014 08:06 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
I don't think we necessarily need to pursue this debate any further in this context - I just don't think it's necessary for either point of view.
The Workstation "product" WG gets to define the lines that bound the Workstation product. But:
- it doesn't get to define anything in particular about the
non-Workstation space
- it doesn't get to decide precisely how our marketing is going to work
So KDE and rest can come up with their own product and related Fedora brand or are you saying that WG's own those "spaces" and related brands ( cloud/server/workstation ) and no one can competed with them?
As I understand it, there is nothing about the .next process which precludes the creation of, say, a KDE Product.
It's been noted in this thread that if we go down the road of creating more and more products, we get back to the problem of deciding and communicating their relative precedence: but that, again, is a discussion that has to happen on a project-wide basis, it's kind of pointless to argue about it within the context of a specific WG.
The Board and FESCo have already approved the Workstation product. The Workstation WG has decided - I believe - they want that product to be based around a single desktop, not attempt to stake a claim on the entire space: that's what I asked in https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2014-January/008834.html , and what Josh answered clearly in https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/desktop/2014-January/008835.html :
"To be honest, I think that's up to the FESCo/Board level. There are spins that extend beyond just choice of DE, and people could want to create different spins of Server, etc. So I personally wouldn't advocate for the Workstation WG to solve that issue."
Again, I really think the most productive way forward here is to let the Workstation WG get on with the business of deciding their desktop and starting to define and work on the product they will be creating.
I think there are important and useful discussions to be had about how we handle desktops that are *not* the one the Workstation product is based around, but it makes no sense to discuss those questions here, given the above. Those questions are for the project as a whole to resolve. There are all sorts of things we can consider, and a lot of them are already being discussed in the unfortunately titled "fate of Spins" thread on devel@. That seems like the appropriate - or at least, a *more* appropriate - venue to me, as it is not in a thread about the Workstation product on a list which is specifically for the desktop spin and the Workstation WG/product.
It might be appropriate to consider these issues here *if the Workstation WG / Product appeared to be trying to do something controversial in regard to the question of what to do about other desktops*, but I really can't see that they are. As linked above, Josh has explicitly suggested that's up to FESCo/Board (i.e. the project as a whole), and I can't find a single person who's disagreed.
On 02/03/2014 08:43 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
I think there are important and useful discussions to be had about how we handle desktops that are*not* the one the Workstation product is based around.
I dont see any need for discussion how we handle the workstation WG or any other branded product for that matter they will have to provide resources to maintainability QA and release those products themselves as others products already have had to do.
JBG
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:45 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 08:43 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
I think there are important and useful discussions to be had about how we handle desktops that are *not* the one the Workstation product is based around.
I dont see any need for discussion how we handle the workstation WG or any other branded product for that matter they will have to provide resources to maintainability QA and release those products themselves as others products already have had to do.
And you decided this on your own?
On 02/03/2014 08:49 PM, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:45 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 08:43 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
I think there are important and useful discussions to be had about how we handle desktops that are *not* the one the Workstation product is based around.
I dont see any need for discussion how we handle the workstation WG or any other branded product for that matter they will have to provide resources to maintainability QA and release those products themselves as others products already have had to do.
And you decided this on your own?
The WG's dont dictate or decide how we in QA spend our time.
JBG
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:48 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 08:49 PM, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:45 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 08:43 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
I think there are important and useful discussions to be had about how we handle desktops that are *not* the one the Workstation product is based around.
I dont see any need for discussion how we handle the workstation WG or any other branded product for that matter they will have to provide resources to maintainability QA and release those products themselves as others products already have had to do.
And you decided this on your own?
The WG's dont dictate or decide how we in QA spend our time.
Where did I say that? Where did QA decide that they now longer want to test desktops? You seem to always talk about the whole QA community while in fact you are talking about yourself.
On 02/03/2014 08:55 PM, drago01 wrote:
The WG's dont dictate or decide how we in QA spend our time.
Where did I say that? Where did QA decide that they now longer want to test desktops? You seem to always talk about the whole QA community while in fact you are talking about yourself.
I suggest you check meeting logs and continue your wishful thinking since we dont have any resource to spare...
