[cross-project-issues-dev] Eclipse Installer makes first hand experience

[Aleksandar Kurtakov <akurtako@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone,

Oomph runs with GTK2 by default and when you install and run your ide with it (the very first time) the env variables are inherited thus in the very first run users of Neon will see something broken [1] on recent Linux distro (Fedora 24) and that's pretty bad initial experience. It is really disturbing that installer/Oomph overrides defaults and decides that it knows better what is on the user machine better than SWT managed to find on the user machine. Upon restart of the IDE (when installer/oomph no longer defines env variables) user will see the proper page [2] but the initial experience would be already ruined and we might have lost the chance this user would ever start it again.
Not to mention that webkitgtk (gtk2 version) is no longer installed by default on latest Ubuntu/Fedora (AFAIK) unless one explicitly installs it or had installed some other application that explicitly requires it. This essentially breaking the Internal web browser [3], making Help center opening in browser tab instead of its own applications and probably others. 
I understand this is just the first start but this is the most important run if we want to grow the user base. Doing such changes without deeply understanding the possible variations and how/when decisions are taken generates too much bad mouth and ruins so much effort spent that I would describe it as unacceptable.
I sincerely ask the Oomph project/installer to reconsider these practices.


[1] https://akurtakov.fedorapeople.org/broken.png
[2] https://akurtakov.fedorapeople.org/proper.png
[3] https://akurtakov.fedorapeople.org/broken_browser.png

-- 
Alexander Kurtakov
Red Hat Eclipse team