(Push the Button)

Things are brewing in the Fedora Desktop community.  Red Hat designers, engineers, and many active Fedora community members have been working hard to make the GNOME user experience great.  Some enthusiasts may notice a bunch of this work showing up in Karmic today (congratulations to our friends on another fine release!).  Though of course we’d encourage you to check out Fedora 12 in a couple weeks too.  We are sure Fedora 12 is going to be our best release yet.

We’ve also been thinking a lot about how we need to improve and where we need to go – and specifically, how we can better serve your needs and improve your experience.  Clearly, we have a lot we need to change and there are many challenging decisions ahead.  But it is my personal promise to you that we will get there and it will be awesome.  Consider this a declaration of intent… to be awesome.

We know what we do well.  We drive innovation upstream.  We have some of the most trusted and talented people around and we are tirelessly producing amazing stuff.  Every day I feel honored to be listed among the rockstars on the Fedora Desktop Planet.  Though sadly, it is our fault that so few know what we’re up to.  And we aim to improve this.  We hope to improve the transparency of our activities.

We know that many of you feel that we’ve been catering to the most vocal members of the enthusiast community and ignoring your needs.  We aim to improve this.  We want to raise our standards and your expectations.

We are one of the world’s most trusted advocates for software freedom.  Free Software runs in our blood here.  But we know that freedom is not enough.

We can’t do any of this without your help.  We need your feedback.  What are we doing well?  What are we doing wrong?  What can we do for you?

As with any good partnership the responsibility runs in both directions.  We promise to listen.  But we also hope that the community is up to the challenge of providing high quality – high signal – feedback.  We need real partners in this endeavour.

So please join us.  Show up, and be awesome.

Follow our latest shenanigans on twitter (as fedoradesktop) or our Planet feed.  If you are a Fedora Desktop user, share our goals, and are an active upstream contributor or contribute to the Fedora Desktop user experience and you’d like to be added to the planet, please let me know.

Or, as always, join us in #fedora-desktop on GimpNet.

Thanks.