Just a quick suggestion.* As a compromise, instead of enabling Xfce as the "universal default" in tasksel *entirely* ... How about only enabling Xfce as default for the CD* distribution, and leaving the default as GNOME for all non-CD distributions? (DVD, netinst, ...)


That will express true "bipartisanism" ... instead of explicitly being biased towards one direction or another simply at the whim of (a) certain decision maker(s), especially over a technicality.* Yes, you can argue this might incur a "split" between install bases and, thus, possibly be less "easy" to support ... But both GNOME and Xfce are officially integrated into Debian, and so should both be considered equally ...


GNOME has a longer-standing status, specifically with Debian, and other GNU/Linux distributions at large.* It's also an officially-supported GNU project, as well as being more "authoritative", in the sense that it's the base of GTK+ which is utilized by Xfce.


According to popcon, Xfce is more common on Debian than GNOME... And considering the recent controversy surrounding v3, many have opted for alternatives such as Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, Unity, or etc...* I, personally, feel as if GNOME is sort of going the "KDE path" as far as becoming somewhat bloated.* Xfce's lightweight-focused approach can be appreciable, but modern high-level functionality shouldn't necessarily be compromised by lack-of/restricted resources.* Simply the fact that it's an OPTION is terrific.* But, from the premise of this entire letter, shouldn't exactly be *forced*.


Thus, I reiterate that it might be a good idea to maybe consider the possibility of thinking about the potential for ...

Xfce being set to default tasksel in CD* distributions, while GNOME remaining default in others.


At *least* as a compromise during a ``transitional' period, whereupon the eventuality of settling on a single/unified default may come into play yet once again.

On Sun, Sep 09, 2012 at 10:21:27PM -0500, Ztatik Light wrote:

> Just a quick suggestion. As a compromise, instead of enabling
> Xfce as the "universal default" in tasksel *entirely* ... How
> about only enabling Xfce as default for the CD* distribution,
> and leaving the default as GNOME for all non-CD distributions?
> (DVD, netinst, ...)

I do not think that making the default desktop environment
dependent on the type of the installation medium would be a good
idea; that would cause much confusion IMHO.

> That will express true "bipartisanism" ... instead of
> explicitly being biased towards one direction or another simply
> at the whim of (a) certain decision maker(s), especially over a
> technicality. Yes, you can argue this might incur a "split"
> between install bases and, thus, possibly be less "easy" to
> support
> ... But both GNOME and Xfce are officially integrated into Debian,
> and so should both be considered equally ...

In my eyes this is no valid argument. We offer four desktop
environments to choose during the installation - GNOME, KDE,
LXDE, XFCE (in alphabetic order ;-)). If we would follow this
line of reasoning further, we would end up with each of CD, DVD,
hd-media and netboot have a different desktop environment as
default, and I am rather sure nobody would consider this a
sensible setup.

IMHO there should only be one default desktop environment, regardless
of which one it will be.

> GNOME has a longer-standing status, specifically with Debian,
> and other GNU/ Linux distributions at large.

I am not going to repeat all the discussions about GNOME 3, but
at least from the impressions I have gotten around here, many
previous GNOME 2 users seem not to consider GNOME 3 / GNOME shell
a continuation of their existing environment, but instead see it
as a radical break, effectively as a different desktop
environment, and a lot of them seem to have adopted XFCE as the
"heir" of GNOME 2.

Regards,
Karsten
--
Gem. Par. 28 Abs. 4 Bundesdatenschutzgesetz widerspreche ich der Nutzung
sowie der Weitergabe meiner personenbezogenen Daten für Zwecke der
Werbung sowie der Markt- oder Meinungsforschung.


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On 9 September 2012 23:21, Ztatik Light <ztatik.light@gmail.com> wrote:
> According to popcon, Xfce is more common on Debian than GNOME... And

How do you figure that?

http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=meta-gnome3
http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=xfce4

Just looking at popcon, GNOME is installed several more times as much
as XFCE. Even gnome-shell has more installs than xfce4-panel despite
GNOME Shell having not been included in a stable Debian release yet.

Jeremy


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Oops, yeah -- I guess I was mistaken. I was using `gnome-common' as the basis, but I guess that's even less appropriate than something, like, say ... `gnome-panel' ... But, even *more* reason to not entirely push GNOME aside for Xfce.


On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 1:33 PM, Jeremy Bicha <jbicha@ubuntu.com> wrote:

On 9 September 2012 23:21, Ztatik Light <ztatik.light@gmail.com> wrote:

> According to popcon, Xfce is more common on Debian than GNOME... And



How do you figure that?



http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=meta-gnome3

http://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=xfce4



Just looking at popcon, GNOME is installed several more times as much

as XFCE. Even gnome-shell has more installs than xfce4-panel despite

GNOME Shell having not been included in a stable Debian release yet.



