Generally maps well…however does “Linux” need to be in there?
Is there a “Fedora Windows with KDE”?
Shouldn’t it be “Fedora Workstation with KDE”?
And to exemplify, I will put this screenshots taken from the Manjaro Linux page:
No harm in accept that a part of the project is community maintained…
Hello @tdawson ,
Welcome to the discussion area. You bring up a good point about visual scope of what is perceived to be Fedora Linux. This is a direct result IMO of stating that there is a default DE, which is really more interrelated with the SW mgmt than any DE preference of those assembling the distribution as a team.
Back to the discussion around Spins and Labs, I think labs have not shared the attention spins received originally. Spins are easier to identify with as a user since the immediate differences are visual, while labs are a specific software collection for a stated use case. If you aren’t interested in that use case, you’re not likely to visit the labs info page. If I look at early years of using Fedora, and the last 10 in particular, the knowledge of fedora Linux as offered as Server and Workstation is sort of ingrained in the general Linux community at large. Maybe the official Editions are now too prominent and all that is needed is to bring the Spins and Labs into focus on the new website, a bit better. I think both have validity and relevance still in the community.
[Edit] After reading further posts I too must agree with the “Fedora Linux with …” approach, much clearer, easier to market too I would think. Of course this still leaves the lab’s …
[more edit’s]
Lab’s presented as “Fedora Linux for …” and Spin’s presented as “Fedora Linux with …” would then benefit by immediately not distinguishing it from Fedora Linux. Sort of flatten the representation of what is Fedora Linux I guess.
I agree with you. It can be as simple as updating the website. And I also realize that it might take years for the outside world to realize the change. But we need to start somewhere, and I’m grateful for the discussion that has developed.
I also like the “Fedora Linux with …” and “Fedora Linux for …” concept.
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No harm, but I remain strongly against that sort of “official vs. community” distinction in Fedora. Here, everything is community, official and otherwise.
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Thinking about this more, I can also come on-board to @ankursinha’s proposal. It makes the most sense to me too if we were to rename things.
I understand the intent behind acknowledging community work being official. But perhaps “official” is not the right word. There is a vast difference between how Workstation is maintained versus Xfce or i3wm in Fedora. There is no Fedora Council policy or project-wide messaging strategy that can change that (in my eyes at least).
Workstation/GNOME is a Fedora deliverable, tied closely to notable-sized group’s paid day-job work. There is a strong investment made there. The other desktop environments lean more towards community-oriented work, i.e. people who volunteer in their own time and are not paid for their work. It is not impossible that the KDE team could suddenly get an influx of people who are paid to work on it, but I see that as unlikely given the funding dynamic we have in Fedora. My intention isn’t to make an issue or problem of this, because I don’t see this to be problematic. But I do think it is important to be clear-eyed in identifying the nature of our reality.
“Official” and “community” perhaps aren’t the right comparisons, but I see where @x3mboy is coming from that we can’t truly put them on equal grounds. I think the best parallel we have seen for this is how Fedora Infrastructure and the Red Hat CPE team have designated some apps and websites as “community-maintained.” Yes, they are still “official” Fedora websites or apps, but they are definitely not maintained the same way as Bodhi or Koji are.
In that same sense, there is probably a better way for us to distinguish the Fedora Editions, like Fedora Linux Workstation with GNOME, from something like Fedora Linux with KDE, Xfce, i3, etc.
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Just throwing this out there as a thought…
“Fedora Linux Workstation with GNOME” seems awful long. I wonder if we could come up with some clever punctuation like “Fedora+ Linux …” for the “default” version with the extra QA?
I don’t think we need to name “Fedora Workstation” anything silly like “Fedora Workstation with GNOME”. Fedora Workstation is a fine name. It’s only the spins that have really long / clunky names “Fedora KDE Plasma Desktop” “Fedora Xfce Desktop”, etc, hence why I agree with the propsoal to change the spins’ names to “Fedora [Linux] with KDE” “Fedora [Linux] with Xfce”, and the labs’ should be “Fedora [Linux] for Astronomy”, “Fedora [Linux] for Design”, etc. Fedora Workstation can and should stay just “Fedora Workstation”!
I don’t think stating the desktop environment in the labs is really necessary. That just creates over-verbose names like the ones you just mentioned. Names like “Fedora Linux for Astronomy with KDE” are a bit ridiculous (and the labs don’t come with multiple desktop environments); instead, I believe the labs’ pages need to have up-to-date screenshots and information that show and tell the desktop environment they come with. The Fedora Labs site is in desperate need of updating - the Fedora Design Suite page’s header shows an incredibly outdated screenshot with GNOME 2 for example, and the Fedora Python Classroom lab page seems to be the only page to actually have a gallery of screenshots showing off what the project is all about.
@mxanthropocene, I guess, this has a reason why astronomy comes with KDE. There is software who just runs on this environment. And as mentioned above, the history of “Linux Desktops” has to be taken in consideration. The KDE is one of the older Desktops !
And if the “Gnome fans” want a own Lab with their Workstation, they need to do their part and change the fact, that older/specific software just works on KDE. Just use the Spirit or Opensource and change that, binging this kind of software to gnome. And even better, make it work also with Wayland.
