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

[Attila]

At Montag, 26. Oktober 2009 11:57 RedShift wrote:

> an nVidia FX5500. My laptop suffers from this sluggishness as well. On top of
> that, lots of things annoy me in KDE 4.3, see the end of this post for my top
> annoyances. Yesterday I had to reboot to my Windows XP installation on this
> computer and I was shocked when I arrived in XP's userland. Everything was

You don't have to go to another OS because i was positive shocked as i switched 
to lxde on my laptop. And i still use the most kde applications but the gui is 
so much faster which remembers me as my good old kde 3.5.

> Last week I also had the chance to check out Windows 7, and I was stumped. I 
was
> genuinly impressed by Windows 7's GUI. It feels fast, works fluently, it has
> nice effects which just work and work FAST. When browsing around it felt like 
a
> very solid desktop environment. I am jealous. I really am. The thought of

That a big firm as MS can learn from his deseaster named Vista is a good sign.-)

> So when should we have started working at a better desktop environment for
> Linux?

At one side you be right but on the other side i miss the positive thing: The 
choice. Because at example your favorit Mac OS X comes only with one gui und 
celebrates centuries after X (or Workplace Shell for OS/2) to have virtuell 
desktops.

Instead i can understand your lines i must say that the other ones cooks only 
with water too.-)

> Yet we did have a second chance in 2007. Microsoft obviously screwed up with
> Windows Vista, we had the chance to win back alot of terrain here until the
> release of Windows 7. So what did we come up with? KDE 4. Yes, a big
> dissapointment. We still don't have something that's comparable.

The miss of one project is even the chance for another project. The biggest 
problem with KDE is that 4.x is not the follower of 3.5 because it is "only" 
plasma 0.x (here i speak from the gui and not from the apps).

I don't mean this too much critical because i test the other gui's after i see 
what i will get with 4.x and at the moment i use on the desktop pc still again 
KDE ... but only because i lost the chance to compile 3.5 with the newer gcc.

> So basically, where are we at?
> KDE 3.5 is Windows XP
> KDE 4.3 is Windows Vista
> ??? is Windows 7

Funny summary.-)

> If we are comparing enterprise desktops, there's no going around Red Hat. The
> current Red Hat desktop (5.4) ships with KDE 3.5, while its succesor RHEL 6 
will
> be, if looking what Fedora brings now, shipped with KDE 4.2 or 4.3. That means
> KDE 4.2/4.3 will be the main desktop for enterprises for at least the next 3
> years. A disgrace if you ask me. Users will be comparing desktop environments
> and they will find Windows 7 or Mac OS X to be better. After the damage RHEL 6
> will have done to the reputation of the Linux desktop, it will take again as
> many years to rectify the damage done. Granted if we will have a solid desktop
> environment comparable to Windows 7 by the time RHEL 7 gets released. Which I
> can't help but doubt.

Don't underrate the devs of redhat or suse because they can't discuss about 
useless things, the have to sell it and so they have to get it stable. So if MS 
can learn from his mistakes why not the bigger player in the linux market can do 
the same.

> * I get a full 10 minutes of extra runtime on my laptop when I switched back 
to
> 3.5

Really, give another gui a chance and you will see more time what you get. 
Perhaps using openbox instead of kwin can helps too ... but the KDE gui without 
kwin looks very bad and my suggestion is to use another gui.

> * Power management is buggy in KDE 4.3 and sometimes powerdevil just loses
> its settings

The laptop-tools can do the same job. I was a fan of KDE until 3.5 but i'm a 
bigger fan of "the better wins".

If you like black humor than you can see KDE 4.x as a good motivation to 
reconsider your configuration and to take a look at the other gui's. For me this 
is the most positive thing about 4.x because now i know that the other one have 
execellent solutions too. Instead i'm not lucky about this days of testing other 
guis i must repeat the biggest advantage: the choice.

See you, Attila