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Bart Decrem on the Linux Business
Anonymous Hero writes "Co-founder of Eazel and now vice president of Hancom Linux, Bart Decram gives his views on a whole lot of things related to desktop Linux in an interview at Linux and Main. He talks abour what went wrong with Eazel, why everyone should work together to build Microsoft Office filters, how anti-U.S. sentiment can be used to promote Linux throughout the world, and how he thinks KDE is 'butt-ugly.' Long read, but worth it."
Why can't Linux be pro-American? I consider myself a patriotic American, and think that Linux is a good thing for our country. For every country. Many of the open source contributers who have made GNU/Linux what it is today happen to be -- you guessed it -- Americans.
Why not package Linux as anti-Woman instead? That would have a tad better ring of truth. How about anti-Gay and anti-Black distributions. Wouldn't that be just fine and dandy?
By the way, has any other superpower in the history of the world been as positive for other countries as America? Look at the U.S.S.R. What a great neighbor. Look at the British Empire. Look at France under Napolean. Go back as far as you want.
Who are our enemies? Well, they are governments that are generally aggresive towards us or towards their neighbors. Or even towards their own people. And what to we do with our enemies after we conquer them. Do we colonize? Do we hold mass executions? No, we do our best to democratize and rebuild.
It's fun to moan about American power. But hot damn, if those American carriers out there on the oceans of the world were to disappear tomorrow, the world would not be a better place for freedom in the morning.
Besides, I'm willing to bet that Bin Laden uses Microsoft Outlook to send his hate spam.
I dunno, guys. I think linux users have a very strange aesthetic.
KDE (in KDEstep mode), to me, is one of the cleanest-looking window managers around. The icons are pixel-perfect, there's no distracting eye candy, and the window management doesn't get in the way of what actually matters -- the programs. (In this respect I think KDE learned some good things from Windows.)
There's no accounting for tastes, I guess, but we don't all feel this way. Keep it up, KDE!
I think this guy is a little shallow by determining his desktop on the types of icons and menu picture! You use a GUI to help you accomplish work faster... NOT to debate about how pretty the pictures are!
;) )
I don't know -- I agree with him for the most part. Every time a new version of KDE comes out, I switch to it for a week or two. I always like KDE, it always feels very together and fluid. But I always go back to GNOME. No matter how much time I spend poking through kde-look or classic.themes.org (you know, the one that actually has themes on it, unlike the new one), KDEs ugliness just nags at me. Eventually I get to the point where I avoid doing any work on the computer because it hurts my eyes to look at it.
I know there are people out there that like how KDE looks... great. But aesthetics does have a real effect on your attitude while using a computer. (Switch to all-Motif apps for a week and see how you feel
- fader
Or at least that's what the advertisers think. Anyone with a clue filters them out.