JBG
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:55 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 08:55 PM, drago01 wrote:
The WG's dont dictate or decide how we in QA spend our time.
Where did I say that? Where did QA decide that they now longer want to test desktops? You seem to always talk about the whole QA community while in fact you are talking about yourself.
I suggest you check meeting logs [...]
Only references I found where: "jreznik from Base WG would like to arrange a meeting with other teams members to discuss the future processes" and "Project-wide, planning is blocking on Fedora.next until the WGs report to FESCo in January; this makes QA planning for Fedora 21 mostly impossible until then"
(Clicked through the summarys back to end of sep. 2013 ...)
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 22:07 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:55 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 08:55 PM, drago01 wrote:
The WG's dont dictate or decide how we in QA spend our time.
Where did I say that? Where did QA decide that they now longer want to test desktops? You seem to always talk about the whole QA community while in fact you are talking about yourself.
I suggest you check meeting logs [...]
Only references I found where: "jreznik from Base WG would like to arrange a meeting with other teams members to discuss the future processes" and "Project-wide, planning is blocking on Fedora.next until the WGs report to FESCo in January; this makes QA planning for Fedora 21 mostly impossible until then"
(Clicked through the summarys back to end of sep. 2013 ...)
There is certainly a resource question for QA: it's generally reasonable to guess that the Products will want to define a minimum expected level of quality and that the project as a whole will want the primary products (that wording is a hedge against the possibility that we wind up defining lots more Products - right now I'm assuming the three currently-defined Products are 'primary' ones) to meet their minimum requirements for a Fedora release to ship.
Right now we have fairly minimal requirements for the desktop and KDE spins, and almost nothing for server or 'cloud' areas of the project, so it's reasonable to assume the overall testing workload in a .next universe will be higher than it is right now, and Johann is right to say that, right now, 'QA' struggles to perform all the work that's *currently* required.
So this certainly is an area of concern that will likely need to be looked at and resolved. Johann is of the opinion that the way to do this is for QA to test the base system and leave everything above that to the products, but we have not decided anything like that yet: as the summary note above says, we really can't plan much until the .next / Product proposals take more concrete form. Especially, we need to know what the Products think their minimum quality requirements will be, obviously.
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 10:15 PM, Adam Williamson awilliam@redhat.com wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 22:07 +0100, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:55 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 08:55 PM, drago01 wrote:
The WG's dont dictate or decide how we in QA spend our time.
Where did I say that? Where did QA decide that they now longer want to test desktops? You seem to always talk about the whole QA community while in fact you are talking about yourself.
I suggest you check meeting logs [...]
Only references I found where: "jreznik from Base WG would like to arrange a meeting with other teams members to discuss the future processes" and "Project-wide, planning is blocking on Fedora.next until the WGs report to FESCo in January; this makes QA planning for Fedora 21 mostly impossible until then"
(Clicked through the summarys back to end of sep. 2013 ...)
There is certainly a resource question for QA: it's generally reasonable to guess that the Products will want to define a minimum expected level of quality and that the project as a whole will want the primary products (that wording is a hedge against the possibility that we wind up defining lots more Products - right now I'm assuming the three currently-defined Products are 'primary' ones) to meet their minimum requirements for a Fedora release to ship.
Right now we have fairly minimal requirements for the desktop and KDE spins, and almost nothing for server or 'cloud' areas of the project, so it's reasonable to assume the overall testing workload in a .next universe will be higher than it is right now, and Johann is right to say that, right now, 'QA' struggles to perform all the work that's *currently* required.
So this certainly is an area of concern that will likely need to be looked at and resolved. Johann is of the opinion that the way to do this is for QA to test the base system and leave everything above that to the products, but we have not decided anything like that yet: as the summary note above says, we really can't plan much until the .next / Product proposals take more concrete form. Especially, we need to know what the Products think their minimum quality requirements will be, obviously.
Thanks.
On 02/03/2014 09:15 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
There is certainly a resource question for QA: it's generally reasonable to guess that the Products will want to define a minimum expected level of quality and that the project as a whole will want the primary products (that wording is a hedge against the possibility that we wind up defining lots more Products - right now I'm assuming the three currently-defined Products are 'primary' ones) to meet their minimum requirements for a Fedora release to ship.
