On Sat, Jul 28, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Dexter Filmore <Dexter.Filmore@...> wrote:
> Well, I've been telling for years now that we were better off with one desktop
> that has the flexibility to adapt to everyone's needs.
> Be lightweight without graphical mumbo jumbo if desired, be all the visual
> monster with tons of effects, be as simple as a task bar and systray, be a
> full blown cornucopia of gadgets if somebody prefer that.
> Make it configurable from simply to rocket science, from 486 to i7 but have
> ONE API. Offer developers a safe base.

Dexter,

This is the thing that the competitors (e.g. Mac, Windows) have done,
or at least tried to do. I have my own workflow, and am not going to
change it just because someone thinks I should. For Mac and Windows,
they are telling me that I have to do task X in this way and that is
the only way I can do it. If I decide to color outside the lines, then
that is not allowed.

I think that's why many of us have gravitated to Linux. Because of the
freedom to compute in a way that is comfortable for us. Gnome and KDE
have completely different paradigms for how they operate, and I think
that trying to force them into a single box is wrong of you.

Not to put too fine a point on it, find a way to compute that works
for you and go with it. But don't try to dictate to everyone else that
they have to compute in the same way. And don't try to tell the
developers, who are doing this in their free time as a labor of love
that they are doing it wrong. If the "there is only one way to do it"
paradigm is what fits you, go back to Windows or Mac.

I've heard similar debates about how there are too many distros. That
we should force all of the distro devs to work on one big unified
distro. So which would it be? RedHat? They are king in the corporate
space. Debian? They have a couple of hundred distros in their progeny.
What about all the specialist distros like Backtrack for
security/pentesting? Or should we stop OpenMediaVault? What about DBAN
or Parted Magic or system rescue cd?  And who would make this
decision? I tend to run Debian on the desktop, but have about a dozen
specialist distros on cd or thumb drive.

So, variety being the spice of life, and since you cannot dictate what
we do with our free time, if we want to contribute to one or more
projects, then I think the best you can do is just say thank you.

Just my $0.02,
--b