It's such a stupid argument, because *no* one can get along with just KDE apps, and it's a pain with just GNOME apps.
Kcheat and Licq are the best of their respective genres of software for Linux. You wanna use em, you're gonna get kde-libs.
However, GTK has the best AIM client (Gaim), all the best P2P clients (gtk-gnutella, lopster, ml_donkey_gui, dc_gui), the best audio app (xmms), the best system monitor (gkrellm), and the most powerful WM (sawfish, though I could see some people not needing said power).
Kde has a stupid naming scheme.
GNOME has a more-technically-user-oriented file browser (with bash-style tab completition) that sucks for ex-Windows users.
GNOME doesn't have DCOP, and hence script-based control of the UI.
KDE has more *crap* running at any given time, which I generally find makes for more fragility and a PITA to troubleshoot.
GNOME has GConf, which is a bad idea.
I *hate* KDE people flaming GNOME (particularly the vocal and generally completely wrong Mosfet), and I'll flame back when they do, but until you can totally ignore the other set of libraries and apps, people should calm the heck down. Neither environment can stand on its own yet.
As I final word, I have to say my main concern about gnome these days really, genuinely is gconf. I know about it being not evil, not really a registry, XML based, easy to modify, and such. I don't buy it. It is a registry.
Yup. I don't like GConf either.
That being said...that's the only thing I agree with of the original article.
Some of the most egregious things in the original article:
Plenty of alternate language-bindings have emerged for Qt and KDE, so nobody is limited to writing in C++.
Uh, huh. And the most common UNIX language is C. And it's what most GNOME programmers choose to use. And KDE doesn't cope with it.
KDE has consistent dialogs for reconfiguring key bindings...
Read "I can't reconfigure any keybinding in any app, as GNOME lets me do, due to the fact that KDE's approach is less flexible."
The KDE picker also lets you navigate through the directories the way a browser does.
*I* use the keyboard to move around the system. I want good tab completion (including partial). GTK provides this.
It has that ancient, Macintosh-like pull-down list that includes the directories above the one you're in.
Oh, the one that lets me get where I'm trying to go without rabidly whacking an "up" button? That one? Is this guy's entire experience with Windows Explorer, not with the Mac OS, and can he handle anything that differs from it?
KDE file-picker slam-dunks the GTK equivalent in terms of
By having shitty keyboard support. Yeah, it sure does...
The reason the file-picker is so easy, feature-rich and consistent is that it is a standard part of a cohesive, maturing framework.
Umm....gee, you mean *exactly like the GNOME file selector*? Read as "I read KDE developer propaganda, but have *no* idea how GNOME works."
One of the nicest things about KParts is how easy it is to use from a programmer's perspective.
*Every* toolkit I can think of has a easy-to-use standard open/save dialog. The Mac had it back in '84, for chrissake. Has this guy ever written a line of software?
Read my lips: no new file-pickers.
Yeah, *there's* a good way to ensure consistency. Keep changing the fucking file-picker each minor release. It was changed in the last major release. Just because KDE can't keep a single consistent interface doesn't mean that GNOME should fall to the same problems.
No consistent interface-components.
What is this guy, *stupid*? All the higher-level GNOME widgets (see glade) are precisely consistent. That's what they're *there* for.
The full-featured sawfish window manager has been ripped out, and a weaker-featured version has replaced it.
That's funny. I'm using sawfish as we speak. Perhaps that's because *GNOME* doesn't suffer from WM compatibility problems out the ass. The change was made because most users don't code in Lisp. The ones who *do*, like me, install sawfish. Not *that* complicated, except evidently for this guy. Also, if he doesn't like the simpler metacity WM, why the hell does he like the *ass simple* KDE window manager?
Nautilus, the file manager, is basically stripped down to a bare minimum of features.
I.E. it is not also a web browser. No shit, friend. Some of us don't consider the pinnacle of a desktop to be cloning a dumb decision that was made by Microsoft *completely* for political convenience.
One of GNOME's biggest problems is that it can't make up its mind
regarding what it is. GNOME started out as a framework, a panel, the
Enlightenment window manager and GMC, which is the graphical version
of Midnight Commander. At some point, Enlightenment was replaced with
Sawfish as the default window manager. The incredibly buggy and slow
GMC was eventually replaced with what is now Nautilus.
