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KDE 4.1 Alpha 1 Released
Crobain writes "The first alpha release for KDE 4.1 is out, and bugs aside, it looks promising. The KDE Plasma desktop shell now has preliminary support for Mac OS X dashboard widgets and SuperKaramba, and panels can be added and removed via contextual menu items. 'This alpha release marks the start of the 4.1 feature freeze, so virtually all of the remaining developer effort between now and the official 4.1 release in July will focus on bug-fixing, polish, and stability. Despite the current breakage, the actual feature set that has been stubbed out for this release is pretty darn good. If the developers can deliver on all of this functionality and make it stable and robust, version 4.1 will offer a much better overall user experience than 4.0, and Plasma will come close to achieving functional parity with the KDE 3.5.x panel system.' The KDE Techbase wiki has a full list of the features planned for the 4.1 release."
Constantly trying to reinvent a perfectly round wheel results in
a) New problems that need to be worked out from scratch
b) Totally different use patterns which may or may not work in the real world
c) Reluctant users
Personally, I don't see a problem with following patterns that were created for Windows. There's no reason that the existing desktop format can't be extended and have features added to it if need be. This "lets go a totally different direction just coz we don't want to follow MS" is stupid. MS spent huge amounts of R&D finding out what regular users will be able to use, and freeriding on that seems like a good idea to me.
Also, open source software doesn't have a good track record when it comes to ground up usability designs. Compare GIMP, Pidgin and Blender with their commercial counterparts. Then look at how long Linux has taken to get to a point where it's considered barely usable by the every day user.
Oh, and anyone who throws in a "but my grandma has been using Linux since 1965 for $fooTinyUseCase" gets a kick in the backside.
I hate printers.