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I'm a GNOME user, so I didn't know much about KDE4. Here are some interesting links I just found while researching what KDE4 is going to include:

KDE 4 promises radical changes to the free desktop

KDE 4.0: Well worth the wait!

KDE 4 is almost ready to go

KDE 4.0 Alpha 2 features new shell

KDE 4: some reasons for design decisions

I don't think I'll switch from GNOME, but KDE4 sounds like it will have some cool features.

Ubuntu got 30% and SUSE 21%.

And even that is probably exagerated. Go to Unis for instance, you'll see SUSE, Fedora... not Ubuntu. And those are plenty of desktops. Also users who are just starting with linux are much more likely to be all excited about it and spending time with this surveys, than long time users who have long passed that period. And the ratio of Ubuntu users is certainly higher amongst new users.

In any case, my point is, there were some very good OS releases in 2008, openSUSE 10.3 being one of them. Why not give those a try?

Seeing the users that have Vista just make the rest of us realize that Vista is not the horror that somepeople seem to be. ... people see "oh, it works well" ...

There's a big difference between watching someone sleep on a bed of nails and trying it yourself. Those that try it, all have the same story.

The university where I work just took the step and upgraded 25 computer labs (30 computers each) from XP to Vista.

Public use workstations are the easiest thing to convert, but you still did not see all the pain and suffering that happened there. At my university, there was a big opening at the local library where a big pile of new Macs and other computers were rolled out. The local M$ Ambassadors were told to make a Vista display but were unable to make it work at all. Their continued efforts at the event was the best demo they could have given. All the rest of the systems were working and everyone else was enjoying the party. That's not something you want to have happen in the real world.

The compatibility problems are so bad for real work at companies that 44% of IT is abandoning M$. Those people know what they are doing and are under the gun to make things work. So far, they can't make Vista work and less than 2% have moved and they are almost all tiny businesses without the resources to do better. Only 13% of companies have real full migration planned and those companies are also tiny. If you are not going to see it in the workplace, why torture yourself with it when you could be doing your homework or having fun?

The solution, of course, is not to stick with seven year old software or wait another five years for M$ to sell you something equally bad. Business knows this and more are moving away from M$ than will stick with XP or less. 56% of companies are not moving away and 13% are moving to vista, which leaves 43% on XP or less. But it's worse than that because another 18% are going to make up their mind after testing. Of the options, dumping M$ is the favorite.

a) Sell crappy Linux box to unsupecting mark.

b) Mark can't figure out why it isn't like every other computer

c) Mark can't make $9.99 computer game install

d) Mark can't make MS Word document open.

e) Profit?

a) Sell crappy Linux box to unsupecting mark.

b) Mark can't figure out why it isn't like every other computer

c) Mark can't make $9.99 computer game install

d) Mark can't make MS Word document open.

e) Profit?

Let me help you connect the dots...

Japan is considering using linux in several areas (or is already using linux)...consider switching 400,000 computers to linux...

Now, so and so linux vendor says they are connected to M$ to boot. Guess who starts getting contracts, etc.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8141249791.html

interesting links but unfortunately it seems your solution is limited to users of turbolinux and linspire distro's.

clicknrun seems to be able to offer this kind of support as this article shows to other distro's such as ubuntu.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7474779842.html

unfortunately the date on that article is march 2006 and there seems to have been little progress.

Linspires covenant with Microsoft might be the reason why. Would Ubuntu users using Linspire products on ubuntu be covered by the covenant?

I submitted a story about this a week or two ago. I think it's also worthy to note that IBM seems to have done the same thing.

What was the story I submitted tagged as? 'fudfudfud'

I wonder how many forks we'll see? I also wonder if anyone's going to actually make this real open source or if each company is going to fork their own copy and call all the shots on it? I hope someone learns that to be the OpenOffice you have to be open to community ideas, wants & needs as well as truly governed by the community.

