Issue
Can there be a different default offering for Fedora, other than the current (GNOME-based) Desktop spin?
Background
Before the advent of Live distributions, the default Fedora product was a DVD with many software choices available. By default, a user who did not choose to customize the packages installed would end up with a GNOME Desktop environment along with some other best-of-breed applications. Because the Fedora DVD originally branched off from the Red Hat Linux product, it inherited these choices.
With Live images, installation becomes marginally simpler because the package complement is transferred as-is, directly from the Live image to hard disk or some other installation target. The user is then free to change that complement as desired. (In practice, most Live spins do not differ significantly from one another in any crucial way that prevents these changes from happening smoothly.) Currently different spins are found through http://spins.fedoraproject.org. Each Spin producer can customize the pages for the Spin site to help users decide whether that Spin is of interest.
Currently, the Fedora Project's default distribution offering is the Live Desktop spin, owned by the Desktop SIG.
Possible actions
- Default offering stays the same.
- Change the default offering to some other spin.
- Rotate the default offering on a regular basis.
- Do not choose a default offering, and offer all possible spins together.
Risk/benefit analysis
- what problems does a single default offering solve?
- what problems would multiple offerings cause?