Of course, KDE did *exactly* the same thing over its major releases, but apparently that doesn't count.
Applications, on the other hand, are still using the old
GTK as well as the new.
Tell me when the *KDE* application base isn't spread out over KDE 1, 2, and 3. I still can't find a newer version of Kcheat, buddy.
Worst of all, by getting sidetracked and making language-neutrality
the highest priority, GNOME has been relegated to a fate of
disintegrating and reintegrating in a seemingly endless effort to find
some decent combination of file managers, window managers, panels and
components.
Read as "KDE sucks to code for in anything but C++ and reasonably supports only *one* file manager, WM, etc"
And where the hell did he pull multiple panels from? Just figured that he could toss a couple lies in there to flesh things out?
In conclusion, this is a pretty pathetic article. The author was wrong, showed bias, wasn't knowledgeable about what he was critiquing, and occasionally pulled stuff straight from his ass.
Yes, and apt's method, while leaking *zero* information, is very expensive. It burns through tons of bandwidth. Had a single package updated? Download 2 megs of package listings again. That's just a complete drain on the people volunteering bandwidth for Debian, or for apt-rpm.
I like the rather impressive yum's approach much more (only for rpm users, though its approach could certainly be used by a.deb front end). It's *slightly* less private, but not by much.
It just grabs a list of all current packages and versions, and downloads metadata on each package (which is stored in a different file for each package) for which it doesn't have the latest metadata. End result? The most a spying main server could divine would be how up-to-date your current, local mirror of the package metadata is. I guess that might let them guess the last time you updated, but that's it. No huge bandwidth waste like apt, no knowledge of what you have installed like MS's current approach.
Speaking of paper, use good, heavy, textured white or creme coloured paper. For a variety of reasons, from 'it soaks up the ink better' to 'it feels more solid' it's going to look nicer. You're selling yourself, as a product, basicially; pay some attention to packaging.
PHB: "Well, I *was* going to interview this applicant with the amazing experience and impressive achivements. But then I came across Johnny Nogood's resume, and my heart nearly stopped. Rich, creamy paper, the color of sliced almonds. A firm, confident texture that my hands couldn't stop running themselves over. And the heft of the sheet! The sheer weight and being of it alone commanded my attention, made me look straight ahead and say to myself "Johnny's the man for this job. He knows his paper!"
Frankly, most (well, largish ones at least) tech companies seem to now be preferring electronic resumes, because they can search through them, grab as many copies as they need, and don't need to worry about the thing getting blurred or something in their hands.
Perhaps my phrasing was unclear. The PTO, upon granting a patent, doesn't provide any guarantee that the patent is legitimate (i.e. that it doesn't have prior art or that it's nonobvious). That's not their job. They're a registry. They weren't given authority or resources to say "this is a bogus patent" or "this is not", though they may try to skim out the really obviously bad ones.
We're not all PhD's are we, yet we can spot the turkeys.
First, we can spot *some* of them, yes. Are you going to guarantee that you or I can spot all of them? Let me put it this way -- I happened to see someone, around a year ago, get granted a patent for a lookup table optimization for computing a 32 bit CRC. I'm a CS major, but had I not the *previous week* been looking into implementing precisely this, and learned that everyone uses and *has used* this particular optimization for ages, I wouldn't have had any idea that there was a problem.
Second, the current level of patent applications is aimed at, well, getting past the current patent examiners. You can throw some undergrads in there, yes, and bump up the level a bit. It just means that the people filing the lame patent applications get a bit more advanced, a bit more complicated, a bit harder to read.
Third, "a great part-time job for university undergrads" sounds a bit risky. Getting patent is terribly lucrative, and putting some undergrad in for a part-time job doing rather subjective work where a single bribe could mean millions for the person granted the patent...I'd say it would be bypassed.
Remember, one does an IPO because one needs money to expand.
Google is profitable, and doesn't really need tons of money to do anything at the moment. They also have an excellent future. I don't see them getting less important at all. If I were one of the Google owners, I don't think I *would* do an IPO. I'd hang onto my ownership of the company.
Though it may be less than useful to the general public, Google does not have an FTP search engine. The company just purchased does. I can see *some* value there.