The eee comes with Linux pre-installed. Sorry, all the things you were complaining about are now irrelevant.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7546509093.html I tried to post this article on slashdot but it was rejected :-( After opening the free internet clubs in every city in Macedonia for older and poor people which work on Ubuntu, this government continue to pleasantly surprise me :-)

As far as OSX goes - I own a mac mini. I used OSX, and it frustrated me. I did not appreciate the way many decisions were made for me and many options were hidden. It took me a lot longer to get simple things done. I installed Ubuntu on it

Didn't you mean "Kubuntu"? :-)

Use a live CD, etc.

Here's an example:
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4984662030.html

There are many more (and I'm sure you're going to get lots of advice here, of various sorts/levels ;-))

Long story short, search for liveCDs and/or kiosks

Best of all, find a local linux geek to help you set it up, etc. ;-)

Now, assuming 1 PC per Japanese citizen (sure, not all have one, but some have more than one), that is over 100 million PCs.

The school system in japan just moved to linux as a test bed for further linux deployment.

Your redmond/japan trade recovery program is about to receive a "slight" bump in the road.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8141249791.html

As for china the estimates are 90% of software is pirated, and secondly OSS is gaining
massive ground there:

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/ar chives/2006/01/a_big_step_for.html

Noticing a few more Asian's and Indian's engineers at your work place ?

Hear of any companies that had their idea appear overseas and be reproduced
and resold for much less, essentially ignoring all copyright/patents?

World Trade is great if everyone honors the system of who invented it owns it,
but that may not happen for some time.

In the cult of cash, morality takes a back seat to the bottom line.

I have said many times, in the long run, it is bad for accounting to
be the primary consideration for engineering decisions.

This applies for long term economic stability too, funny enough.

Overseas labor has no OSHA, has no FDA, just ask ppl with dead pets
from tainted chinese pet food, or ppl that used the tainted tooth paste.

On a price point your no going to beat them unless you build robots
here to do the labor for less than any other country can do it,
and the sad fact is china or asia will end up making the robots for us.

Any way you stack it the US is in a economic tailspin of its own design.

The race for the bottom has begun.

Maybe, but I didn't miss the similar announcement of lenovo supplying Novell linux. Note that that announcement was almost exactly a year ago. And the article makes the comment:

Linux on the ThinkPad has long been supported first by IBM, and more recently, by Lenovo. In addition, the ThinkPad PC product line has probably had more specific Linux support than any other computer brand.

So a year ago, they were touting their long-time support for linux and their imminent sale of pre-installed linux. Go to lenovo.com and try to find any mention of Novell anywhere in any of the order-your-computer pages. (Really, try it. I'd be interested in seeing if anyone can find such references. I can't. I couldn't 9 or 6 months ago, either.)

When a company talk about having "long" supported linux, and has several times announced the imminent release of linux on their hardware, but you can't find a way to order it from them, there is reason to be suspicious. It's highly likely that this is yet another company that, like the Chinese government itself, is merely using the linux threat as a negotiating tactic to get a better deal from Microsoft. If they intended to actually sell it to us, you'd think that a year after announcing it, we'd be able to buy it.

The ThinkPad has a history as a good machine. I intend to keep checking occasionally to see if lenovo actually starts making it easy for customers to buy one with linux. Repeated public announcements aren't good enough; we should be able to order it without an extraordinary effort. If we can't, such announcements are little more than conventional bait-and-switch tactics.

But maybe this time it'll be different. (Ever heard that before? ;-)

Red Hat confirmed on Aug. 3 that it would be delaying the release of the newest member of its desktop Linux family, Red Hat Global Desktop, because the company is seeking to provide certain multimedia codecs. Sources close to Red Hat said obtaining some of these codecs was dependent on Red Hat coming to an agreement with Microsoft.

Amarok is lighter than iTunes, it can sync iPod's flawlessly, (rip and put on music from any computer, any iPod) iTunes is not a reason to stay on Mac/Windows.

It's running a derivative of xandros:

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4576754329.html

You've been able to PAY for these codes via Linspire's click-n-run for over a year now.

