Desktop Relevance

[david-8uUts6sDVDvs2Lz0fTdYFQ at public.gmane.org (David Kramer)]

Eric Chadbourne wrote:

> There's so much documentation and a large and friendly community
> learning about Linux won't be difficult at all for you.
> 
>> become more user friendly considering Ubuntu
> 
> Yuck!!!  Fedora rules!  ;-)

... And there you have it.  This is, and always has been, a part of the
UNIX/Linux adoption problem.  With Windows, there's Windows.  And with
most releases, there's maybe three different levels, and it's usually
pretty clear which you need (home vs pro vs ultimate).  With Linux, not
only are there too many choices for the uninitiated to make, but there
are zealots behind each one touting how they are the one true $FOO.
That goes for distributions (and versions of distributions), WMs,
filesystems, proprietary vs OSS drivers and libraries, databases, email
programs, browsers,..

Having too many choices/options can be a barrier for the uninitiated,
when the differences are unclear.  Nobody can answer which is better out
of KDE or Gnome, or even which is better for a particular use, or
whether it's better to use an editor that thinks it's an operating
system or an editor that thinks its an assembly language compiler.

I had hope when there were projects out there that tried to standardize
a lot of the arbitrary difference between distributions, like file and
directory locations, but now that seems to be out the window.  Ubuntu
doesn't even use /etc/inittab anymore.  I have no idea how it determines
which runlevel to go to.

Also, there is *absolutely* no excuse for KDE and Gnome to not share
menu configuration files at this late age, so one can switch back and
forth at will.