The place has well above federal safety standards of radiation even today. Just walking through is unlikely to cause a problem, though I definitely wouldn't want to live there.
I suspect he will. He documented what he did, violated federal high-security areas...journalists aren't above the law, and this was particularly egregious. I could see him getting prison time for this.
When will the patent office get a clue? Doesn't *anyone* there make even the slightest attempt to search for prior art?
Not really the task assigned to them. They zip through their own patent db, and (I would assume) check referenced patents, but they don't have anywhere near the funding to be an authoritative source on whether a patent is valid or not. They're basically just a registry...and if someone tries to go after you with a bogus patent, it's *your* responsibility to challenge it. The PTO wasn't given authority to mark patents as valid or not.
Think of what it would entail (and keep in mind that patents are deliberately worded to be as broad as possible and yet sound as original as possible). You'd have to hire leading PhDs in every field to comb through all the data coming in.
but does any know the process used to review a patent application?
The USPTO is essentially just given the task of a registry, and their review is cursory. It means little in terms of legitimacy to be granted a patent. The USPTO doesn't take responsibility for challenging patents that shouldn't have been granted but were -- it's the responsibility of private business or citizens to do so.
To be honest, BBEdit doesn't offer much that Emacs doesn't, in terms of functionality.
The Pro version used to ship with a nice GUI HTML table editor. Other than that, I'd say it's pretty handily outfeatured by emacs.
But I didn't buy a $3k titanium laptop so I could run an un-mouseable text editor in a terminal window (nor did I buy it so that I could install X and xemacs, so that's not a solution).
$3k for the laptop and MacOS (admittedly, the OS is factored into that cost), and then $150 to run an editor that isn't as flexible when you could be running xemacs in an OS that uses X as its native UI (And I used BBEdit for years before using emacs:-) )? Urrrggghhh...so expensive.
This isn't insightful. This is ignorant, and I feel dumber for having read it.
Ah.
There is no onus to clone the Windows interface.
Really. So, you believe than someone who has used Windows for the past five years will just as happily use Linux if the interface is completely different?
It's cloned because OSS GUI developers are quite simply unable to create anything better.
Already, despite the constraint to appear "Windows-like", OSS developers *are* out putting new UI ideas into play. GNOME has tear-off menus -- I don't see that in Windows. It also has menu accelerators that I, as a user, can rebind just by moving the mouse over them and tapping my desired key combination. KDE is making major leaps and bounds towards making *everything* a dockable pane.
That's off the top of my head (*and* I don't use KDE). What improvements has Microsoft come up with in the past five years? The Office Assistants?
However, if you're content to sit there and wait for MS' desktop dominance to subside, you're going to wait for the rest of your life. MS' desktop dominance has less to do with "superior UI design" and more to do with marketing.
And now there are competitors who offer a price edge, the ability to avoid vendor lock-in, and just as many services as Microsoft does.
Emulate service, support, consultancy, and business partnering.
That has nothing to do with OSS. Anyone can offer these services, and many do right now.
If you're selling people the idea of "Almost-But-Not-Quite-Windows", you'll "Almost-But-Not-Quite-Sell-Them".
It's not an attempt to be "another Windows", it's an attempt to keep close enough in UI to keep ex-Windows users comfortable.
No matter what other faults they may or may not have (fence sitter ahoy \o/) MS spend millions on research into human/computer interaction and user interface design.
And what has it led to?
A filesystem browser squashed together with a web browser (done for political reasons).
The Start menu (this has been torn to pieces on the Interface Hall of Shame).
WMP 9.
Outlook's custom widget (with the mailbox name).
Each version of Office using completely different widgets than all other apps in Windows.
All with poor UIs.
Most of the rest of what Microsoft's done has been heavily based on Apple's ideas, or HCI driven by technical flaws. There was the dual filename system because they made the poor choice to use 8.3 filenames. Then the Start Menu, because Windows developers used masses of completely unidentifiable data file names slapped in the same directory as the executable. MDI, which was produced for Windows 3.1 because the VM system sucked and MDI reduced load on it.
Occasionally they take ideas from OSS (did I read elsewhere in this thread about virtual desktops and taskbar applets?)