And since linspire is Ubuntu based now - its pretty darn easy to install on ubuntu that way, too.

The linspire-ubuntu proprietary codecs stuff is actually old news.

The author of TFA just doesn't know how to Google. Perhaps he's afraid he might not be searching legally?

Maybe it's pointless because we are all already linux users.

• The Year of the Linux Desktop! (2007)
• 2006: The year of desktop Linux?
• 2005 will be the year of the Linux Desktop
• Linux breaks desktop barrier in 2004: Torvalds
• I am convinced that 2003 is going to be the breakout year for Desktop Linux.

Wherever I go, there's M$ defender dedazo. Every hour of the day, seven days a week. What a drag. The only thing worse, of course, would be if I actually was dedazo. This time, he wants to compare X to Vista and declare Vista more efficient, wowzer.

What "DRM" is that again? I seem to be able to play all my media without any trouble at all.

This is a different issue, but it is part of the user experience so I'll deal with it. Most audiophiles would disagree with you when they find out that Vista disables their spdif outputs. What I was really talking about though, was the waste of resources the checking of "trip bits" represents. There's a lot of stuff like that in Vista that will never hamper free software. You can also add anti-virus, file indexing, poor memory management, driver that can't share code and other bloat to the list of performance robbing junk on Windoze. Once again, these are different issues and should not be confused with the interface.

I find a fully loaded KDE desktop that sort of begins to mimic OS X or Vista (and frankly not that well) to be very computationally intensive. Do you contend otherwise? Of course XFCE and other options make that better, but then of course it's up to you what you want to give up for the "pretty" experience.

Yes, I'll say otherwise. I've run a "fully loaded" KDE interface on a 233 MHz PII. It was a little slow for my taste, so I run E16 instead, which is prettier, has transparency, multiple desktops, excellent pagers and very good speed even on modest hardware. Yeah, it did movies and all that. I also run the parts of KDE I like, such as the kicker, universal sidebar, konqueror, kate, kontact and other bits and pieces where KDE is really the best available. My fastest machine is still a six year old 1.2 GHz Athlon. I do movie editing on it, but my wife does most of that for us on an 800 MHz PIII. One day, I might upgrade because the newer processors are that much better at number crunching, but I think I'll wait until some piece of hardware actually dies.

The only advantage Vista has is accelerated drivers, which are a must for gamers. This drives them to Intel, or non free nvidia and ATI drivers.

My subjective view of the overall Vista experience comes from a visit I made to CompUSA today. There, against the back wall was a line of M$'s finest display. Even to someone bound in the 1995esque eXPerience, the display was a dissapointment. First off, it was jerky. It's just a movie and should have flown smoothly but it jerked every second or so. The flying toaster people did better fifteen years ago. Second, what it showed looked like a dud. There was limited transparency, a bazillion flying windows, dual desktops, and video conferencing. E16 has better transparency and E17 offers animated desktops. The flying windows looks about as good a way to organize your data as throwing our papers into the air and I far prefer the multiple desktops of X which are best done by E16. Dual displays are something that KDE and others have mastered that I will occasionally yearn for, but never enough to actually install a second or third or fourth PCI card. Video conferencing is the most interesting thing, not because it's hard to do, but because they might finally deliver on what they have been unable to do well for the last seven years of NetMeeting. XP users may finally reap some of the rewards of the M$ monopoly and the ass pain M$ has made of USB cameras, when they move to Vista. It won't last long because ATT and other greed heads are busy setting up their networks to block anything but their own pay per byte VOIP but XP users don't know it. Otherwise, I saw absolutely nothing that would tempt the average XP user. The performance hit, hardware costs and cost of replacing software and other stuff broken by Vista add up to one very large negative. That might explain why I was the only person in the store looking at computers.

See for comments on desktop Linux.

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS2603651519.html

I agree with the philosophy of his approach - not sure MS pact's are the best
way to achieve that however.

is available here: Linspire, Microsoft in Linux-related deal. For example... In an email to DesktopLinux, however, Carmony clarified this apparent contradiction in how the Microsoft IP (and "protection" from alleged patent infringement) would be licensed. "We just bundle everything together," he wrote. "Meaning, you can't say 'I want the fonts, but not Windows Media 10,' or 'I want Windows Media 10, but not the IP coverage,' etc. If you want any or all of these new offerings, they ALL will come with Linspire 6.0. If users don't wish these, they can easily uninstall what they don't want from Linspire, or simply use Freespire, which will not include these features. When the press release was written we hadn't fully decided if we wanted to just include it in Linspire or offer a separate SKU. The agreement gives Linspire the freedom to do it either way. We're going to start by just including it with ALL copies of Linspire sold, so they don't really 'purchase a patent SKU,' but just buy Linspire which will include everything."

"It's always funny to see someone who never designed professionally in their life suggest GIMP."

What's even funnier is the poster who declares that others have never designed professionally, while never posting a link to their own portfolio. For all we know, your sum total of graphics design experience involves crayons and construction paper.

Meanwhile open source tools continue to dominate web design, and the movie design industry:
http://www.linuxtoday.com/high_performance/2003100 201126OSBZHE
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5472
http://www.linuxmovies.org/studios.html
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT7096363910. html

including this guy here:
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/57300.html
who says:

"Linux is the default operating [system] on desktops and servers at major animation and visual effects studios, with maybe 98 percent [or more] penetration," CinePaint Project Manager Robin Rowe told LinuxInsider. "With the big dogs, there's nobody left to convert to Linux. Every studio is already on board."

That's Cinepaint... a fork of Gimp.

Yes, some of these people design professionally just a tiny bit. And some of them might answer this question on Slashdot with just that response. Yeah, the rest of your points have some merit, but not this one.

- sincerely, a professional designer who uses all FOSS tools, and kicks your butt at it.

Economic terrorism?! Dell sells Windows computers because it suits their business, so what? Should Linux become easy to support, and useful to the consumer, why wouldn't they offer it? What evidence do you have of shady business dealings?

Wal-mart sells pre-loaded linux computers, Apple is stylish and available, commerial and free OS alternatives abound, but market share is what it is. Do justice to society by your personal choices all you want, but if you strive to make a difference, help make these alternatives a viable choice for the rest of the world.

ow many non-/. reading, mainstream users are going to install another widget system on their computer?

Quite a few actually. Your family members will all have the same experience, clicking on setup.exe.

the reason that so many companies choose the Windows development? It just works

If you are trying to make another Solitiare (sp?) game, then yeah windows works. Microsoft's tools are limited. Very limited. That you have a problem with complexity outside Microsoft's use cases is very narrow-minded. There are so many use cases that fall outside Microsoft's development range, you simply haven't had any experience with them.

Instead of being content in Microsoft's walled garden, check out a Linux distro and see what it's like. It will be like going from AOL to a real ISP. Here's a good link to get you started on Debian. http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT8143350649. html

I was under the impression that China was moving away from Windows...

:-/

I own an HP Media Center and it works great.

Rob Pegoraro was much less than impressed by this line of machines,

That aside, this is just business.

Sure, it's bad business to sell things that don't work.

See for yourself in this blow by blow install and feature compare. Summary here. A lack of drivers and compatibility were only the start of the author's problems which digital restrictions greatly multiplied.

As usual, the Microsoft story is worse than you would expect.

For Christmas I bought a system preloaded with eComStation. I paid no Microsoft tax. All you have to do is support THE vendors of good quality products. Like buying high quality Snapper lawn movers instead the disposable Wal-Mart ones.
(The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html)

You can avoid the Microsoft tax too.

eComStation user group - http://www.os2voice.org/
eComStation - http://www.ecomstation.com/

eComStation preloaded
http://www.curtissystemssoftware.com/preloads.htm

Also Linux preloads
SUSE preloaded
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7778908329.html

Fedora preloaded
http://www.emperorlinux.com/

Last summer, Lenovo agreed to preload Novell Inc.'s SLED 10 (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) on its ThinkPad T60p mobile workstation.

