Re: My thoughts on fallback mode

[Mario Blättermann <mariobl gnome org>]

Am Dienstag, den 04.01.2011, 20:58 +0100 schrieb Christopher Roy
Bratusek:

> But as some have unvealed today, it's not the real reason, marketing is the 
> magic word and to provide a desktop "made from one", and some other less valid 
> reasons (eg.: even if you allow modularization you can provide great user-
> experience as modifications made by the user bother him/her not you).
> 

The »Desktop made from one« is a long lasting dream of almost all
developers of integrated desktop environments. »THE GNOME« doesn't exist
and won't exist ever. What folks are using is mostly the desktop which
the distributors ship as default.

Have a look at the most important GNOME-reseller Ubuntu: There will be
no gnome-shell by default, they have decided to use Unity. Well, due to
it is also clutter-based, there will be similar problems. Moreover, the
help browser doesn't show the usual overview of the GNOME docs, instead
users see the Ubuntu Help Center, and there's no way to browse to
GNOME's Desktop User Guide. Most distributions have such »features«,
which lead the user to accept his distribution as a unique OS, and to
accept GNOME as a second stage free gift. Could be that the gnome-shell
won't flop because of misusability, but because of too less users take
notice of it.

It can't be the goal to win new users with a »bleeding-edge new desktop
experience« and, on the other hand, to ignore the other ones which want
to keep the well-known desktop principles (kernel, X11, WM, DE) which
allows them to put their own desktop experience together, if they like
it (!). And, we shouldn't speak about »selling« GNOME. We don't sell it,
we provide it. That's an important difference. If we would sell it, we
had to concentrate our efforts to ship new hardware with an OS with very
nice and exiting features. But because we provide it, we must recognize
more than these users and their moneybags. As I already wrote, one of
the most important advantages of GNOME is its modularity, which doesn't
preclude integrity. A desktop as strong bolted as Windows or MacOS which
forces people to use this and not that is misplaced.

BTW, all these thoughts are from a user's point of view. I'm not a
developer, just a translator, and I have subscribed to this list
actually by accidence. But it is very interesting to see how decisions
for the future are seem to made, ignoring a considerable number of
long-standing users. It is more than a handful, be sure.

Cheers,
Mario