[Discuss] an "Enterprise" Linux for desktop

[markw at mohawksoft.com]

> On 11/27/2011 11:28 AM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
>>>> From: markw at mohawksoft.com [mailto:markw at mohawksoft.com]

>> Think about the QWERTY keyboard. The Dvorák proponents made their case
>> and
>> lost. QWERTY is no better or worse than Dvorák and thus, the prevailing
>> paradigm won. Rightly so. That's the competition of ideas.
>
> True, but you can buy dvorak keyboards, and every linux distro I've seen
> supports that layout even on standard QWERTY keyboards.  So QWERTY
> 'won', but dvorak didn't die.

Yes, but the UI movement is more intellectually dishonest. They aren't
giving you the choice of "established and supported" vs "new and
experimental" with "established and supported" being the default. No, they
are offering "New and Experimental, and supported for as long as we feel
like it" vs "established and kind of supported" with "New and
Experimental" being the default.

It is bad for the users.

>
>> With user interface, we are not getting a "vote" or a choice. They are
>> changing it and we have to learn a new one. We are not letting the
>> competition of ideas win, we are being forced to accept new paradigms by
>> fiat. IMHO this is not how open source and free software should be
>> working.
>
> Except that no one is forcing you to go with gnome-shell or kde4.  I
> guarantee you that some group of people will be disgruntled enough with
> gnome3 that they will maintain gnome2 for years to come.  And every
> distro supports lots of other desktop options (the alternate desktop
> spins are the most popular variations of fedora).

I HATE this argument because it is hollow. Yes, it is "factually" true,
but it is false in "practicality." We use a distribution because it fits
our needs. We use it for the interface and support. I used to build my own
custom Linux environment, KDE, Gnome, mwm, even tried enlightenment, sorry
for good or bad, we are past those days. The UI is part of the
distribution.

When the distribution changes the use model, it may no longer fit our
needs. At that point it is difficult to change.

We are stake holders in the decisions, that used to matter in the open
source world.


>
> The other point is that forks are crucial part of F/OSS; they are in
> essence your voting mechanism.  Don't like the cabal that is ruining
> your favorite project?  Take the good parts and start your own project.
>
> There was a long standing feature request in openoffice that was enough
> to make me not use it or advocate using it
> (https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=43937; my comment is
> #14).  The people in charge didn't like the feature, so they refused to
> implement it.  When LibreOffice forked, implementing this feature was
> one of the first things I noticed different (besides the splash screen).
>   So sometimes forking is the best way to get progress...

I think most of agree that a "fork" in a project creates inefficiencies,
duplication of work, and brings some doubt to the stability of projects. A
fork IMHO is a failure.