Windows 7 being better than Vista is saying a lot. Microsoft may have a huge PR advantage as people will compare it to Vista and think it is good so "angels will sing again" like they did with Windows 95 compared to Windows 3.1. So maybe Microsoft did this on purpose.

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No comment.

A lot of what made Microsoft successful in the nineties is gone. There is a reason why people don't think they are successful anymore, but hey, I don't have a business model at all!

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No comment.

Proprietary was a downside, but what choice did I have? Hey, I usually do my presentation slides in PowerPoint.

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No comment.

I used to be a KDE user. I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster I switched to GNOME.

--

This quote is causing a major stir in the free/open source community, since Linus was known to talk major crap about Gnome.

My job is the same and I do the kernel and nobody tells me what to do and they pay me for it, which is just the way I like it.

--

Damn I wish I had that kind of job.

corona_coder said:

Gnome is the best desktop EVER. KDE just sucks and XFCE is stupid and nonfunctional. 

I happen to agree with Linus.  The state of KDE sucks and its really bad when you take the #1 desktop environment, in my eyes anyway, KDE 3 and you totally screw it up.  The KDE team made the Vista mistake they didnt put enough polish on before they released it and look what happened.  

IMO, the reason why Microsoft is not so popular anymore has nothing to do with the state of computing, it has to do with the size and the fact Microsoft is no longer the underdog.  In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against.  In the nineties, IBM was the bad guy, in 2000 Microsoft has the title, in 2010 Apple will get the title.   A lot of XP users are really looking forward to 7 and with good reason to.  7 will be an awesome release for Windows users.  Actually, I do think Windows 95 was the last release that had this much anticipation.

I really dont blame Linus for going GNOME, right now its basically 2 usable desktops GNOME and XFCE

corona_coder said:

Gnome is the best desktop EVER. KDE just sucks and XFCE is stupid and nonfunctional. 

corona_coder said:

Gnome is the best desktop EVER. KDE just sucks and XFCE is stupid and nonfunctional. 

ever? are you sure about that? they say that "ever" is a very long time span...

rjdohnert said:

corona_coder said:

*snip*

I happen to agree with Linus.  The state of KDE sucks and its really bad when you take the #1 desktop environment, in my eyes anyway, KDE 3 and you totally screw it up.  The KDE team made the Vista mistake they didnt put enough polish on before they released it and look what happened.  

IMO, the reason why Microsoft is not so popular anymore has nothing to do with the state of computing, it has to do with the size and the fact Microsoft is no longer the underdog.  In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against.  In the nineties, IBM was the bad guy, in 2000 Microsoft has the title, in 2010 Apple will get the title.   A lot of XP users are really looking forward to 7 and with good reason to.  7 will be an awesome release for Windows users.  Actually, I do think Windows 95 was the last release that had this much anticipation.

I really dont blame Linus for going GNOME, right now its basically 2 usable desktops GNOME and XFCE

rjdohnert said:

corona_coder said:

*snip*

I happen to agree with Linus.  The state of KDE sucks and its really bad when you take the #1 desktop environment, in my eyes anyway, KDE 3 and you totally screw it up.  The KDE team made the Vista mistake they didnt put enough polish on before they released it and look what happened.  

IMO, the reason why Microsoft is not so popular anymore has nothing to do with the state of computing, it has to do with the size and the fact Microsoft is no longer the underdog.  In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against.  In the nineties, IBM was the bad guy, in 2000 Microsoft has the title, in 2010 Apple will get the title.   A lot of XP users are really looking forward to 7 and with good reason to.  7 will be an awesome release for Windows users.  Actually, I do think Windows 95 was the last release that had this much anticipation.

I really dont blame Linus for going GNOME, right now its basically 2 usable desktops GNOME and XFCE

Erisan said:

rjdohnert said:

*snip*

I'm running KDE 4.2 on Fedora 10 and it works without problems. Like KDE developers said the first two versions were for "developers". I think those version should have been numbered differently though.

Sabot said:

Erisan said:

*snip*

The problem with desktop OS'es is the future is no long Windows v Linux. Obviously there is the Mac but machines booting straight into Vmware applications or straight into browsers that have just enough OS to support there function are here.

What this means is that the traditional desktop OS supports generic computer use, but users are moving increasingly towards specific computer use. Take for example Games, the PC is no longer the platform of choice. Citrix, VDI, AJAX, Silverlight, Flash etc are increasingly delivering richer clients and content. Even the humble PC is under attack, take for example my company, we give everyone a thin-client device that just has enough brains to run the Citrix ICA Client.

There will be a hugh market for generic computer use, but the percentage will not be as large as it once was. People won't care if it's Windows or Linux for that matter so will be a hollow victory if it is the latter.