Just crossing arms and wait till it works under Gnome wiil not change enyting.
About the discussion Lab versus Spin and with versus for … even the maintainers of the Lab page mix the lab with spin ?!
In my opinion it has to be " The Lab privides …" (see below)
Fedora Astronomy brings a complete open source toolchain to both amateur and professional astronomers.
The Spin provides the Fedora KDE desktop enhanced with a complete scientific Python environment and the AstrOmatic software for data analysis. KStars was added to provide a full featured astrophotography tool. As KStars uses the INDI library to control equipment, various telescopes, cameras etc. are supported. Summarized, Fedora Astronomy provides a complete set of software, from the observation planning to the final results.
Sorry for the late reply as real life keep me busy. As pointed out, mentioning a specific desktop environment in the title can lead further confusion and strongly suggest yet another fragmentation. The naming “Fedora Linux for …” is more appealing and easy to remember.
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The Labs category is a distinct advantage of using Fedora Linux. I feel settled in with a few versions of Fedora Linux for my home computing setup. Although I’m comfortable with the distinction between Labs and Spins, merging Labs and Spins will be a good indicator of what the Fedora community communicates in favor of inclusiveness.
Before I saw this post, I summed it up like
Domain specific OS
Just like a pre-provisioned computer at work, you have the freedom to choose a functional bundle that’s the best fit for your workflow. You don’t have to spend hours rummaging through the internet to configure your computer.
- The Python Classroom labs
- One for a graphic designer
- Pre-built minimal Fedora Linux: Example i3 Spins
(Minimal in terms of out of the box/simple initial config, not build from the ground up spending hours of configuration)
As a side, the availability of cloud base images in big public cloud services can be a deciding factor for cloud-native developers and enthusiastic users of Linux. AL2022 is fantastic news.
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Just thought I’d bring this conversation back up, since it looks like we may(?) be welcoming a Sway and Budgie spin with Fedora Linux 37 or 38, it would be a great time to implement these proposed name changes, if the community approves of course 
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@mattdm The design team’s current thoughts on this is that rather than separate out spins and labs on their own websites, they’ll be brought back into the main website under a general “Downloads” area. We will elevate / promote the editions the most visibly. The main distinction between labs and spins is whether or not they are focused on a desktop vs. functionality, so we could just call them all “spins” and the spins focused on desktop could be “desktop spins” or under a “desktop” category of spins, and the spins focused on function / use case could be categorized under their functions or even called “lab spins” or something like that.
So, we’re pulling labs & spins back onto the main website. And the distinction between desktop (spins) and function (labs) will remain, but may be in terms of a category applied towards a general “spins” notion rather than completely different terminology.
Does that make sense?
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This is a great idea, it covers the main conversation of this thread that is exposure of both labs and spin.
It make sense, but I think the idea was to not having it separate from each other. The term we discussed was “Solutions” but there wasn’t a consensus about it. In this particular case I think wording is important, and we though about use Fedora with and Fedora for that could fit under the idea of “Solutions”
My questions here are:
- By having this included in the main site, Would we drop labs.fp.o and spins.fp.o?
- If we drop those, Will we have specific page per “Solution” (e.g.: labs.fp.o/jam)
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Yes, we (Sway SIG) would very much like to see how the final policy looks.
We just did a community survey to help us come up with a smart name for a Sway OSTree variant, and the result was interesting: “Just call it Fedora Silverblue Sway and don’t make people remember all these names”. Not in the same tone, of course, but it was suggested enough times to reconsider the naming strategy. (Note that our audience is limited and may not represent well the overall Fedora community).
So I do like Fedora [Linux] with Sway and Fedora Silverblue with Sway options made according to the policy being discussed. I think I’ll be backing these names on the next SIG meeting.
Just… what’s the right moniker to use to distinguish an immutable ostree desktop variant? General audience seems to associate SB with immutable desktop in general, but people closer to Fedora development narrow it to a Workstation (GNOME) immutable edition.
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I’m all for dropping the whole “Silverblue / Kinoite / Sodalite [potential name for the Pantheon immutable spin]” thing and using a simplified naming scheme. I see very often on Reddit, YouTube comment sections, and elsewhere, that people find this current naming scheme confusing.
Fedora Silverblue used to be called Fedora Atomic Workstation - I like that name, and it provides a nice pattern for the rest of the immutable spins.
Fedora Atomic Workstation
Fedora Atomic with Plasma
Fedora Atomic with Sway
Using the “Atomic with…” scheme avoids the problem of “Silverblue” being associated with GNOME, and matches up nicely with our current proposal for “Fedora Linux with…” for the RPM-based spins. What do you think?
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For as much as I love the names of Silverblue and Kinoite because they sound like Pokemon games, I do think it makes sense for there to be a single brand for the immutable desktop and then something to denote the differences between the spins.
@mxanthropocene’s recommendation for the format makes sense.
One counterargument are some of Ubuntu’s spins like Kubuntu and Lubuntu. However, even that doesn’t seem to have stuck in the community because you also have Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Kylin, Ubuntu MATE and so on. 
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