Make kde 1st class in fedora

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Sun Nov 19 02:23:35 UTC 2006


On 11/17/06, Neal Becker <ndbecker2 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe most linux advocates would agree that one of linux main strengths
> is choice.  But, user's don't really have choice if they don't know they
> have choice.
>
> I don't want to remove firefox.  Firefox is great.  I just believe we need a
> more effective way to alert new users that they have a choice.

Effective.. sure we'd all like a pony.  Uninformed choice is no better
and in many cases worse than no choicee.  First and foremost informed
choices require the individuals to care.  How do you make new users
care, if they have not in fact experiencecd the pros and cons of each
software choice for themselves? It's a catch-22. You can't pack enough
information into the installer or into firstboot to help new users
make informed choices.  This is the role of detailed documentation...
and you sure as hell aren't going to get new users to read through 4
pages of a detailed comparison of just the available browser
advantages at install time.

At best you can do is attempt to make them aware that Fedora contains
multple application choicees across a wide array of functionality and
ask them to explore the packagespace after install time.

If the default is a bad choice for new users, there is no garuntee
that any other choice you could give new users at install time would
lead to consistently better experiences on average, because such
choices at install time are inherently uninformed unless users have
previous knowledge. And if they have previous knowledge as to what
applications they prefer.. they don't need install time walk-throughs.

If you want to fight about changing the default applications, feel
free. But to pack a series of nagware like dialogs into the installer
or into firstboot to enforce that users make a series of inherently
uninformed choices is not going to make anything better for anyone.
You might as well just write in a randomizing function so every user
gets a random set of default apps.

In fact.. from a testing point of view.. a random set of default apps
would make for good testing coverage during pre-release testing.

-jef"best is the enemy of good"spaleta




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