Right now we have fairly minimal requirements for the desktop and KDE spins, and almost nothing for server or 'cloud' areas of the project, so it's reasonable to assume the overall testing workload in a .next universe will be higher than it is right now, and Johann is right to say that, right now, 'QA' struggles to perform all the work that's *currently* required.
So this certainly is an area of concern that will likely need to be looked at and resolved. Johann is of the opinion that the way to do this is for QA to test the base system and leave everything above that to the products, but we have not decided anything like that yet: as the summary note above says, we really can't plan much until the .next / Product proposals take more concrete form. Especially, we need to know what the Products think their minimum quality requirements will be, obviously.
And I should add to that on a 6 month development cycle and Adam was it you that posted a summary of the time we spent in release blocker bug meetings for a whole cycle on your blog or was it Tim or Kamil which should give people a bit clearer picture how many hours QA spends on just that alone.
Anyway the only way I can see us remotely manage to cover multiple products is to alter Anaconda release cycle either before alpha or after beta which is necessary to free up resources to do so. ( Anaconda is and always has been QA's nr.1 resource hog )
I should also mention that the QA community proposal I'm working on with Mike will only be applied to base ( small group of components ) to begin with to see for the first if it will work and if it does iron out any issues that we find *before* we applied on a larger set of components as well as update-testing if turns out to be success.
JBG
On 02/03/2014 09:07 PM, drago01 wrote:
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 9:55 PM, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
On 02/03/2014 08:55 PM, drago01 wrote:
The WG's dont dictate or decide how we in QA spend our time.
Where did I say that? Where did QA decide that they now longer want to test desktops? You seem to always talk about the whole QA community while in fact you are talking about yourself.
I suggest you check meeting logs [...]
Only references I found where: "jreznik from Base WG would like to arrange a meeting with other teams members to discuss the future processes" and "Project-wide, planning is blocking on Fedora.next until the WGs report to FESCo in January; this makes QA planning for Fedora 21 mostly impossible until then"
(Clicked through the summarys back to end of sep. 2013 ...)
yeah go through the entire meeting logs in December to see the actual discussion that have taken place.
QA first and foremost functionality is and always has been around installer + base and base WG has defined ca 1800 components we need to cover.
The cloud WG did their own testing against the release criteria in F20, based on what Stephen has implied the serverWG will do the same so I really dont see why the workstation WG should be any difference since in the end of the day we dont have the resources to cover multiple products anyway when we barely could manage one ( default ).
JBG
On 02/03/2014 08:43 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
I think there are important and useful discussions to be had about how we handle desktops that are*not* the one the Workstation product is based around
Those discussion will need to be had before output from *any* of the WG's is decided.
We will need to know what is expected from the service sub-communities when it comes down to products and obviously we cannot play pick and chose between them.
JBG
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 12:06 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
Basically, nothing about any decision that has been made by FESCo, the Board, or the Workstation WG so far as I can see places any particular restrictions on us at all as to how we decide to define, describe and deliver desktops outside the one the Workstation WG decides to choose as the basis of their product.
"the Workstation WG decides to choose as the basis of their product"
Please don't do this, it's a really bad idea!
One of the major divisive actions taken by Ubuntu was to make Canonical's own desktop Unity the default for that desktop. There was a huge outpouring of discontent and it fragmented their user-base. You should avoid that sort of situation at all costs. In that context there shouldn't be a default desktop environment for the Workstation Product if this proves to be too controversial which it is.
There can be officially Fedora Workstation "supported desktops" and the select between Fedora branded versions of Gnome Shell (Gnome 3), Mate (Gnome 2) and KDE (important!) available via the installer. This isn't that different from installing a Fedora or CentOS server and being able to select what kind of server your setting up such as Apache, NGINX or Tomcat at the installer stage.
Perhaps part of unifying the Linux desktop space means staying away from the whole "default desktop" idea and merely providing a limited selection of "supported" desktops.
On Mon, Feb 3, 2014 at 12:45 PM, Alexander GS alxgrtnstrngl@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, 2014-02-03 at 12:06 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
Basically, nothing about any decision that has been made by FESCo, the Board, or the Workstation WG so far as I can see places any particular restrictions on us at all as to how we decide to define, describe and deliver desktops outside the one the Workstation WG decides to choose as the basis of their product.
