The most popular feature in openFATE (at least of this writing) is a proposal from KDE e.V. member Frank Karlitschek to make KDE the "default" in openSUSE. Michael Loeffler has also blogged about this and put it on the opensuse-project mailing list.
A couple of arguments have been given in favor of this proposal, but none that are particularly compelling. Let's look at some of the reasons that have been put forward by Frank:
- It is confusing for new Linux users if they have to decide between KDE and GNOME during the installation.
- Unique Selling Point. It is important for openSUSE to provide something that Ubuntu and Fedora don´t provide. It would be beneficial for openSUSE to be the only big KDE distribution.
- This could attract more developers because KDE developers need a nice distribution to develop on.
- This would increase the popularity of openSUSE in the KDE user community. The negative impact on the GNOME community is not that bad because Ubuntu is the most popular GNOME distribution.
Confusing?
The first point, that it's "confusing for new Linux users," has some merit -- choice means having to think about the relative merits of the options put forward, and since most new Linux users don't have a lot of information to decide it probably is mildly confusing. But limiting choice, in my opinion, isn't the best option -- the best option here is to do a better job at informing new users. Or, perhaps, encouraging new users to grab a live CD instead of the DVD and test drive both before making a decision.
The next point, that this would be a "unique selling point," because Fedora and Ubuntu don't provide a default KDE desktop is not convincing at all. We have a "unique selling point," now -- which is we offer two outstanding desktop environments to choose from at install time. (And, of course, Xfce and other Window Managers if you delve a bit deeper...)
And of course, there's Kubuntu -- which provides KDE as its default. So, how unique would we be again?
For me, our selling point is choice: Come for GNOME, come for KDE, we have both, plus Xfce, and a whole slew of other great software (like YaST, Zypper, etc.) and project tools (the openSUSE Build Service).
More developers, really? Promise?
Point three (attract more developers) is sort of the main point of interest for me. We all want to see more contributors to openSUSE, so if this was likely to attract more developers, it might be worth considering.
But why would this attract more KDE developers? Apparently because we'd be sending a political statement that we put KDE above GNOME. Nothing would change, technically -- we'd just be giving the KDE option a bit more oomph. This doesn't make openSUSE's KDE any better in and of itself. It doesn't provide any technical tools that make openSUSE better for developers.
openSUSE is already a "nice distribution to develop on." We're extremely KDE-friendly, we have a great KDE implementation, and we have the openSUSE Build Service. Thanks to our existing KDE community, we're one of the first distros to have KDE packages (damn good ones) following each KDE release that are dead-easy to install on the testing distro and on the stable releases. I'm not knocking the other distros here -- just saying, it seems to me that all of the components for a great KDE distro already exist in openSUSE -- minus the political flag that says "we like KDE better than GNOME, we recommend KDE over GNOME" or whatever.
The flip side of that is -- will we lose GNOME developers (or other developers who work on other tools but prefer the GNOME desktop) because of this statement? I think that's likely.
Which brings me to the final point:
Increase popularity of openSUSE in KDE user community?
This may be the case. If we make KDE our "default," it might well inspire some brand loyalty to openSUSE amongst KDE users. Again - what's been proposed doesn't make our KDE better (or worse) it just means that the project has decided to recommend one above the other.
openSUSE has been extremely supportive of the KDE user community. We're shipping two KDE desktops in 11.1 (and 11.0 before it) because we wanted to provide the right desktop for our KDE users who wanted the "classic" KDE or the new KDE. That wasn't something that many other distros did. Actually, I don't know of any other distros shipping both releases at the same time, but with so many distros out there... let's just say none of the "major" distros have taken this path.
The second half, though, is what I disagree with most strongly: "negative impact on the GNOME community is not that bad because Ubuntu is the most popular GNOME distribution."
The impact on the overall GNOME community may not be that great. The impact on the openSUSE GNOME community, though, is not going to be good. How many of our contributors are going to feel alienated because their platform of choice has been downgraded to second choice? How many users will choose Ubuntu because we're signaling that GNOME is (ever so slightly) less important to us. If this is of great importance to KDE developers and users that we choose one over the other, then the logical assumption is there's going to be equal backlash from GNOME developers and users at being the second choice.
Granted -- there's no real change in the quality or availability of the desktops in either case -- it's the political signal that we prefer one over the other. Sometimes a political signal is a good thing. Given two equal choices, I'll shop at or patronize businesses that signal (for instance) that they're politically progressive, or that they support the environment, etc.
