Is KDE 4.0 the Holy Grail of Desktops?

An anonymous reader writes "With KDE 4.0 being expected some time this year, expectation runs high in the linux/unix users camp and the media read a lot between the lines of what the KDE developers say and do. In some ways KDE will provide a standard as to how a desktop should look and behave. This interesting article wonders whether KDE 4.0 will become the complete desktop which will meet the needs of a wide cross section of computer users. One of the common complaints that some Linux users have over KDE is that it is too cluttered. And by addressing this need without putting off the power users, the KDE developers could make it an all in one Desktop. Keep in mind that KDE 4.0 is based on Qt 4.0 and so can be easily ported to Windows and other OSes too which makes this thought doubly relevant."

Comments

Re:Explorer is just a shell

[jhfry]

I worked for a company that ran Outlook as it's shell. Every user logged in and had their mail, calendar, and shortcuts for word, excel, and a couple of internal apps in the sidebar. At first I thought it was nuts, but it was a well managed network, and it worked really well actually.

Mind you, this was a relatively long time ago... Win 95 or 98 era if I remember correctly... when you could change your shell just by editing a line in your system.ini.

Re:Why?

[parvenu74]

Of course, if you're using KDE on Windows as a migration step towards KDE on Linux, once you move to Linux the WIN32 API disappears along with the windows apps. If you're using KDE on Windows as a migration step toward Linux, then the disappearance of the Win32 API is the goal, not a problem. Hey Gnome developers -- I know you read these posts, Miguel! -- how much longer before you have something like Gnome/Win32 available? Y'all keep wondering when Linux on the desktop will be ready for prime time... As soon as you can deliver KDE/Win32 and/or Gnome/Win32, allow OpenOffice, Firefox, and all of the other F/OSS apps to run on these frameworks instead of the Win32 API stack, then sysadmins will be able to deprecate the Win32 apps one at a time in favor of the Linux apps (Evolution for Outlook, for example) until no more native Windows apps are left and you can nuke Windows & repave the hard drive with your favorite flavor of Linux. Moreover, if these frameworks actually WORK on Win32 and work well, then companies like Adobe will have a reason to make version of their products for KDE/Gnome/Linux, which means more momentum for Linux and more nails in Windows' coffin.

Re:Why?

[alexhs]

Excepted it doesn't disable the window manager AFAIK.

The key I know about is "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Shell"
I've used it to start cygwin xwin X server in place of explorer, but if you're launching a win32 app, it still has XP borders. And if you're launching a browser window, it will launch the full desktop.

Is there an equivalent to 'nautilus --no-desktop' for MS explorer ?

Is there a mean to replace the whole window manager ?

Re:There are even better shells for windows.

[nschubach]

I've actually tried this before (for a PC-Gaming center configuration). something about Half-life as the Shell disallowed it access to the registry, thus the application key stored therein. When the PC booted up into Half-Life, it would prompt for the CD-Key.