"the Workstation WG decides to choose as the basis of their product"
Please don't do this, it's a really bad idea!
One of the major divisive actions taken by Ubuntu was to make Canonical's own desktop Unity the default for that desktop. There was a huge outpouring of discontent and it fragmented their user-base. You should avoid that sort of situation at all costs. In that context there shouldn't be a default desktop environment for the Workstation Product if this proves to be too controversial which it is.
There can be officially Fedora Workstation "supported desktops" and the select between Fedora branded versions of Gnome Shell (Gnome 3), Mate (Gnome 2) and KDE (important!) available via the installer. This isn't that different from installing a Fedora or CentOS server and being able to select what kind of server your setting up such as Apache, NGINX or Tomcat at the installer stage.
Perhaps part of unifying the Linux desktop space means staying away from the whole "default desktop" idea and merely providing a limited selection of "supported" desktops.
I think this is the right way to move forward.
Just give the user the option. Pick 3 or 4 desktops and roll with it. (Gnome, KDE, MATE, Cinnamon).
I feel like users are "tricked" in to using Gnome 3.. other desktops aren't advertised on our website really and when doing an install with just "next,next,next" you get Gnome.
Also, maybe we should look at tweaking the out of the box Gnome 3 defaults. So I switched to Gnome 3 over the weekend and have been using it heavily.
After installing every available extension and the tweak tool, it's not as bad as it used to be. However, without the extensions and the tweak tool, it's really bad.
Again, I'd like to bring up the importance of "it just works" out of the box. Gnome 3 doesn't really do that well out of the box currently IMO.
Dan
On Mon, 3 Feb 2014 13:48:13 -0800, you wrote:
Just give the user the option. Pick 3 or 4 desktops and roll with it. (Gnome, KDE, MATE, Cinnamon).
I feel like users are "tricked" in to using Gnome 3.. other desktops aren't advertised on our website really and when doing an install with just "next,next,next" you get Gnome.
Again, I'd like to bring up the importance of "it just works" out of the box. Gnome 3 doesn't really do that well out of the box currently IMO.
So how to you reconcile "it just works" with forcing the user to decide between mutliple desktop choices?
If you want it to just work, then you need to make a decision as to what to make work.
As much as I dislike GNOME 3 (I install Cinnamon myself as soon as install is finished), having GNOME 3 as a default is better than making no decision at all.
On Mon, 03 Feb 2014 15:45:05 -0500, you wrote:
One of the major divisive actions taken by Ubuntu was to make Canonical's own desktop Unity the default for that desktop. There was a huge outpouring of discontent and it fragmented their user-base. You should avoid that sort of situation at all costs. In that context there shouldn't be a default desktop environment for the Workstation Product if this proves to be too controversial which it is.
Ubuntu has always had a default desktop, the discontent was the decision to change from GNOME 2 -> Unity (and the discontent basically mirrors the GNOME 2 -> GNOME 3 issue).
The fragmenting that Ubuntu experienced was the breaking up of the Ubuntu GNOME community into Unity / GNOME 3 / Cinnamon / MATE, with some likely switching over to the other Ubuntu secondary desktops.
There can be officially Fedora Workstation "supported desktops" and the select between Fedora branded versions of Gnome Shell (Gnome 3), Mate (Gnome 2) and KDE (important!) available via the installer. This isn't
At which point the person trying out Fedora reboots the computer and goes back to Windows, or if determined tries a different distribution.
On 02/03/2014 01:38 PM, Richard Hughes wrote:
On 3 February 2014 13:26, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com wrote:
Really why is the "workstation working group" dictating and decided that.. a) it's an single product b) a single desktop environment c) which desktop environment it is
The reality is, what we've done for the last 19 releases isn't working. People don't know what "Fedora" is. Ubuntu has done a much better job of marketing themselves, and I'm sure it's no small amount due to the lack of confusion about their brand and offering. At the moment people wanting a Fedora desktop are shown this: http://fedoraproject.org/en_GB/get-fedora#desktops which is confusing as hell. All desktops that look somewhat similar with different subtle architectural, cultural or package changes in each. Compare to http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop which clearly has one product. Ubuntu still has a KDE version, it's just not called "Ubuntu KDE" and placed with the same prominence as "Ubuntu The-one-most-people-are-actually-using"
If people want to go and build Kedora or MATEora that's fine for me, and probably makes sense to share infrastructure and base package sets. To allow users to choose a "spin" for our workstation product? Crazy.