People see buttons they can click on with the mouse and text boxes they can put stuff in that all helps them do whatever they want to do. What is happening underneath isn't important, it really isn't. We in IT have to realise this, the popularity of the Asus EEE and the start of NetBooks proved this. No one really cares about Windows  ... or Linux ... or Mac ... or Flash .... or Ajax ... because they haven't got enough emotion invested in the choices.

The only people that do care are the ones that have invested a career in it ... but ultimately at the end of the day we are just service providers.

dentaku said:

rjdohnert said:

*snip*

"In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against."

That's the attitude I hate so much, that you HAVE to have a good guy and a bad guy (you're either on OUR side or the WRONG side kinda thing). It's an attitude that is most popular in American culture too and the reason why the I'm a Mac adds did so well. People just LOVE being told which side is good and which side is bad so they don't have to make any decisions for themselves.

Did I say that was my attitude?  No, thats the attitude of most everyone out there.  I dont play the software wars thing.  I love everyone with the exception of Novell and Apple.   Personally, I find the Microsoft developers and Xandros developers to be the more professional.  But, I digress.

The point being I agree, cant we all just get along.

@Erisan

KDE 4.2 may be better, I personally have had alot of problems with that even but I think in one of the PDC videos, I think it was Chatanyas Intro to the Windows 7 Desktop, he made a comment that rings true.  When people use a product if the first impressions are favorable they tend to like the product if they arent favorable it will be hated forever.  My point with the KDE team is that they needed to have a longer beta testing process.  4.0 should never have been put out there for public consumption because people dont pay attention to that "For developers only" statement.  I dont do a public beta process for that sole reason alone.  When I released PC/OS 2008 last year I did my first and only Public Beta and I got so much hatemail.  One of the things I wrote "It wont install on the hard drive, dont try a HD install yet" I wrote this for the world to see.  I got tons of e-mails from users "PC/OS wont install to my hard drive, PC/OS sucks!!!!!"  I was trying to get Wubi working and it just totally mucked things up royally with the Installer that I had to fix it for beta 2.  Unfortunately KDE 4 was the introduction to the product and everyone hated it now the KDE team not only has to work at fixing the software problems, they also have to deal with the PR problems.  

Erisan said:

[ rjdohnert
My point with the KDE team is that they needed to have a longer beta testing process.  4.0 should never have been put out there for public consumption because people dont pay attention to that "For developers only" statement. ]

Yeah, agreed. I don't understand why didn't they numbered versions 4.0 and 4.1 like 3.9.000 or 3.9.500 or whatever. A weird decision. KDE is still under heavy development. Aaron said that 4.2 -> 4.3 will be a big step forward.

@ erisan (Aaron said that 4.2 -> 4.3 will be a big step forward.)

Lets hope so.  But they have to get the good press, they have to get people behind it.

rjdohnert said:

Erisan said:

*snip*

@ erisan (Aaron said that 4.2 -> 4.3 will be a big step forward.)

Lets hope so.  But they have to get the good press, they have to get people behind it.

Erisan said:

rjdohnert said:

*snip*

True, they have a lot of work to do. This whole situation would have been avoided easily by using more sane numbers on pre KDE 4.2 releases.
Have you ever thought that PC/OS would use KDE4 instead of XFCE as a default desktop?

rjdohnert said:

Erisan said:

*snip*

When KDE is ready yes PC/OS will have a KDE release built,  PC/OS 2009v2 includes GNOME and XFCE alongside each other due to customer demand.  The developer working on the KDE release sent me a PC/OS build that he made with KDE 4.2.

dentaku said:

rjdohnert said:

*snip*

"In every aspect of life you will have the proverbial "good guys" and you always have to have the "bad guy" everyone rallies against."

That's the attitude I hate so much, that you HAVE to have a good guy and a bad guy (you're either on OUR side or the WRONG side kinda thing). It's an attitude that is most popular in American culture too and the reason why the I'm a Mac adds did so well. People just LOVE being told which side is good and which side is bad so they don't have to make any decisions for themselves.

brian.shapiro said:

dentaku said:

*snip*

American culture, how about all culture? People outside of the US just make it everyone else vs. America, where America is the bad guy.

Erisan said:

rjdohnert said:

*snip*

True, they have a lot of work to do. This whole situation would have been avoided easily by using more sane numbers on pre KDE 4.2 releases.
Have you ever thought that PC/OS would use KDE4 instead of XFCE as a default desktop?

Erisan said:

rjdohnert said:

*snip*

I'm running KDE 4.2 on Fedora 10 and it works without problems. Like KDE developers said the first two versions were for "developers". I think those version should have been numbered differently though.

Erisan said:

rjdohnert said:

*snip*

True, they have a lot of work to do. This whole situation would have been avoided easily by using more sane numbers on pre KDE 4.2 releases.
Have you ever thought that PC/OS would use KDE4 instead of XFCE as a default desktop?

matthews said:

Erisan said:

*snip*

For what developers? KDE developers? I know I don't want to use an unstable desktop environment on any operating system when I'm trying to do dev work.