If the issue was merely sending a pro-KDE message, I'd be quite in favor. But it's not neutral to GNOME (in my opinion) because we're effectively choosing one over the other -- even if that's not the spirit in which it's intended (and I like to think that Frank is trying to send a pro-KDE message, not an anti-GNOME message), I'm concerned that it will be interpreted wrongly.
I appreciate the desire to make openSUSE a welcome home for KDE developers and users. I just think we could find a better way to accomplish it.
50 Comments
NO, we don't need a default desktop. I understand perfectly well that if one is very satisfied with one's desktop environment of choise that one want to see it made the default. But one should still be able to see that the OTHER half of opensuse users doesn't agree.
So just please DON'T.
Well, I've to disagree on how you dismiss some of Frank's arguments. Most notably this one:
"And of course, there’s Kubuntu — which provides KDE as its default."
You're completely negating the fact that the distro is Ubuntu and its default is GNOME. Kubuntu is an afterthought to pretend providing choice and pretend having some KDE support. But really did you use it? It's nowhere near what openSUSE is providing already in support, or what openSUSE could provide if it got back to KDE as default (don't forget openSUSE has a legacy from the time where a small company in germany created a distro which had KDE as default).
As for attracting KDE developers, well of course it will. Not all of them, but at least most of the ones who would switch to openSUSE because they'd feel welcome. Right, the proposal itself doesn't immediately change the quality of the KDE support, it's mostly about perception and trying to fix the harms some announcement for SLED did a while back.
But look at it over time. I for one would definitely start packaging some extra KDE apps for openSUSE thanks to OBS, and also would give a hand to the desktop team in its work. Also the KDE work going upstream will be facilitated if more KDE developers use openSUSE. So long term the integration of KDE in openSUSE would even improve of what's existing now.
As a final note, you'd also get users along the way. Today I use openSUSE with KDE on it (and locally I'm definitely not the only one), but I'm not recommending it around me as there's no strong committment from the distro on KDE support.
Which makes it purely political, and does harm to our GNOME community. No thanks.
I fail to see how you can make this claim. As I cited in my post, we have made many moves that demonstrate openSUSE's commitment to KDE -- what is really being asked here is a statement that we support KDE *more* than GNOME, which I find unnecessary.
"""
The first point, that it’s “confusing for new Linux users,†has some merit — choice means having to think about the relative merits of the options put forward, and since most new Linux users don’t have a lot of information to decide it probably is mildly confusing. But limiting choice, in my opinion, isn’t the best option — the best option here is to do a better job at informing new users. Or, perhaps, encouraging new users to grab a live CD instead of the DVD and test drive both before making a decision.
""""
I think you're overestimating potential users. Let me give an example, two questions:
- What is your timezone?
- Do you want KDE or GNOME?
Most people reading this will probably be able to answer both questions easily. Most of the people in The Real World won't be able to make a decision right away though, so they have to invest into doing research, which costs time and therefore increases the costs of trying openSuse -- something which you want to make as easy as possible. The choice between desktop environments adds weight to the installation process, many new users who don't care about GNOME or KDE or don't know either both will be unsure and maybe confused whether they made the right choice, or if they should've clicked "the other option they don't know the meaning of".
Just accepting the default when you're unsure (which is just good user interface design) isn't possible with no option at least pre-selected. That makes a bad first impression. If the openSuse community wants to make openSuse more accessible for new users, it should offer reasonable defaults and not force new users to make decisions they do, at that point, not know enough about. To me personally, it reduces the value of a distribution if I want to recommend it to someone, because I can't simply say: Just pop in the CD, it'll ask some simple questions such as timezone, name, but you don't need to know anything Linux-specific to get started.
Choice is not just a checkbox during install, choice is offering good alternatives to what's there and good documentation about that. I don't see that jeopardized at all, in this discussion. For those that are in for choice, it's right there install another desktop.
To me, this mandatory desktop choice checkbox shows one thing very well, that politics are apparently more important than offering the best possible user experience. This should be corrected.
This assumes that the "real world people" haven't done any research before they pop in an openSUSE disc -- which may be true in some cases, but I doubt it is the majority. The "confusion" level of new users is also being radically over-emphasized in my opinion.
We offer a KDE live CD - which removes any of the objections you have to the choice. Why not recommend that?
If politics were unimportant, I doubt we'd be having this discussion, true -- the pro-default argument has basically been largely predicated around making a political statement.
I think making novice installers choose between Gnome and KDE is ridiculous, in fact asking any questions is likely to make them give up. The live CD makes all the choices for you. I think the installer should use the available info (IP address, etc.) to make the best guess it can, not ask any questions and allow the user to correct afterwards. The first time the user does some Administration/root task, make them set a password for that.
If KDE is stable and fully functional, then default to that, but initially disable any performance sapping indexing if it is going to make it unusable.
But also install Gnome and Xfce, they each seem to run each others applications, but the beginner may prefer Xfce.
I agree. Actually yesterday I wanted post in openfate that it is pointless to make kde the default DE from a newbie point of view because no newbie would install openSUSE from the installable DVD. He/She would do it from a liveCD if he/she can burn an iso image, can boot to one and is courageous enough .
Let's look at it from a different perspective. It's my understanding that openSUSE is either 2nd or 3rd in distribution, reported by DistroWatch, and is not making a significant dent in Ubuntu's lead. Maybe its time to stop playing politics and role the dice and see what happens. Remember in the end we are only talking about a default of an optionbox.
Nice how you ignored my other points. Thanks for resting my case on the unique selling point.
As for the strong commitment... You fail to see how I can claim this? It's very easy, requires to know your history though. Although the KDE support is good, and better than in most distros, the political moves which happened after Novell entered the game jeopardized greatly the level of quality of KDE in SUSE (now openSUSE). The KDE integration was better before that (should I also mention the downsizing in number of hired developers for the relevant teams?). And we've no guarantee that it won't continue in this way to the point where openSUSE won't be the best in this department anymore. So yes, until openSUSE is back at the table and publicly commit to be the best distro with KDE by default on it, I'll likely not advocate it.
In any case, the ongoing vote proves you wrong for now. And it's definitely a good test case on how open openSUSE really became.
Just because the project goes in favor of KDE, doesn't mean that Novell will commit any additional resources to KDE -- that's my point. In fact, I'm pretty sure that won't happen. So, the level of commitment stays equal. The project, however, has never wavered from supporting KDE. So, I don't see a real change here.
"This assumes that the “real world people†haven’t done any research before they pop in an openSUSE disc — which may be true in some cases, but I doubt it is the majority."
Then you should seriously consider which user base you're targetting... But Joe user definitely hasn't done any research before they pop in an openSUSE disc. They likely got it advised by a friend, or take it out for a try.
Your current user base probably has done some research though. But I thought the goal of openSUSE was to grow its market share, in this case be ready for users who won't do any research...
It should be a no-brainer really. KDE 4 is a modern desktop, whereas Gnome has been stuck on version 2 since 2002
Yeah, some extra research there might be in order.
Being a non-technical user, I would definitely agree to standardise one desktop for openSUSE.
Non-geeks like me are mostly confused with the ton of choices. Try going to a totally new place that get advise from passerby how to go to a location and each person tells you a different way/ method
Just wanted to comment and say that as a Gnome user, I read the first couple sentences of a blog post on this issue and already in the back of mind was the thought "Maybe I'll have to switch to a different distro." Maybe that makes me disloyal or something. But I do prefer openSUSE's gnome implementation to that of Ubuntu. As you say, the result of this change would mean nothing except the message "We like KDE better"
Just commenting to say that yes, Gnome users would feel slighted.
Vote.
Why not provide a screenshot/screencast of a default GNOME and KDE desktop in the installer?
Then the people who doesnt know already what to choose, would get an idea what their desktop would look like after a installation.
(and also maby a list of software that will be included in said DE)
That way, a default desktop would not be needed.
> > To me, this mandatory desktop choice checkbox shows one thing very well, that politics are apparently more important than offering the best possible user experience. This should be corrected.
> If politics were unimportant, I doubt we’d be having this discussion, true — the pro-default argument has basically been largely predicated around making a political statement.
What you should be doing, and that has been clearly pointed out by both the user survey and the FATE entry is a clear statement that you acknowledge this strong trend towards KDE in openSuse, and start thinking about ways provide this focus to the people requesting KDE as default. Show that focus to the user is *more* important than the politics you seem to be so afraid of.
Take this opportunity, use the positive energy that is there right now and get things moving, rather than sitting there, sticking your fingers into your ears and repeating the same self-made-up truth over being afraid of taking a decision that's long been made among users already. Here's your chance, take it.
Furthermore, I think it would really send the wrong message if Novell / openSuse dismissed this opportunity for openSuse and KDE to get closer together again. Moreover, it would do serious harm to the credibility of openSuse as a community-driven project, and it will also surely not help the perception of many KDE users and contributors of openSuse and Novell. Not mine personally in any event.
No one has ever claimed that KDE isn't a strong trend in KDE users. Why you need an *additional statement is what confuses me.
The logics goes like this:
- default to KDE and commit to it
- attracts contributors (remember? you choosed to ignore the claims there, go back to my previous comments for the detailed reasoning)
- overall experience gets better in openSUSE/KDE, as the integration improve
- guess what SLED users will want in the end?
From that I guess Novell will probably want to commit additional resources to it. That's definitely driven by demand, and demand you have sir.
If I remember correctly (open)SUSE lost quite some users because of the announcements made of dropping KDE a while back.
Actually I find it funny to call the current *vote* playing politics, and trying to dismiss it with this argument, when a while ago it was fine to try to unilaterally commit to one desktop (the one which wasn't used by the user base at the time, and which is still the minority in openSUSE users).
I addressed this in my blog and your detailed reasoning isn't persuasive. You may *guess Novell would want to commit additional resources to KDE, but I wouldn't place money on that. Sorry, wishful thinking. It *may bring additional contributors to openSUSE, but minus a *major and massive change in market preferences, Novell's default won't change.
Let's pick it up again:
"But look at it over time. I for one would definitely start packaging some extra KDE apps for openSUSE thanks to OBS, and also would give a hand to the desktop team in its work. Also the KDE work going upstream will be facilitated if more KDE developers use openSUSE. So long term the integration of KDE in openSUSE would even improve of what’s existing now."
You find that not persuasive? To me it'd be a net positive gain of pushing closer the openSUSE and KDE communities. Real outcomes and work done for a smoother experience.
I fail to see how it can't be persuasive of the fact that a) it'd attract contributors and b) would provide good outcomes for openSUSE.
"You find that not persuasive? To me it’d be a net positive gain of pushing closer the openSUSE and KDE communities. Real outcomes and work done for a smoother experience."
I guess I don't find it persuasive because nothing stops you from doing that now, except that we're not explicitly setting KDE as the default. Lots of people (as Will has pointed out) contribute to Kubuntu and Fedora without this statement, so...
I'm a KDE 4 user and just occationally use Gnome and I believe this is a very very very bad suggestion.
The Desktop Environments needs fierce competition every day and in as many distros as possible. Share what's shareable but compete!
That's the only way they will develop into good products.
Look at Microsoft Windows and you'll see how bad it becomes if domination is achieved.
The Linux/OpenSource DE's have virtually just broken free from the concept of sticking close to the Microsoft usability consept and reducing competition is the worst thing that could happen.
What Linux needs now is fierce competition between Gnome and KDE, Kontact and Evolution, Android Vs Moblin Vs Maemo Vs PRE Vs Symbian/Qt and so on.
I voted for the feature, if only to be part of a reminder to Novell/opensuse that the majority of opensuse users DO still use kde.
This necessary IMO because:
1) Novell has in the past been heavily influenced by Gnomey types
2) opensuse's decision to bring out 11.3 in July 2010, just before KDE 4.5 arrives
I encourage opensuse to provide a quality Gnome desktop, but understand that i and the majority of other users prefer KDE, and share an enthusiasm to use the latest opensuse with the latest KDE, i.e. bear upstream in mind when planning release schedules, it matters to us.
I wonder if you're playing deaf on purpose... Yes nothing stop me from doing it now *technically*, now let's pick up what I wrote earlier (again, was in comment 2 BTW):
"As for attracting KDE developers, well of course it will. Not all of them, but at least most of the ones who would switch to openSUSE because they’d feel welcome."
Or in other word: They're not feeling welcome right now, or as welcome as they were in the past when SUSE was a distro with the KDE flag.
Again for the reason why, look at the history with Novell. There's an opportunity to heal that, it'd be sad to not take it (even more so when it's pushed by a vote of people who actually cared enough to be registered).
I'm sorry you're not feeling welcome now. I'm sorry that it would require making other users feel unwelcome to make you feel welcome. I'm all for "healing" things, as long as the cure isn't worse than the disease. Alienating another chunk of our community doesn't seem like the right way to do it. I'd hope there's a way to make KDE users feel welcome without making GNOME folks feel unwelcome.
Then, I think we disagree on the amount of alienation which got done on the KDE community in openSUSE, and the amount of alienation this request would lead to in the GNOME community.
In this case that's a perfectly fine disagreement as it's definitely not something you can have strong metrics for.
"In this case that’s a perfectly fine disagreement as it’s definitely not something you can have strong metrics for."
And there we agree. A lot of this is pure speculation. If we could say definitively "well, X number of users will be happy, and Y number will not," it'd be much easier.
Think of Pardus as THE KDE distro nowadays (integrated tools etc). openSUSE is now just standard distro.
Whats the point ? Novell too a perfectly good KDE centric distro and turned it into GNOME centric distro. Now Mandriva is the one of the only major distros which are KDE centric.
It doesnt matter what openSuse users decided Novell is in bed with Microsoft and hence wants to push GNOME infected with Mono. If you prefer not to contribute to this I suggest you move. Mandriva works for me.
Former OpenSuse user
As someone who has little interest in the outcome of this discussion nowadays, I'd like to add that Novell somehow did give us the impression that it would cater to Gnome when it acquired Ximian, put some of the Ximian employees in the driver's seat and then started pushing lots of GTK/Gnome tools and technologies into what used to be one of the most popular KDE distros.
Also found strange the comparision between the KDE flavor of OpenSUSE and Kubuntu as anyone knows that Kubuntu does not receive nearly half the amount of care that Ubuntu gets and that it is broken in so many ways that it is not even funny. If that is what you have in mind to achieve with KDE in OpenSUSE then God help your KDE users!
Makes one long for the good ol days of SUSE, before the
De Icaza/Mono/Ximian crowd got their paws on it.
As mentioned above this is not a discussion about numbers and facts, but about feelings. My feeling (following some blogs and identi.ca) is that many KDE users and developers are searching a home (distro). As long as they are searching, changing and testing they don't commit. They are searching a distro with a fantastic KDE integration and a distro treating KDE not as NR. 2. With openSUSE a have the impression that GNOME and KDE are treated equal. But GNOME is a little bit more equal. (Perhaps caused by the grown support for GNOME in the last years.)
This discussion (as I understand it) is not about reducing choice. Those you know what they are doing still have the choice. I see this request not against GNOME. But I see it will be a challenge to communicate such a decision.
Must agree that I have no clue what (open)Suse adds extra compared to other distro's like Fedora/Redhat or Ubuntu/Debian (and the other way around btw). They all have big up to date repositories. If dropping GNOME means having more developers available for creating the ultimate KDE based distro I am all in favour. A good different distro would make Suse more attractive.
Pretty sure that will never happen though, since Novel clearly prefers GNOME and invested lots of resources into it together with Redhat and Ubuntu.
I'm on openSUSE 11.0 with KDE 3.5 as my desktop.
I think all this stuff about having a "default" desktop is composed of two things: 1) a hidden agenda about emphasizing one's preferred desktop; and 2) a completely addled notion that distros are distinguished by their desktops.
Linux has had TWO main desktops for a decade or more. It's ridiculous to start sub-dividing the OS into competing distros based on the desktop. BOTH desktops should be equally supported in all the main distros. If that isn't being done now, then it should be. It's up to the desktop developers to handle their projects and provide equal support to all the distros who want to be able to run their desktops.
This crap about being "too difficult to choose": I've never had the slightest inclination to use GNOME because of all the arguments over its methods of handling windows in the past. Also, coming from a Windows background (albeit I learned both Linux and Windows at the same time), and hearing KDE was more similar to Windows than GNOME, I've never had any interest in trying GNOME. KDE does what I need. But I see no reason to emphasize it over GNOME just to make openSUSE as popular as Ubuntu.
Personally, the one time I used Kubuntu, I got fed up with the bugs and the poor QA Canonical does. So I switched to openSUSE, because of my perception that the QA is better and the completeness of the distro. I think openSUSE should compete on that basis rather than try to emphasize that it's a one-desktop OS.
I see this whole argument as just another means of starting a flame war and dividing up the Linux community. It's little different from all the nonsense over the Novell-Microsoft deal. It's just a means for people to start arguments who have nothing better to do with their time.
Novell already has a Gnome centric desktop, SLED. Same as Ubuntu so why not make opensuse like Kubuntu and use KDE as the default. Opensuse already has already been polluted enough with gnome ideas in it like mono (thank goodness you can now choose not to have it)
(ironic) I think the real strength of the buddha is to wait until others have changed direction, so he can swim in the stream...
The day canonicals main distribution is kde based and their gnome will be called gubuntu is less than a year away.
"For me, our selling point is choice"
That's exactly how I see it. And I don't need a default or preselected desktopenvironment. When I first installed $suse, I tried GNOME and KDE and XFCE and so on. After that I was able to decide which desktop fits my needs. This something a distributor cannot decide. Maybe the majority of users uses KDE, but how can a distributor tell wether I am part of said majority?
I always enjoyed the freedom of choice in openSUSE.
And It would be a shame for openSUSE to loose GNOME-Hackers for the sake of such a Sommerlochdiscussion.
Joe,
I know you have a personal preference - and so do I. Sidestepping that, I think it is clear that making a strong choice (like Ubuntu did) does help a distribution. I am sure it would help OpenSuse to focus more strongly on one desktop.
And this 'focus' is not about resources, but about how OpenSuse is perceived. Both users and developers would love to see this happen - and growing 10% KDE users while losing 10% GNOME users would still increase the number of OpenSuse users quite a big, so why not?
If you feel this choice is forced upon you and OpenSuse - maybe. But that force is the community developing OpenSuse, so what is bad about that?
Actually, I switch desktops pretty regularly. Have since I started using Linux in 1996, and expect I will continue to. I like both KDE and GNOME, and -- more importantly -- I like a lot of the contributors to each project.
Maybe if we get a default desktop we can focus in a better experience.
I love what we have now but i always getting better and better
I agree with Jacob and I can see no technical reason for choosing a default as long as there are sufficient maintainers in the community to support a desktop. Indeed, developments like Studio should make this redundant. Let people continue to have the choice.
Zonker: "And of course, there’s Kubuntu — which provides KDE as its default. So, how unique would we be again?"
You're wrong here. There is no KDE for Ubuntu. There is only an afterthought provided as an excuse that even the Ubuntu people say is rubbish. I couldn't agree more, and I say that from experience. Kubuntu is rubbish. Monitor doesn't work - no tool to fix it. Network settings beyond DHCP can't be made - no tool to fix it. Give me openSUSE KDE 3 any time.
freedom of choice...
If freedom of choice is so important for you, why not let Suse developers work on better integration of all the other desktop environments (DE) available out there?
Because the developers work is missing in the integration of the *main* DE.
Ubuntu puts its effort in the Gnome DE, Microsoft works on its Windows DE but the openSuse project has so much manpower to spend - they just work on two main DEs.
Focussing on one DE automatically means less resources for the other DE, so I'd prefer a strong commitment to ONE DE.
I beleave that it is a good idea to make KDE the default openSUSE desktop, focus in make it solid rock and completely integrated in openSUSE, and leave the option to install gnome from the DVD if the user wants to after the installation, if the user knows the difference between the two desktops and he likes gnome, he will look for it, if not, he will be happy with KDE.
There is too the posibility to remove gnome from the installation media and use that disk space to include more software, and leave the option to install gnome via online repos, so the user always have the choice to install it.
"Focussing on one DE automatically means less resources for the other DE, so I’d prefer a strong commitment to ONE DE."
But then why not choosing Gnome over KDE? so all efforst from other distros (i.e Fedora, Ubuntu) goes to openSuse as well?
I think Suse is making the difference by providing equal support to both DE which is great. Averybody, gnome fan or kde fan is wellcome to openSuse which means a larger number of contribuitors... KDE developers + Gnome developer > KDE/Gnome developers
>> “Focussing on one DE automatically means less resources for the >> other DE, so I’d prefer a strong commitment to ONE DE.â€
> But then why not choosing Gnome over KDE? so all efforst from other > distros (i.e Fedora, Ubuntu) goes to openSuse as well?
It would even be ok to choose Gnome over KDE. As explained, I think the integration of openSuse into ONE desktop would be beneficial.
But then you have to think what users you want to attract. Will you produce one more Gnome distribution and loose the 60% KDE lovers of your userbase?
Yes, make KDE default it would simplify things a lot.
Defauting KDE does not mean that you cant install Gnome if you want.
I don't agree with the idea of making KDE the default desktop for openSUSE. One of openSUSE's greatest strengths is that multiple desktops are supported equally, and the *user's preference* weighs into the behavior of the distro. I don't like the choices that Windows and OSX make for me, as a user. I don't like a lot of the choices that Ubuntu makes, and that they bury advanced options. SuSE has always made it easy for me to craft a desktop that works for me, without making me jump through hoops. I wouldn't want to give that up. And, as a user who (currently) prefers gnome, I don't want to waste the time uninstalling KDE cruft that gets preinstalled by default.
There was some discussion of changing the selection page to make it more usable, using screenshots, default application lists. I like that idea, a lot.
But really, with the live discs and their accompanying installers, isn't this moot?