I understood Matthew’s position as “this should be discussed in the Workstation WG first”, not as a “no”
And later he said it’s not up to the community but the Fedora Council which at least partially consists of unelected Red Hat-appointed people and all decisions need to be on a consensus-basis, so a single corporate-appointed person can veto everything. FESCO (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee) is democratic, Fedora Council is not.
IMO Fedora is still a great distribution, IMO even the best for beginners. Just because certain Gnome-affiliated people are insufferable doesn’t change that (at least not for now). From my point of view it would have been completely fine to discuss that, hold a vote, and if Gnome comes out on top, then fine. But with the changing landscape with Steam Deck and with it more development resources flowing into KDE technologies and also many more mainstream people having their first Linux desktop contact through Steam Deck’s Desktop Mode (=KDE Plasma), I think it’s totally fair to hold a discussion, similar to when Debian discussed Gnome vs Xfce years ago and Gnome came out on top because of offering the best accessibility features.
Lol GNOME vs XFCE, that was absolutely the right decision XD
GNOME is worlds better.
And that decision wasn’t about which is better liked by the majority. It was (I’m paraphrasing) “the default shouldn’t put up hurdles for people with disabilities. Gnome supports accessibility techs X, Y, Z. Xfce only tech X.” That’s an objective metric. The same metric could still hold up for Gnome vs Plasma. Gnome might be ahead in that regard. I don’t know the current state. I know that years ago (Plasma 4.x days) adding a Japanese IME under Fedora Gnome was super easy thanks to PackageKit integration of the IME settings of Gnome while under Fedora’s Plasma session it was pretty much all manual configuration. Best out of the box accessibility is a metric I would wholeheartedly support even though my personal interest would prioritize gaming performance over screen readers because I simply don’t need the latter.
I didnt test GNOME or KDE for accessibility but I know KDE 5.27 had various different zoom features while GNOME doesnt.
Orca runs on both but no idea where better.
Both are using Wayland on Fedora and that is pretty problematic poorly, as all apps are different and I assume many dont support the correct portal/API/push service for screenreaders.
The rest seems integration. KDE and GNOME use Packagekit on traditional Fedora.
The Fedora leadership is elected the the community. Also most the community does not want to deal with KDE. KDE is great for power users and people who like customization. Outside of that most people want stability and simplicity both of which KDE is not.
The other issue is the installer and the enterprise. If Fedora switched to KDE by default then the downstream distros would need to as well as Fedora is the testing ground for RHEL, Rocky and Alma. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to run KDE on a server or corporate workstation.
The Fedora leadership is elected the the community.
“The Fedora Council is composed of a mix of representatives from different areas of the project, named roles appointed by Red Hat, and a variable number of seats connected to medium-term project goals.” –https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/
Also most the community does not want to deal with KDE.
Too bad we can’t know this for sure because the discussion and a vote was shut down. The leader was clearly afraid of the possible outcome. No need to “drop the mic” if it was actually so clear cut.
Outside of that most people want stability and simplicity both of which KDE is not.
Baseless claims.
The other issue is the installer and the enterprise. If Fedora switched to KDE by default then the downstream distros would need to as well as Fedora is the testing ground for RHEL, Rocky and Alma.
Wrong. Fedora switched to btrfs as well despite the fact that it’s unsupported by RHEL. Outside the RH sphere of influence, openSUSE manages to offer Plasma equally next to Gnome even though Gnome is default in SLE.
I can’t imagine anyone wanting to run KDE on a server or corporate workstation.
While I generally agree that there’s probably not much appetite among the distributions for switching default, this point seems weird. I don’t see why KDE would be any less desired than Gnome in that segment.
And later he said it’s not up to the community but the Fedora Council which at least partially consists of unelected Red Hat-appointed people and all decisions need to be on a consensus-basis, so a single corporate-appointed person can veto everything. FESCO (Fedora Engineering Steering Committee) is democratic, Fedora Council is not.
I’m not sure I follow… Did the Fedora Council actually take a decision?
Crazy… so much about the best Distro, huh?
IMO Fedora is still a great distribution, IMO even the best for beginners. Just because certain Gnome-affiliated people are insufferable doesn’t change that (at least not for now). From my point of view it would have been completely fine to discuss that, hold a vote, and if Gnome comes out on top, then fine. But with the changing landscape with Steam Deck and with it more development resources flowing into KDE technologies and also many more mainstream people having their first Linux desktop contact through Steam Deck’s Desktop Mode (=KDE Plasma), I think it’s totally fair to hold a discussion, similar to when Debian discussed Gnome vs Xfce years ago and Gnome came out on top because of offering the best accessibility features.
Lol GNOME vs XFCE, that was absolutely the right decision XD
GNOME is worlds better. But KDE “Plasma” (I hate this name) was like “this is how Windows should look like”
And that decision wasn’t about which is better liked by the majority. It was (I’m paraphrasing) “the default shouldn’t put up hurdles for people with disabilities. Gnome supports accessibility techs X, Y, Z. Xfce only tech X.” That’s an objective metric. The same metric could still hold up for Gnome vs Plasma. Gnome might be ahead in that regard. I don’t know the current state. I know that years ago (Plasma 4.x days) adding a Japanese IME under Fedora Gnome was super easy thanks to PackageKit integration of the IME settings of Gnome while under Fedora’s Plasma session it was pretty much all manual configuration. Best out of the box accessibility is a metric I would wholeheartedly support even though my personal interest would prioritize gaming performance over screen readers because I simply don’t need the latter.
I didnt test GNOME or KDE for accessibility but I know KDE 5.27 had various different zoom features while GNOME doesnt.
Orca runs on both but no idea where better.
Both are using Wayland on Fedora and that is pretty problematic poorly, as all apps are different and I assume many dont support the correct portal/API/push service for screenreaders.
The rest seems integration. KDE and GNOME use Packagekit on traditional Fedora.
The Fedora leadership is elected the the community. Also most the community does not want to deal with KDE. KDE is great for power users and people who like customization. Outside of that most people want stability and simplicity both of which KDE is not.
The other issue is the installer and the enterprise. If Fedora switched to KDE by default then the downstream distros would need to as well as Fedora is the testing ground for RHEL, Rocky and Alma. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to run KDE on a server or corporate workstation.
“The Fedora Council is composed of a mix of representatives from different areas of the project, named roles appointed by Red Hat, and a variable number of seats connected to medium-term project goals.” –https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/council/
Too bad we can’t know this for sure because the discussion and a vote was shut down. The leader was clearly afraid of the possible outcome. No need to “drop the mic” if it was actually so clear cut.
Baseless claims.
Wrong. Fedora switched to btrfs as well despite the fact that it’s unsupported by RHEL. Outside the RH sphere of influence, openSUSE manages to offer Plasma equally next to Gnome even though Gnome is default in SLE.
While I generally agree that there’s probably not much appetite among the distributions for switching default, this point seems weird. I don’t see why KDE would be any less desired than Gnome in that segment.
Customization is usually the enemy of reliability and supportability
KDE Plasma 6 on Kinoite is actually really stable now for me. Some issues at the beginning, but their refactoring really made sensw.