oneline article: "Debian Alliance on The Horizon"

[Etienne Goyer]

Ed Cogburn wrote:
> If Ubuntu can gain traction on the desktop side, it
> will be *much* easer for them to translate their success onto the server
> side, rather than vice versa.

That is something that many people underestimate.  Newcomer to Linux 
tend to stick to the distro they know best.  Usually, they start with 
their desktop, thus many "desktop" distro get promoted to server status 
by these guys.

In my surrounding, I see a lot of server running Mandrake.  Mandrake had 
very good French localization early in its lifecycle, back when other 
distro did not.  Early Mandrake adopters stay loyal and build server on 
it.     (...this make me shiver, but that's for another flamewar)

> This only makes sense if you see KDE's mindshare as shrinking.  If you're
> right here, then it makes perfect sense to officially ignore KDE.  I said
> the exact opposite however because I believe KDE's mindshare will increase
> over time, not decrease.  :)  I believe that because I simply don't see
> GNOME as being able to satisfy everyone, and less folk as time goes on,
> given that it doesn't seem to have any coherent vision directing its
> future, its future direction seems to be only whatever Red Hat wants it to
> be, but RH is only interested in the corporate desktop, not end-users....

There is a trade-off to be made between simplicity and flexibility. 
Ubuntu is nice because it's simple, consistent and compact.  Supporting 
KDE in mainline Ubuntu would require to compromise these quality to a 
certain extent.  Is it worth it ?  I do not know.