[kde-community] Proposal to change to kde.org/download text

[John Layt]

Hi,

[Posting to community rather than www or promo as it covers all 3
areas and this seems the best place for bike-shedding without spam
cross-posting.]

I spent a couple of hours on the weekend trying to walk someone
through installing KDE on Windows.  While there were several issues
with the KDE Windows Installer, an initial problem came with just
finding the installer.  We started at http://www.kde.org/ and clicked
on the prominent "Get KDE Software" which led to
http://www.kde.org/download/ which is where we hit a solid wall of
text over more than one page.  Eventually we found the link at the
bottom that took us to http://windows.kde.org/, and finally to
http://windows.kde.org/download.php.  That's 4 clicks and a lot of
text to get through when we already knew what we wanted.

The Download page seems to want to explain what KDE is before letting
you download stuff, but most people going to that page will have
decided they already want to try it and so we should just give them
the info they need most.  We can explain KDE elsewhere.  We also need
to use terminology that new users will understand, which means leaving
out unnecesary and confusing details.

I'd like to propose the following text instead (links marked as <text>):

[Begins]

The KDE Community produces <Free Software> that can to be used on a
number of operating systems.  This page details how to obtain KDE
Software on each of those platforms, but for best results we recommend
you run KDE Applications under KDE Plasma Workspace on Linux or BSD.
To obtain support for using KDE Software please visit the <KDE
UserBase>.

[h1] Supported Platforms

[h2] Linux and BSD

KDE Workspaces and KDE Applications are available for most <Linux and
BSD distributions> by using the distribution's software manager.  For
more information please consult your distribution documentation or
user support forums.

You can try out KDE Software on Linux without changing anything on
your computer by using a <Linux Live CD or USB stick>.

[h2] Windows

Many KDE Applications are available for Windows XP, Windows Vista and
Windows 7 using the <KDE Windows Installer>.  Some KDE Applications
are also available as <individual downloads>.  The level of Windows
support available may vary for individual applications.

For more information visit the <KDE on Windows home page>.

[h2] Mac OS X

Most KDE Applications are only available for Mac OS X by using the
<MacPorts>, <Fink>, or <HomeBrew> package managers.  These
installation methods are not recommended for most users.  Some KDE
Applications are also available as <individual downloads>.  KDE hopes
to provide more user-friendly installation methods in the future.

For more information visit the <KDE on Mac home page>.

[h2] Source Packages

All KDE Software is <Free Software> with the source code freely
available for anyone to download, modify, build, and distribute in
accordence with the terms of <our licences>.  You can obtain tarballs
for any release from our <download servers>.

For more information on building KDE Software from source visit the
<KDE TechBase>.

[h1] KDE Software

[h2] KDE Applications

The KDE Community develops a wide variety of <applications> which can
run under any supported operating system or desktop environment.
These may be released as part of the regularly scheduled KDE
Applications releases, or may be released independently.

The latest <KDE Applications> release is <version 4.13.2> which was
released on 10 June 2014.

[h2] KDE Plasma Workspaces

The KDE Community develops Desktop, Netbook and Tablet workspaces for
use on Linux and BSD systems.

The latest <KDE Plasma Workspaces> release is <version 4.11> which was
released on 14 August 2013.  This is a Long Term Support (LTS) release
that will be supported with bug-fixes until after the release of
Plasma 5.  The most recent LTS bug-fix release is <version 4.11.10>
which was released on 10 June 2014.

[Add at Plasma 5]  The Plasma 5.0 desktop was released on 7 July 2014.
While this is a stable release, it is not yet recommended for general
use.

[h2] KDE Development Libraries

The KDE Community develops many libraries and tools for software
developers which are used to build the KDE Applications and KDE
Workspaces.  Other developers are free to use these for their own
applications under the terms of our licences.  See the <KDE TechBase>
for more details.

The latest <KDE Development Platform> for use with Qt4 is <version
4.13.2> which was released on 10 June 2014.

The latest <KDE Frameworks> for use with Qt5 is <version 5.0.0> which
was released on 7 July 2014.

[Ends]

This may still need editing down, as the intent should be to fit on a
single page, or at least the platform download links section should.
The Windows and Mac details may be better placed on a separate wiki
pages where we can easily change the list of installers, but that
increases the number of clicks required.  The alternative is listing
them all on this page (mostly Krita, Marble, Digikam?).

The Package Policy page at
http://www.kde.org/download/packagepolicy.php page has a level of
detail that should be on TechBase instead, and its FAQ section strikes
me as rather unprofessional in places and should be removed.

The CDROM page at http://www.kde.org/download/cdrom.php page seems
archaic and is empty so should either be deleted or replaced with a
list of Live Distros running off USB or CD.  A wiki page may be a
better option for such a page?

The Distributions page at
http://www.kde.org/download/distributions.php page can be kept, but
note that distrowatch.com is broken right now so perhaps we should use
distrowatch.org instead.  We may prefer to provide direct links to the
distro homepage rather than always send them to Distrowatch (although
there may be legal issues around that for the eV?).

Longer term, once we have individual Win and Mac installers per app,
and perhaps apps in the Android store, we are going to need something
better.  I have ideas about adapting http://www.kde.org/applications/
to be a proto app store auto-generated from AppData files with links
to the downloads, but that's a bike-shed for another occasion :-)

Thoughts?

John.