I *wish* they'd take the idea of virtual desktops. One of the biggest things Windows needs.
are more than happy to build interfaces based on the results of their millions of dollars worth of research and linux is all the better for it.
Is a combined web browser/file browser really that crucial or useful, or just included to help out ex-Windows users?
But I thought OSS was all about inovation right now?
To RMS, it's about freedom.
To ESR, it's about better software quality.
To suits, it's about lower costs.
As for "innovation", that's a word that's been more wildly misused than any other term that I can think of. If someone's crowing about "innovation", they probably haven't had a fresh idea in years. Freenet, rsync...now *those* contained clever, useful ideas that were new when they were written.
People said the same thing about IBM and business computer systems at one point. DEC was pretty overwhelming at one point. Apple pretty much controlled the personal computer market at one point.
If there's one thing certain about the tech industry, it's that no one holds their position forever. MS went from being a dinky applications vendor to having an enormous amount of control over the desktop because the then-dominant vendors screwed up and they had a couple of lucky breaks. The same thing will most certainly happen to some smaller company at some point in the future.
Maybe it'll be Apple, maybe a Linux vendor. If you think MS is here forever, though, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Slashdot Mirror
The first time I logged in to GNOME, my first reaction was, "Holy crap, this is windows!" Then it began to sink in, the GUI is too much like windows.
Then you're going to *really* hate KDE, which clones Explorer even more closely.
It's such a stupid argument, because *no* one can get along with just KDE apps, and it's a pain with just GNOME apps.
Kcheat and Licq are the best of their respective genres of software for Linux. You wanna use em, you're gonna get kde-libs.
However, GTK has the best AIM client (Gaim), all the best P2P clients (gtk-gnutella, lopster, ml_donkey_gui, dc_gui), the best audio app (xmms), the best system monitor (gkrellm), and the most powerful WM (sawfish, though I could see some people not needing said power).
Kde has a stupid naming scheme.
GNOME has a more-technically-user-oriented file browser (with bash-style tab completition) that sucks for ex-Windows users.
GNOME doesn't have DCOP, and hence script-based control of the UI.
KDE has more *crap* running at any given time, which I generally find makes for more fragility and a PITA to troubleshoot.
GNOME has GConf, which is a bad idea.
I *hate* KDE people flaming GNOME (particularly the vocal and generally completely wrong Mosfet), and I'll flame back when they do, but until you can totally ignore the other set of libraries and apps, people should calm the heck down. Neither environment can stand on its own yet.
As I final word, I have to say my main concern about gnome these days really, genuinely is gconf. I know about it being not evil, not really a registry, XML based, easy to modify, and such. I don't buy it. It is a registry.
Yup. I don't like GConf either.
That being said...that's the only thing I agree with of the original article.
Some of the most egregious things in the original article:
Plenty of alternate language-bindings have emerged for Qt and KDE, so nobody is limited to writing in C++.
Uh, huh. And the most common UNIX language is C. And it's what most GNOME programmers choose to use. And KDE doesn't cope with it.
KDE has consistent dialogs for reconfiguring key bindings...
Read "I can't reconfigure any keybinding in any app, as GNOME lets me do, due to the fact that KDE's approach is less flexible."
The KDE picker also lets you navigate through the directories the way a browser does.
*I* use the keyboard to move around the system. I want good tab completion (including partial). GTK provides this.
It has that ancient, Macintosh-like pull-down list that includes the directories above the one you're in.
Oh, the one that lets me get where I'm trying to go without rabidly whacking an "up" button? That one? Is this guy's entire experience with Windows Explorer, not with the Mac OS, and can he handle anything that differs from it?
KDE file-picker slam-dunks the GTK equivalent in terms of
By having shitty keyboard support. Yeah, it sure does...
The reason the file-picker is so easy, feature-rich and consistent is that it is a standard part of a cohesive, maturing framework.
Umm....gee, you mean *exactly like the GNOME file selector*? Read as "I read KDE developer propaganda, but have *no* idea how GNOME works."
One of the nicest things about KParts is how easy it is to use from a programmer's perspective.
*Every* toolkit I can think of has a easy-to-use standard open/save dialog. The Mac had it back in '84, for chrissake. Has this guy ever written a line of software?
Read my lips: no new file-pickers.
