[arch-general] We have lost the desktop war. The reason? Windows 7.

[Lars Tennstedt]

Shridhar Daithankar wrote:
> On Monday 26 October 2009 19:25:09 Lars Tennstedt wrote: 
>> I suggest the opposite in the facts of speed. My work's computer runs
>> with Windows XP and the hardware is faster than mine at home. But
>> Windows XP often stands still without a reason and takes ages to do
>> something. KDE 4.3 on my Arch Linux installation runs very well and
>> fast. I guess that it depends on the hardware you use.
>>
>> But I would say that the enterprise linux distributions should use KDE
>> 3.5 and GNOME 2.28 in the nearly future. In such an area with
>> installations on many machines things just have to work and Plasma and
>> GNOME Shell are too new.
>> If KDE is too slow for you, use Xfce or LXDE. I do not miss anything
>> under Xfce. And if you want to use Windows 7, use it. At the moment
>> linux has little percentage on the desktop market.
> 
> I am writing this for sole reason that silence of a satisfied linux user 
> should not be taken as absence of one.
> 
> I am a happy arch and KDE user and use windows XP only as much forced by the 
> work. I don't know about vista. Rarely seen it in action. These are my 
> opinions and not conclusions. Just adding a data point here.
> 
> - KDE is hugely productive. Multiple desktop(it already had for ages but 
> mentioned for comparison with XP), plethora of applets(plasma widgets lately), 
> kopete, kmail, akregator, knews, kate, konsole, k3b  and konqueror. It is so 
> much ahead of windows that its not even the same race. Not to mention, each of 
> these apps have innovation on its own that are hard to rival.
> 
> - I was happy with KDE 3.5.x(on slack and arch) and upgraded to KDE4 just 
> along the way. KDE4.1/4.2 were not upto the par but KDE4.3 is on par with 
> KDE3.5.x for me.
> 
> - I don't need any eye-candy on KDE and I have turned it off. Even though I 
> have functioning nvidia drivers, I want my desktop fast, not animating and I 
> am happy with that speed. Frankly I have not found any plasma widget worth 
> keeping on desktop(I don't get to see the desktop anyways. Its always covered 
> with some app). But I am a konsole geek. I could go alone with kate/konsole 
> except email/IM/webbrowsing needs.
> 
> - I couldn't change to GNOME. I hate it. File open dialog is lame compared to 
> KDE. I don't know what virtues peole see in it. That is only one reason 
> another is button order(third is GTK. C for desktop? Not for me and no mono 
> please.). I could stand a half working KDE but not GNOME.
> 
> - To people advocating lightweight options, Don't you lose what *KDE* offers? 
> Instead of putting together a solution yourself, isn't it much better to use a 
> solution that is put together already? Use xfce, throw in firefox and 
> openoffice and its hardly any different from KDE+openoffice. Throw in 
> thunderbird and pidgin and one begins to wonder whats the point? Is the 
> dekstop really that lean now? Besides, throw in one KDE app. because its 
> irresistible(kmail, kopete, k3b?) and again, one might as well run KDE.
> 
> - Huge win for KDE is consistency. Whatever speed KDE desktop loads today, it 
> will load with same speed 3 months down the line and 3 years down the line(I 
> can attest that. My home directory has remains of mandrake 7 till date. 
> Upgraded and moved from machine to machine). Windows will not.
> 
> - I don't like nepomuk/strigi/akonadi and its off on my desktop. Thats more to 
> do with hatred of mysql than these technologies itself. I won't let my desktop 
> depend on mysql. Period. Come postgresql support and I will give it a go. 
> Besides I don't have time to tag 10s of thousand of photos that I already have 
> and every download from digital camera is at least 150 photos. 
> 
> - on point of desktop war, KDE is not fighting with windows but windows 
> ecosystem. What does vanilla windows offer compared to KDE anyways? freecell 
> and solitaire? Where is google messenger? where is an up to date browser? 
> where is yahoo messenger? where is a good console? where are tons of 
> utilities? Again, KDE is not fighting with windows. Its fighting with an echo-
> system.
> 
> - for browser, I dabbled with lot of them and here is simple conclusion. The 
> web is too fluid. There is no single app that can render it well, now and in 
> future. And the whole web2.0 is a  non-sense, at least functionally. So I have 
> konqueror for regular browsing(no serious site breaks in it for me.) and 
> firefox for occasions when its needed. Usually if it does not render well in 
> konqueror, I bypass the site and not the browser.
> 
> - use windows and you have to format/reinstall to upgrade. You realize how 
> much productivity hit that is? It is impossible to get back all the small 
> tweaks that one has accumulated over the period of time. Besides isn't that 
> like last century? With arch we upgrade every month, if not more and don't 
> have any problems.
> 
> I am happy with linux desktop for long time, since 2001 and haven't had 
> windows since then. The war is over. Neo won :)
> 

I have to agree. The time using Debian and Arch was and is a pleasure 
for me. At this point huge thanks to the Arch developers. Compared to my 
Windows XP area, I had much less issues to solve. I do not hate Windows 
XP. My girlfriend use Windows XP and my father either because they know 
where and when to click. But for me the war is also over. I will never 
go back to the Windows world.

Bye
Lars