oneline article: "Debian Alliance on The Horizon"

[Ed Cogburn]

Etienne Goyer wrote:

> 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.


Until Canonical starts making a decent income for itself, I realize the idea
of supporting 2 different DEs is not possible now anyway.  This is why I
said its not an issue in the short term.  As for 'simple' always being a
*good* thing, well that's in the eye of the beholder.  Its because of
GNOME's draconian simplicity that I use KDE in the first place.  :)