I question that logic since...
A) People make choices everyday from the day the get up in the morning to the time they go back to sleep. B) People already are faced with the exact same question be it application in a cloud, on a server or in a desktop environment thunderbird vs evolution, totem vs vlc which is why for example you yourself are working on a software center with an rating system so people can chose what other people think what are the best/most popular application that serve their needs. C) Is the general end user which ubuntu is after the kind of end user we seek since we are fundamentally a project that expect our user base being able to contribute *back* to us, an feedback which we then deliver upstream and the entire GNU/Linux ecosystem benefits from including us when the result from that feedback get's delivered here downstream back to us.
JBG
The working group was tasked with trying to make a product and that is what the working group is doing, which includes making decisions about what to do. If we are to follow your logic then everything happening in Fedora is to be considering horrible. I mean why is FESCo dictating that people use a Linux kernel instead of just defining what a kernel is and then let the upstream BSD, Hurd and Linux communities work towards becoming that?
Christian
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" johannbg@gmail.com To: desktop@lists.fedoraproject.org Sent: Monday, February 3, 2014 2:26:31 PM Subject: Re: Underlying DE for the Workstation product, Desktop -vs- Workstation
On 02/03/2014 01:07 PM, Christian Schaller wrote:
<SNIP> > >I dont see any correlation between individuals working for Red Hat > >maintaining application or application upstream in RHEL being able to > >dictate and decide what happens in Fedora no more then any other > >individual working for another company and are the Gnome and KDE > >upstream and it's community aware that they are being "colored" by > >Fedora and it's workstation group? > > > >JBG As I said I don't think there is any dictating going on
Really why is the "workstation working group" dictating and decided that..
a) it's an single product b) a single desktop environment c) which desktop environment it is
As opposed to say
This is the baseline,expectation and criteria we have agreed upon for an desktop environment to be considered an workstation product and then simply have the DE* and their surrounded sub-community's do what needs to be done to meet the workstation criteria and become a workstation "product".
Instead you have chosen the path of deliberately causing friction between different desktop environment maintainers and the user base surrounding their already existing community product and continue to fuel debate that dates back all the way to RHL 6 thus well beyond the entire existence of Fedora.
Why because Red Hat and employees are dictating that's why what other logical explanation can there be?
JBG
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Dne 3.2.2014 14:44, Christian Schaller napsal(a):
The working group was tasked with trying to make a product and that is what the working group is doing, which includes making decisions about what to do. If we are to follow your logic then everything happening in Fedora is to be considering horrible. I mean why is FESCo dictating that people use a Linux kernel instead of just defining what a kernel is and then let the upstream BSD, Hurd and Linux communities work towards becoming that?
Christian
This comparison isn't fair at all :) It's always for practical reasons and popularity people choose the solution A over B. Remember XFree86 vs. X.org; nobody is dictating anyone to use the linux kernel, people want it, simple as that
On 02/02/2014 06:04 AM, Alexander GS wrote:
Touchscreen's on a developer workstation? That sounds more like a tablet or media consumption all-in-one device. Also the Wayland is still in alpha on Gnome 3 Shell and nowhere near ready. You're talking about future events that haven't happened or things that aren't relevant to desktop workstations.
It does seem like laptops with touchscreens are becoming more and more common. When I counted for fun at a local computer store here in town it was 1 in every 3, and according to Wikipedia it's one of the requirements of the Ultrabook v3 (Shark Bay) specification [1]. Even the Lenovo ThinkPad that is more popular among programmers comes with one in the new T440s model [2]. A lot of these new machines also comes with hi-dpi screens, so that is certainly something that needs to work out of the box using free software. I hope the above data helps.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabooks#Specifications 2. http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/laptops/lenovo-thinkpad-t440s.aspx
- Andreas
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