Jeremy

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 5:28 AM, Ztatik Light wrote:

> But, even *more* reason to not entirely push GNOME
> aside for Xfce.

That hasn't happened at all, the tech media you have been reading and
believing neglected to check their facts:

pabs@chianamo ~/tasksel-3.13 $ grep -A3 tasksel/desktop debian/templates
Template: tasksel/desktop
Type: multiselect
Choices: gnome, kde, xfce, lxde
Default: gnome

Indeed, the release team have been pursuing compressing GNOME better
so it will fit.

--
bye,
pabs

http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Le lundi 10 septembre 2012 Ã* 20:08 +0200, Karsten Merker a écrit :
> I am not going to repeat all the discussions about GNOME 3, but
> at least from the impressions I have gotten around here, many
> previous GNOME 2 users seem not to consider GNOME 3 / GNOME shell
> a continuation of their existing environment, but instead see it
> as a radical break, effectively as a different desktop
> environment, and a lot of them seem to have adopted XFCE as the
> "heir" of GNOME 2.

Just because these people are noisy doesn’t make them numerous.

Furthermore, Debian (and Ubuntu too IIRC) makes “GNOME classic�
available right from the login manager, with the default installation.
Not considering gnome-panel 3.x a continuation of the existing
environment is purely bad faith.

--
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: :' :
`. `'
`-


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Josselin Mouette writes ("Re: CD1 without a network mirror isn't sufficient to install a full desktop environment"):
> Le lundi 10 septembre 2012 Ã* 20:08 +0200, Karsten Merker a écrit :
> > I am not going to repeat all the discussions about GNOME 3, but
> > at least from the impressions I have gotten around here, many
> > previous GNOME 2 users seem not to consider GNOME 3 / GNOME shell
> > a continuation of their existing environment, but instead see it
> > as a radical break, effectively as a different desktop
> > environment, and a lot of them seem to have adopted XFCE as the
> > "heir" of GNOME 2.
>
> Just because these people are noisy doesn’t make them numerous.

I have encountered numerous people who have been complained (not in
particular to me, just i general) about changes to GNOME. Not being a
GNOME user myself I don't really appreciate these complaints.
However, I have observed that these complainants have generally been
told by their peers to switch to xfce and been broadly satisfied with
the results.

I haven't seen anyone in my social circles praise these changes as
good for them.

Based on this, I think there is at the very least no reason to
reverse the decision to switch the Debian default to xfce.

> Furthermore, Debian (and Ubuntu too IIRC) makes “GNOME classic�
> available right from the login manager, with the default installation.
> Not considering gnome-panel 3.x a continuation of the existing
> environment is purely bad faith.

Please do not accuse fellow contributors of bad faith.

Ian.


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On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 01:06:22PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> I have encountered numerous people who have been complained (not in
> particular to me, just i general) about changes to GNOME. Not being a
> GNOME user myself I don't really appreciate these complaints.
> However, I have observed that these complainants have generally been
> told by their peers to switch to xfce and been broadly satisfied with
> the results.
>
> I haven't seen anyone in my social circles praise these changes as
> good for them.
>
> Based on this, I think there is at the very least no reason to
> reverse the decision to switch the Debian default to xfce.

There is not a single Debian release with the version that is being complained
about. Therefore the audience of stable have not yet tried it, and you're
drawing conclusions from the anecdotes of a sample of users who may not be
representative of our (stable) users.

I feel that the decision to change from GNOME to something else, on the
basis of complaints about GNOME 3, should only be considered after we've
actually released with at least one version of GNOME 3.


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Le mardi 11 septembre 2012 Ã* 13:06 +0100, Ian Jackson a écrit :
> I have encountered numerous people who have been complained (not in
> particular to me, just i general) about changes to GNOME. Not being a
> GNOME user myself I don't really appreciate these complaints.
> However, I have observed that these complainants have generally been
> told by their peers to switch to xfce and been broadly satisfied with
> the results.
>
> I haven't seen anyone in my social circles praise these changes as
> good for them.
>
> Based on this, I think there is at the very least no reason to
> reverse the decision to switch the Debian default to xfce.

You can’t be serious. Xfce is way more different from GNOME 2 than GNOME
3 classic is.

If those users are satisfied with Xfce, that’s very good for them, and I
agree Xfce is of very good quality. However, it still lacks a number of
features and for many use cases, you need pieces of GNOME with it.

> Please do not accuse fellow contributors of bad faith.

I would not qualify most of the whiners as “fellow contributors�.

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On 11 September 2012 08:06, Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk> wrote:
> Based on this, I think there is at the very least no reason to
> reverse the decision to switch the Debian default to xfce.

Except as Paul said, the decision to make XFCE default for Wheezy has
not been made so it can't be reversed.

Jeremy Bicha


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