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Have you looked here? Bottom line: Linux is getting a lot closer to being an end-user desktop every day.

The Kontact suite on KDesktop is what's really killer. Sure, it will remind you to do things, but it also delivers on promises that Outlook never kept by actually working together and with devices. The address book has everything Outlook does and LDAP lookup and cryptography and a few other useful things. The mail client is very fast and has two or three forms of file format, none of which is a stupid monolithic database that breaks when it gets too big. The on the fly spell check works without being obtrusive and overbearing. Just right click to get chose the right spelling. Filtering by recipient, sender or list is as easy as right clicking too. The Kontact container brings it all together, where you can check out your RSS feeds, see your most important inboxes mail, who's having a birthday or anniversary, what's next in your todos and what's next in your appointments.

Syncing all of that between several computers is not too difficult, but Kpilot is easier. Kpilot syncs well with palm. It stuffs most of the information it can into the device. I use a visor and the USB cradle works using the visor kernel module. I've been using unstable, so there have been a few hickups, which mostly result in duplicate entries, but I've never lost data. Someone using Sarge and nothing but Sarge would be very happy with Kontact.

I've been told by many that Outlook was so buggy and so prone to spy/mal ware attack that the majority of people have turned their backs on PIMs in general. That's too bad. The KDE people have what they wanted and it works now with equipment they already own.

This page covered by Slashdot on May 28th, has screen shots of Outlook, KDE and Evolution that do a nice job of showing how everything stacks up to Outlook. What it does not show are all the cool extras you get with KDE and how well it works. For that, you need to run it yourself. Spam filtering can be a little slow, but that's as easy to turn on and off as running a wizard and apt-get installing one of four packages.

...or stealing ideas, one could also argue...

One that would should see this first.

AFAIC, that's inspiration, not stealing.

These guys also did Windows and Linux comparisons which make for good viewing.

Kde and Gnome look a lot like very pretty versions Windows 98.

No idea what version of KDE you are running. I think it looks earily close to XP On this page you can compare. It says Ubuntu and SUSE, but is more like Gnome and KDE next to XP.

To make Linux really cool

Why would Linux need to be cool? And because of F/OSS all aplications created for Linux will be available for Windows or anything else.

compared here

Another debate takes root? (debate)

about open source vs proprietary apps, like IE vs Firefox, here.