Re: Reverting to GNOME for jessie's default desktop
2014-08-13 22:59 GMT+02:00 Theodore Ts'o <tytso@mit.edu>:
> On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 10:18:49PM +0200, Matthias Klumpp wrote:
>> Well, Linus' extensions won't break because GNOME updates them with
>> every release and ships them with the official GNOME release.
>
> From the README found in "gnome-shell-extensions" sources:
>
> GNOME Shell Extensions is a collection of extensions providing additional
> and optional functionality to GNOME Shell.
> Since GNOME Shell is not API stable, extensions work only against a very
> specific version of the shell, usually the same as this package (see
> "configure --version"). Also, since extensions are built from many
> individual contributors, we cannot guarantee stability or quality for any
> specific extension.
> For these reasons, distributions are advised to avoid installing or packaging
> this module by default.
That's odd - I remember someone from the GNOME folks saying that they
develop these extensions together with the Shell and as part of
official GNOME so they do not break and users can rely on them.
Also, they provide the stuff needed for GNOME Classic, which is the
default desktop on RHEL (so I kind of expect that stuff to work and to
be developed in future).
But that README file is indeed very clear about the extensions repo...
> So again, it'll be interesting to see how many extensions work when
> 3.14 gets released, and how many just break or just silently
> disappear....
>
> Of course, not anything which is officially in GNOME is guaranteed to
> stick around, either. Functionality which is part of "official" GNOME
> have commonly disappeared in a version "upgrade" as well, and the
> Gnome Shell Extensions has a lesser guarantee of stability than
> features in core GNOME.
>
> At least for me, it's a case of "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me
> twice, shame on me."
That's why I use KDE (GNOME also has some small annoyances like having
to delete things in Nautilus using ALT+ENTF etc.) - but admittedly,
the GNOME experience is very usable, and the common reaction I get
from new Linux users is some kind of "wow" effect, since they like the
clean and modern design of GNOME as well as it's workflow, which lets
people focus on screen content instead of desktop chrome.
So if that's the people we want to reach with the default desktop,
GNOME is certainly a good option. I would also recommend to go for
this user group when selecting a default, since any more experienced
user can absolutely be expected to pick the right image with their
favourite flavour of Debian, or change some options in the installer.
Unexperienced users usually don't really know what they want, so
selecting a good default for them would be useful.
People for computers with low specs could pick an image with Xfce or
LXQt and experience a great desktop environment - since there isn't
really a "second class" desktop in Debian, only different levels of
how well something is maintained.
Cheers,
Matthias
P.S: Of course, KDE Plasma would also be a great choice as DE
default-selection ;-)
--
Debian Developer | Freedesktop-Developer
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