Brief diary of an F-7 installation

[Timothy Murphy]

Rahul Sundaram wrote:

>> I'm pretty sure the vast majority of users would choose KDE
>> if they were given a clear choice.
> 
> The vast majority of users wouldn't care about desktop environments at
> all. Applications matter. The only people who argue about default choice
> of desktop environments and text editors is technical users which is a
> small minority.

I don't think that's true at all.
In my view the difference between KDE and Gnome
is far more visible than the difference between different distributions.
I cannot tell if one machine of mine is using Fedora + KDE or Kubuntu
(both are installed) unless I look very carefully.
I can see at once if the machine is running Gnome or KDE.

> A installer cannot in any proper way hope to explain to end users what a
> desktop environment or how to choose between them. A distribution's or
> even individual application's job in most cases is to pick defaults
> instead of pushing it to end users.

Why?
I don't mind being given simple choices,
particularly if one is Recommended.
Even car salesmen give you a choice of colour.
Bill Gates gives me more choices than Anaconda.

> If you really wanted KDE, you can download the the KDE Live image and
> install it.

I did in fact download the KDE Live Image,
but it wasn't at all clear to me what it would do
if I chose "Install on hard disk".
Would it delete my /home partition?

I'm pretty sure the people who could offer a radio button choice
between Gnome and KDE
actually push Gnome for political/philosophical reasons.
I've found in different discussions of this point
that after giving the "people don't like being given a choice" argument
the same people usually go on to say why Gnome is morally preferable.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland