> The biggest incentive for people to quit using a GNOME desktop, and move > to Windows, is arbitrary, caprious changing of the user desktop for no > good reason to the users. Rather than people guessing this is what > users want or need, it seems to me that actually talking to cross sections > of a wide variety of users might provide accurate models of what people > need and want.
You need to talk to a wide variety of potential users as well - Havoc is right that they tell you very different things to your typical Linux user. It's obviously hard to figure out their view on the changing nature of Gnome because they don't yet use it. Existing users do regularly mention "it changes too much/fast" and often use words like "arbitary" and "arrogant". They are I think much more concerned about lack of desktop lockdown ability and performance than about "Run as" however. One thing that is annoying as hell that I've now heard from several people involved in the front line pushing desktops is that "If its not in the same place as in Windows then they assume its a missing feature". I fear users are now so brainwashed/trained into one thing that what users _think_ they want is a windows clone. I'm all for seeing a better Gnome but removing things that don't cause confusion for what appear to be arbitary reasons doesn't work. All it will do is cause a fork in Gnome between "purist Gnome" and "vendor shipped Gnome for real people", where the latter puts back things the users expect regardless of their "purity" of model. I'm baffled why "Run as" is a problem to anyone but the balance is hard and the more folks can go and talk to users/potential users the better. Go victimise some relatives, business associates or other willing (or unable to escape) people and take notes. Its a parallelisable problem to do that and then look for common themes in the results. Alan _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
