*Official Announcement:* Ubuntu Studio is switching to XFCE.

[Takashi Sakamoto]

Hi,

I'm basically welcome to the shift into XFCE.

But I'm concern about the difficulties of communication for support 
between Ubuntu users and XFCE users. There are many differences of 
system application. Of cource, GNOME system application also run in XFCE 
but it will not be as default.

I worked as a member of Ubuntu Japanese Local Community and fortunately 
I have never heard the decition to purge GNOME desktop environment in 
11.10. My LoCO has Ubuntu's membership and GNOME deveroppers and 
translators but all of them have never heared the announcement of the 
lack in 11.10. We can see it merely in Mark Shuttleworth's weblog. In 
other words, it's just a his opinion, not community decision.

I think the users of XFCE (Xubuntu) is not so much yet and Ubuntu 
Studio's users community is not so large, too. I can understand XFCE 
desktop environment is fit to our aim, Linux Multimedia Workstation. But 
we have been gaining a large support from Ubuntu users because both are 
based on GNOME desktop environment.

I think the desicion will not be so late after we get the official 
announcement of the lack of GNOME environment in 11.10.

In this two weeks, Ubuntu Developer Summit is held in Hungary and this 
summit make the desition for the form of 11.10. I suggest that our 
desicion should wait for the discussion in UDS and get enough 
information about it.

Best Regards


Takashi Sakamoto
o-takashi at sakamocchi.jp