[CS-FSLUG] Theory Exercise: Stable Desktop

[Ed Hurst]

Humor me for a moment. I write from acknowledged ignorance of the finer 
details.

Assume for the moment I am part of the leadership for a new distro 
project. We are going to have one, and only one, desktop. Among other 
things, we want to choose, adapt, or if necessary develop our own 
desktop environment. A major requirement is stable experience for the 
user over a period of years. Underlying changes are fine, but it must 
remain just as quick on that same hardware four or five years later as 
it was at first. This is non-negotiable. Innovation must take a back 
seat to stability.

We have developers willing to work under this restriction. With what you 
know about various window managers and desktop environments, what would 
you recommend our team of developers work on? Among the options would be 
forking a current project at some "really good" release point and 
keeping it there (say, KDE 3.1.5), resurrecting some long forgotten 
favorite (CDE?), or adapting some ideas and building a whole new project 
(a la Xfce).

-- 
Ed Hurst
------------
Associate Editor, Open for Business: http://ofb.biz/
Applied Bible - http://soulkiln.org/
Kiln of the Soul - http://soulkiln.blogspot.com/