Bug 374798

Good point.

The text that appears in desktop selection is taken from the selected pattern...

"kde", "gnome", "xfce" ...

Coolo, please, update the pattern description if you feel like.

Do you have some text suggestion? The source is at:
https://svn.suse.de/svn/pattern/trunk/tools/patterns/src/patterns_utf8.c

Putting Karl and Frank in CC, they might have input as well.

Is it possible to make any more intrusive changes to this selector?

IMO choosing minimal then using the pattern selector is too much hard work, since we're supposed to be reducing the number of steps.

In decreasing order of preference, I'd like to see
1) separate choices for KDE 3 and KDE 4, with KDE 3 text emphasising that this is the /previous/ version of the KDE desktop

2) When KDE is chosen, show nested pair of radiobuttons showing this choice (GNOME users won't even see it)

3) A KDE 3 choice in the Others... choices, with the KDE 4 text indicating that the previous, stable version can be accessed here.  This is probably the simplest to indicate, right?

3) sounds good but it seems the "Others..." option doesn't exist anymore. :-| So it would have to relatively complicated read like

"KDE 3.5.9, the latest release of the stable KDE3 series, is also included within openSUSE 11.0. For installation select first 'Minimal X Windows' as system type and later on the 'Installation Overview' screen add under 'Software' the 'KDE3 Desktop Environment' pattern."

or alike.

this won't work, it's the pattern description we're talking about - which will be used in plenty other places

How about 2) with a 'KDE' label that is either hardcoded or i18ned from somewhere else, that expands into 2 sub-radio buttons with the KDE3 and KDE 4 pattern descriptions?

Will you guys please just do as Will (#4) told you to, thank you. :-)

We need seperate KDE3 and KDE4 patterns with separate appropriate descriptions,
both easily selectable under "System Type" as in Will's option 1) or 2).

Option 3), Hiding KDE3 or other "System Types" under "Other" has proven a bad
idea imo. I regularly have to explain to long time SUSE users that openSUSE
actually offers a stripped down text install - and often times they hardly
believe me when I tell them. Hiding KDE3 under "Other" would mean hardly anyone
would notice it was available.

Current strategy of telling users to select minimal install and then manually
add kde3 patterns, is almost as bad as not including KDE3 desktop at all. Only
a few hardcore users will ever figure it out, and they'll probably be annoyed
by the amount of hoops they need to go through, to get a KDE3 desktop.

Regarding the descriptions maybe the old one could be reused with the following
additions:

For KDE4: "KDE4.0 is the latest major release of KDE, it's immature but
exciting."

For KDE3: "KDE3.5 is the previous release of KDE, it's mature and stable but a
little old and boring."

Sounds good, but we need better descriptions ;). Perhaps:

KDE 4: KDE 4.0 is the latest major release of KDE; it's less mature, but contains all of the latest KDE technologies and applications". 

KDE 3: "KDE 3.5 is the previous release of KDE; it's mature and stable, but contains the older desktop and applications"

Not my decision

+1 for separate choices for KDE 3 & 4

I really don't care how you call it - besides the obvious stuff (KDE3 is old and KDE4 is universal peace ;) - aka I'm perfectly happy with Francis suggestions) but IMHO it's neither good to make KDE4 the default (although this is not the point here) nor not to make it as easy as possible to select KDE3.

Why? For the following, probably obvious, reasons:

1. KDE 4.0.x is neither intended for the end user nor on feature parity with KDE 3. So making KDE 4 the default with an easy to miss option to install KDE 3 will just result in some morons claiming that "Suse is da suxs cause their KDE is broken & far worse than their previous version".

2. KDE 3.5.9 is very polished & stable & generally works just great. Further it probably is preferred in a conservative / "I want to get stuff done" environment.

3. The argument that KDE 3.5 isn't supported officially and therefore there shouldn't be a choice is just bad because, following the usual no upgrades but just updates rule, it would mean that KDE 4.1 isn't supported as well which then will result in openSUSE 11.0 only supporting a KDE version that isn't intended for the end user.

To make it short: I don't care if it is officially supported or not but I really want a separate choice to easily install KDE 3.

Thanks :)

How about we just *say* KDE3 is supported, but the developers don't fix any bugs or spend any time on it. From what I hear this approach has worked out fine for GNOME in recent openSUSE releases.

There can hardly be any doubt that offering an easy way to install KDE3 will diminish the total number of bug reports and complaints for KDE team substantially.

Agree 100% with Will and Martin (Lasarsch), we clearly need both options as, let's be honest, it's quite probable that there will still be some serious issues with KDE4 when 11.0 will come out, probably not for everyone, but certainly for a non negligible amount of users.

+1

Implemented in Beta 1.