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Re: Why?

* John Hasler <jhasler@debian.org> [2006 Jul 11 13:51 -0500]:
> Nate Bargmann writes:
> > The Debian Project, itself a part of the GNU project, or at least tightly
> > affiliated with it...
> 
> Debian was briefly affiliated with the FSF at the beginning but the
> association was dissolved before 1.1 came out.

Very well.  I knew there was a connection some time back.  Thanks for
the update.

> > A few years later, TrollTech changed the license on Qt to the "more free"
> > GPL thus leapfrogging the "lesser" LGPL.  Despite this...
> 
> Despite what?  Both are completely DFSG compliant.  There is no question of
> one being "more free" than the other.

For some time it didn't seem to matter, how Free either was, in some
minds the old Qt/KDE situation could not be forgotten.  There are
likely many remants still to be found via Google, etc.

> > ...old attitudes have been slow to change and Debian, for whatever
> > reason(s), still prefers GNOME over KDE at installation.

I recently performed a Net Install on a new machine.  Ordinarilly I
manually choose the packages I want.  That time I was feeling
lazy/adventuresome and chose the Desktop task.  I don't recall ever
being prompted to choose a DE and GNOME was the default which I spent a
fair amount of time expunging.  I agree that something needs to be the
default, but I expect that to take the form of a dialog with an
explanation/recommendation if it's deemed necessary.

> The reason is that there is no reason to change.  One or the other has to
> be the default: should we toss a coin?

No reason to change what?  I find GNOME not to my liking.  Perhaps it
is all well to introduce the rank newcomer and train them in the GNOME
way, but I have used a number of similar environments over the years
and KDE for a DE and IceWM for a simple WM suit me best.  As far as
the installer goes, everything else is second behind GNOME.

- Nate >>

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