Unusual Linux Desktops?

sparrow_hawk asks: "I'm doing a presentation on Linux, sort of a basic education about what exactly it is and isn't. One of the points I'm trying to hammer home is the idea that Linux can look and act pretty much however you want it to. I'd like to know what's the most unusual Linux desktop you've seen, preferably with screenshots -- the one that looks like the helm of an alien spaceship, or the one that mimics a 50's radio?"

Comments

careful

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I would be really careful about this. While the power of choice is attractive to geeks, it more often than not puts normal people off. I think that you stand to lose more converts than you gain by putting up extreme Linux desktops--normal people react with "this is a much too complicated thing for me", rather than "oh cool! I want to twiddle with my machine too!"

For proof, look no farther than how many Windows users have changed the default background on their machine.

Re:careful

[Brandybuck]

While the power of choice is attractive to geeks, it more often than not puts normal people off.

Where the heck did you get that factoid? From the Encyclopedia Slashdotica? It's clearly false. While some people abhor choice, the vast majority want it.

Go into MacDonalds and find twenty different kinds of hamburgers, plus chicken and fish sandwiches. Odds are they'll have a specialty sandwich for the month. A far far cry from the John Belushi "cheeseburger cheeseburger pespi" world. Restaurants have dozens of selections. Even those that cater to the non-geek.

Grocery store commercials advertise new larger selections. Automobile commercials advertise new makes, models and a huge range of colors and options. Ditto for just about any other kind of store I can think of. "LiquorMegaSuperMart! Now with three hundred of your favorite microbrews!"

"But," I hear you say, "it's different when it comes to computers!" Nonsense. I walk around my work and I see that at least nine out of ten Windows users have their own wallpaper.

Re:Enlightenment v0.13

[tiny69]

I miss the old themes.org. The themes could be as simple as AbsoluteE or some gaudy monstrosity. And they would both look good. There was also a lot of effort to create the best looking theme or screenshot. I just don't see that anymore. The only reason I don't use E now is because Slackware dropped it because of library naming issues. Instead, I'm using KDE which is just as bad as Gnome. There are well over a dozen different processes that need to be running.

$ ps ax | grep kde
. . . /bin/sh /opt/kde/bin/startkde
kdeinit: Running...
kdeinit: dcopserver --nosid
kdeinit: klauncher
kdeinit: kded
kdeinit: knotify
kdeinit: ksmserver
kdeinit: kwin
kdeinit: kdesktop
kdeinit: kicker
kdeinit: klipper
kdeinit: konsole --ls
kdeinit: kmix -caption KMix -icon kmix -miniicon kmix /opt/kde/bin/artsd -F 10 -S 4096 -s 60 -m artsmessage -l 3 -f
kdeinit: konsole --ls
kdeinit: konqueror --silent

I miss how simple and smooth E ran, even on older, slower systems. The only thing that has impressed me with the desktop in the last couple of years is the addition of tabs to the webbrowsers and Konsole.

Anyone remember when Netscape was the only GUI webbrowser. And it was also the buggiest thing on the system?