Then, Lenovo started retreating, and hemming that they really didn't mean that they would offer it pre-installed

Lenovo recommends Windows Vista(TM) Business for business computing.

I was impressed by the author's attention to detail and clear specification of the tested systems and the steps involved in using them.

One useful correction would be that programs are just as easy to install on .rpm-based systems as they are on .deb-based systems. The default tool on Fedora Core 6 is called YUM and it does all the dependency resolving necessary. There are even simpler front ends to it such as Pup and Pirut. Package installation, deinstallation, upgrade and update are just as easy as they are with Aptitude.

The problems that the author experiences with 64-bit Flash are unfortunately a result of there being insufficient pressure from GNU/Linux consumers on vendors to supply Free software. A similar problem is experience by many Ubuntu users that rely on the non-Free drivers produced by Nvidia for their graphics cards, or the various non-free binary blobs used for some dodgy wireless hardware. This will continue to be a problem as long as distributions like Ubuntu facilitate the manufacturers of this hardware in evading one of the central principles of Free Software. The manufacturers can't do a good enough job of staying current with the kernel and so GNU/Linux will always be a second class citizen as long as we accept this. Fortunately there are manufacturers, such as Intel that provide Free software for their 3D graphics cards and their wireless chipsets and so it's worth choosing their components when building a new system. (I used to buy ATI stuff because the Free 3d drivers were better than the Free Nvidia ones, but apparently the nouveau project is opening up the list of working Free Nvidia cards. I'll probably be giving Nvidia and ATI both a miss in favour of Intel though).

Unfortunately Mark Shuttleworth is a short-term thinker who is pushing many of the Ubuntu developers into including binary, closed blobs that work until you update your system. This is the tired old "I'm a pragmatist" line which has been releiving the pressure on manufacturers to open their drivers and on users to choose non-closed hardware while purchasing new systems. It's anything but pragmatic and leads to the sort of frustrations seen in the article.

Computer users have to use their purchasing power.
Improve security - buy alternatives

Stop feeding the monopoly. A competitive environment is good for all users. A mono culture is bad for security. The major PC OEMs will drag their feet becuase they are looking to save pennies even if it costs computer users hundreds of extra dollars in the long run

SUSE preloaded
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7778908329.html

eComStation preloaded
http://www.curtissystemssoftware.com/preloads.htm

Improve security - buy alternatives

Stop feeding the monopoly. A competitive environment is good for all users. A mono culture is bad for security. The major PC OEMs will drag their feet becuase they are looking to save pennys even if it costs computer users hundreds of extra dollars in the long run

SUSE preloaded
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7778908329.html

eComStation preloaded
http://www.curtissystemssoftware.com/preloads.htm

Stop feeding the monopoly. A competive environment is good for all users. A monoculture is bad for security

SUSE preloaded
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS7778908329.html

eComStation preloaded
http://www.curtissystemssoftware.com/preloads.htm

Dell replied, "We love Linux, and we're doing our best to support the Linux community. We see lots of opportunity there. If the Linux desktops could converge at their cores, such a common platform would make it easier to support. Or, if there was a leading or highly preferred version that a majority of users would want, we'd preload it." In the end, "we see [the Linux desktop] as a customer-driven activity. If customers want it, well, Dell will give it to them." One company has not played a role in Dell's Linux decisions. "Microsoft has not talked to us about Linux. If they did, I wouldn't care. It's none of their business," concluded Dell.

I'm amazed that that comment was rated funny because that's exactly what Dell is saying/thinking: http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS3822185143.html

I'd like to see the Slashdot thread the day that Dell announces to ship machines with a preinstalled Suse. All the Red Hat, the Debian, the [your favorite distro here] fans will be really pissed off.

