Re: Another online survey

[Claus Schwarm <c schwarm gmx net>]

On Mon, 09 May 2005 13:59:44 +0200
Dave Neary <dneary free fr> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Simos Xenitellis a écrit :
> > The real fight to get GNOME even higher is to win more distros.
>
> Right. Anyone have any idea how we can go about that? 

Is the basic assumption correct? Given the political issues surrounding
the question (UserLinux rejecting KDE, Ubuntu adding Kubuntu), you'll
have a hard time trying to convince a distribution to change its
desktop default.

It seems more promising to promote GNOME to end users (institutional and
private), and feature those distributions that use GNOME as default. For
example, remember Davyd's blog entry about GetFootware:

  "Some people from Gentoo and Mandriva were concerned that their
distributions were not on the list, but rest assured, now they are."

Indeed, they are: under "Ships GNOME, too." Let users decide if they
want the hassle to change the default desktop.

IMHO, as long as there are visual differences in GNOME and KDE apps,
the default desktop will continue to increase as an important aspect of
user decisions, and thus as one of the main selling points of
distributions.


Cheers,
Claus