Hi, David! I already wrote I agree with Lluis that the success of a desktop is driven by a diverse and large set of applications. I've also seen many people say Mono is a nice platfrom to build apps on. I can't judge this due to not being a developer but I have no reason to mis-trust these statements.
You're right that the majority of user don't care about the language an application is written in. However, you miss one point: Linux users do care because they were taught to do so. ;-) When you are required to install dependencies, required to know what a compiler is, and several other things, you do start to care about the language and the development platform! And: Yes! You are required to know about this stuff because OS application developers unfortunately don't care about making proper binaries that run on many distributions. And not even Debian offers packages for all applications. ;-) You say many people run Mono applications already. So, what would change if Mono becomes a dependency in the desktop release? Nothing, it seems. It would be just a sort of approvement. If Mono would really need it for market success, that's wouldn't be a good sign. Don't you agree? You asked why should any user want to de-install an application. Indeed, the harddisk space is no reason to do so but my _attention space_ is much more restricted. I don't like Totem so there's no reason for it to waste space in my (right-click) menus and my attention. For this reason, I de-installed Totem; and Nautilus started to get a hick-up when using the right-click menu on media files. You also said, nobody is going to de-install a rocking application. You're right but please understand that there's no such thing as a rocking application for _everybody_! Totem might rock for most people -- I don't like it. You probably love F-Spot -- I don't need it. You may like Rhythmbox -- I don't use it. And this is a good thing! Because this is what a desktop is for: That we don't need different desktops just because we don't agree on certain applications! You wrote, you're going to stop using GNOME if Mono's not included. But why should you do that? * You want to use C# and Mono: You can do so. * You want to use something like MonoDevelop: You can do so, too. * You want ISVs to be able to use Mono: They can do so right now! * You want GNOME's blessing for GTK#: It could be included in the platform release. The only disadvantage is that an application like Tomboy or Beagle would not be able to enter the desktop release. Tomboy's nice but including it won't be a major selling point for GNOME. Beagle might be a selling point but there seems to be an alternative option (IMHO, the search stuff is over-hyped, anyway, but that's just me). And apps like F-Spot don't need to be included by default. It would be a completely different discussion if we were talking about Topaz but we are not -- I mean: hopefully we not otherwise I missed an important piece of the debate. ;-) And we're not talking about certain application suites, as proposed by Dave Neary. I believe nobody would mind if you want to use Mono for one of these projects. There's enought demand for cool applications, and enought room to use Mono, C# and GTK#. But according to what you wrote, there's C# just one way to use Mono and it needs the GNOME desktop release to depend on it. Why not the killer-application for Wannabe-Quentin-Tarantinos? So: Yes! We need more applications! But not more of those that we could include in the desktop, and certainly no more editors or audio players. We need applications that can stand on their own, that could sell themselves on gnomefiles.org and freshmeat.org! Something as useful as GIMP or Inkscape. Instead of fighing over a non-issue -- depending on Mono won't make GNOME something completely different that everybody wants to have suddenly --, we should think about a way to let users install application more easily, IHMO. Because that's the major restriction on marketing applications on Linux right now: They don't spread because users can't install them! And I don't seem to be the only one: Havoc Pennington wrote: "... RPM and dpkg are not designed for third-party software, and the diversity of Linux distributions makes it even harder. The whole Linux ecosystem is set up assuming a single giant pool of built-from-source packages. Which has many advantages, but easiness for ISVs is not one of them." However, that's a different discussion. :-) So: Using Mono for Topaz or applications is not a problem. Making the desktop release depend on it, however, is one. IMHO as a user, of course. :-) Cheers, Claus P.S.: Accusing me of using GNOME because I hate Microsoft wasn't polite, really. _______________________________________________ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list