Re: Why?

[Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net>]

On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 01:31:56PM -0400, Carl Fink wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 12, 2006 at 12:27:15PM -0500, Nate Bargmann wrote:
> 
> > In many other facets of the install process questions are posed and
> > reasonable defaults are suggested yet a choice can be made.  I think
> > the same approach should be taken to a DE.
> 
> Certainly the question could be "Would you prefer to use GNOME
> (screencapture) or KDE (screencapture) or something else?  If you don't
> know, just click OK."  (You'd have to have X already installed for this to
> work as I envision it, but you can certainly install X before picking a DE
> or rejecting both, which is what I do.)

I think the config questions are all asked before anything is installed
in Debian, at least anything so heavy weight as X. So, it would be nice
but non-trivial to do.

But some posters to this thread seem to be unaware that selecting
"Desk top" during install of Debian causes -both- kde -and- gnome to
be installed. So, I believe almost all of those newbies about whom we
are genuinely concerned already have both on their computer.  And
-both- gdm -and- kdm can be told to start up either kdm or gnome.
(xdm doesn't seem to have this feature.)

I think it wouldn't be hard to add to display manager code a config
question that is only asked the first time it is started. Personally,
I'm not qualified to do the addition, and I think it would be a 
waste of the time a qualified person. Surely there are better things
for him/her to do, IMHO. 

As an example to the wierd personal preferences that govern GUI selection
I mention my own: I use gnome-terminal exclusively because it has a 
special feature of highlighting URLs and when you to control-click on
a URL, it brings up your web browser. It works great with mutt.
I would use gnome-terminal under kde, except that kde steps on my
font selections in gnome-terminal.

Having established that I'm something of a outlaier, I suggest for
your consideration the thought that we are all outlaiers in the
opinion of others of us.

-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@mesanetworks.net