If anything, I think this might be a good thing for Linux on Dell computers. Michael Dell has previously gone on record as saying:
"We love Linux, and we're doing our best to support the Linux community. We see lots of opportunity there. If the Linux desktops could converge at their cores, such a common platform would make it easier to support. Or, if there was a leading or highly preferred version that a majority of users would want, we'd preload it."

"Switch to Gentoo you say? I could, but then I'd have to get my hands gooey at levels that I'd rather remain a mystery (the kernel should remain distant, angry, and invisible like a God)"

I can't for the life of me understand why you would need to get your hands gooey. These provide similar desktop experiences to Vista without compiling the kernel. Looking Glass on Ubuntu, Beryl 3D on Gentoo, Novells SLED and Suns Looking Glass 3D desktop.

"I'm not a communist and don't believe in that hippy crap"

Good for you, I'm a republican myself too. But talk about mixed metaphors, Hippys generally don't like to be told what to do and good communist think what the central committee tells them what to think.

was I'll be upgrading (Score:1 FUD)

Try this article, it is a cogent discussion of the most approachable distros for those coming from other platforms: http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2914026253. html

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4828732453.html

The gist is that edgy has many experimental features. It was made known well before release to expect some departures from the norm. Edgy lacks in almost all areas from extensive testing to just plain polish. If you have strange variables like upgrading an upgraded upgrade or wierd combinations of hardware, you may see some issues, and some issues may not be very friendly, though I don't believe there is any dataloss.

A standard computer + fresh edgy install is a good setup, but I wouldn't give it to a newbie because I'd hate to explain how he's running a little experiment. I'd go with dapper and wait for the next LTS version, which is likely to upgrade from dapper very well.

"What happened in the intervening four years with KDE and Gnome ... not much"

Would you call Looking Glass on Ubuntu nothing or Beryl 3D nothing. Both out Vistas Vista which isn't even in the shops yet. Not to mention Novells SLED offering.

"In 2007 I want to be able to setup a printer, connect to all my network shares and install my productivity apps in under 3 weeks and avoid having to recompile my kernel"

You're obviously trolling but I'll bite. What obscure 'productivity apps' that (in all probability googled on) you had to recompile your kernel. Setting up a printer and enabling network shares do not require recompiling your kernel either.

was Re:2002 LoL

"Honestly I don't see why HP's argument is flawed, without an OS the PC is useless for things that consumer's want to do. HP could install Linux on every PC they ship, but the problems inherent in that should be easy to see for anyone, even the most die-hard linux fanboy"

'during the past few years, several thousand Linspire-loaded PCs have been deployed in dozens of classrooms across the state of Indiana in an trial program that has been widely successful; some 12,500 high schools in India moved to Linux-only computers'

'Desktop Linux is less expensive for schools to buy and less expensive for IT administrators to upgrade," said Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony. "It's easy to install and easy for teachers and staff members to learn, and it's safe from the plague of viruses and spyware'

was (Not a bad arguement Score:4, Astroturfing)

"Honestly I don't see why HP's argument is flawed, without an OS the PC is useless for things that consumer's want to do. HP could install Linux on every PC they ship, but the problems inherent in that should be easy to see for anyone, even the most die-hard linux fanboy"

'during the past few years, several thousand Linspire-loaded PCs have been deployed in dozens of classrooms across the state of Indiana in an trial program that has been widely successful; some 12,500 high schools in India moved to Linux-only computers'

'Desktop Linux is less expensive for schools to buy and less expensive for IT administrators to upgrade," said Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony. "It's easy to install and easy for teachers and staff members to learn, and it's safe from the plague of viruses and spyware'

was (Not a bad arguement Score:4, Astroturfing)

The colour is faked?? Shove me some proof of that. All I see is:

http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT5734583728. html
  Display -- 7.5-inch "dual-mode" 1200 x 900 pixel display

        * Mono display: High-resolution, reflective monochrome mode
        * Color display: Standard-resolution, quincunx-sampled, transmissive color mode

Doesn't sound very 'fake' to me... Just lower resolution.