Firefox etc. default homepage

Owen Taylor otaylor at redhat.com
Sat May 7 16:52:55 UTC 2005


On Sat, 2005-05-07 at 14:32 +0200, Kyrre Ness Sjobak wrote:
> Today we use the release notes as standard homepage for all browsers,
> instead of whatever is upstream default. Why do we do that, while
> constantly repeating the mantra "upstream!, upstream!, upstream!"?
> 
> In my personal opinion, the release notes belong in "help" or something
> like that (even a shortcut on the standard desktop would be more
> intuitive) - not as the standard homepage in every browser.
> 
> This confuses people, and addmitedly, the release notes aren't that much
> usefull to the users as the standard homepage - especially in firefox,
> where the standard is:
> http://www.google.no/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:nb-NO:official
> which is simply a google search with some hints on using firefox etc.

If a site actually deploys fedora to tend users, they certainly
shouldn't leave the release notes as the default page.

But the target for fedora really is the enthusiast community; while we
encourage people to use it in others ways, the prototypical Fedora user
is someone who: 

 - Installs their own machine (**)
 - cares about the software they just installed
 - Has a good chance of following further links and getting involved
   with Fedora

This is someone who is going to get a benefit from seeing the release
notes (*)

I don't think there is any attempt to say that the release notes
are what anybody will leave as their homepage, but 

It might be even cooler to have some sort of "fedora portal" (I use that
word with great reluctance, but I don't know a better one) as the 
default homepage... but that would take a lot more active resources
than the release notes.

Regards,
						Owen

(*) The obvious question then is why we don't configure the default 
    desktop for a hacker... at least add a terminal launcher. 
    There are multiple reasons here .. *my* personal take on it
    is that "configured for the hacker" often leads to sloppiness 
    where the end-user configuration is just an untested veneer
    with a bunch of good looking knobs. Not so much of a concern for 
    the default homepage, which will be changed anyways.

(**) If we could identify the user who installed the machine and
     give just *them* the release notes, that might be cool,
     but it's not obvious how to make that identification.


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