Yeah, *there's* a good way to ensure consistency. Keep changing the fucking file-picker each minor release. It was changed in the last major release. Just because KDE can't keep a single consistent interface doesn't mean that GNOME should fall to the same problems.
No consistent interface-components.
What is this guy, *stupid*? All the higher-level GNOME widgets (see glade) are precisely consistent. That's what they're *there* for.
The full-featured sawfish window manager has been ripped out, and a weaker-featured version has replaced it.
That's funny. I'm using sawfish as we speak. Perhaps that's because *GNOME* doesn't suffer from WM compatibility problems out the ass. The change was made because most users don't code in Lisp. The ones who *do*, like me, install sawfish. Not *that* complicated, except evidently for this guy. Also, if he doesn't like the simpler metacity WM, why the hell does he like the *ass simple* KDE window manager?
Nautilus, the file manager, is basically stripped down to a bare minimum of features.
I.E. it is not also a web browser. No shit, friend. Some of us don't consider the pinnacle of a desktop to be cloning a dumb decision that was made by Microsoft *completely* for political convenience.
One of GNOME's biggest problems is that it can't make up its mind
regarding what it is. GNOME started out as a framework, a panel, the
Enlightenment window manager and GMC, which is the graphical version
of Midnight Commander. At some point, Enlightenment was replaced with
Sawfish as the default window manager. The incredibly buggy and slow
GMC was eventually replaced with what is now Nautilus.
Of course, KDE did *exactly* the same thing over its major releases, but apparently that doesn't count.
Applications, on the other hand, are still using the old
GTK as well as the new.
Tell me when the *KDE* application base isn't spread out over KDE 1, 2, and 3. I still can't find a newer version of Kcheat, buddy.
Worst of all, by getting sidetracked and making language-neutrality
the highest priority, GNOME has been relegated to a fate of
disintegrating and reintegrating in a seemingly endless effort to find
some decent combination of file managers, window managers, panels and
components.
Read as "KDE sucks to code for in anything but C++ and reasonably supports only *one* file manager, WM, etc"
And where the hell did he pull multiple panels from? Just figured that he could toss a couple lies in there to flesh things out?
In conclusion, this is a pretty pathetic article. The author was wrong, showed bias, wasn't knowledgeable about what he was critiquing, and occasionally pulled stuff straight from his ass.
This is actually how APT works.
.deb front end). It's *slightly* less private, but not by much.
Yes, and apt's method, while leaking *zero* information, is very expensive. It burns through tons of bandwidth. Had a single package updated? Download 2 megs of package listings again. That's just a complete drain on the people volunteering bandwidth for Debian, or for apt-rpm.
I like the rather impressive yum's approach much more (only for rpm users, though its approach could certainly be used by a
It just grabs a list of all current packages and versions, and downloads metadata on each package (which is stored in a different file for each package) for which it doesn't have the latest metadata. End result? The most a spying main server could divine would be how up-to-date your current, local mirror of the package metadata is. I guess that might let them guess the last time you updated, but that's it. No huge bandwidth waste like apt, no knowledge of what you have installed like MS's current approach.
Speaking of paper, use good, heavy, textured white or creme coloured paper. For a variety of reasons, from 'it soaks up the ink better' to 'it feels more solid' it's going to look nicer. You're selling yourself, as a product, basicially; pay some attention to packaging.
PHB: "Well, I *was* going to interview this applicant with the amazing experience and impressive achivements. But then I came across Johnny Nogood's resume, and my heart nearly stopped. Rich, creamy paper, the color of sliced almonds. A firm, confident texture that my hands couldn't stop running themselves over. And the heft of the sheet! The sheer weight and being of it alone commanded my attention, made me look straight ahead and say to myself "Johnny's the man for this job. He knows his paper!"
Frankly, most (well, largish ones at least) tech companies seem to now be preferring electronic resumes, because they can search through them, grab as many copies as they need, and don't need to worry about the thing getting blurred or something in their hands.
Perhaps my phrasing was unclear. The PTO, upon granting a patent, doesn't provide any guarantee that the patent is legitimate (i.e. that it doesn't have prior art or that it's nonobvious). That's not their job. They're a registry. They weren't given authority or resources to say "this is a bogus patent" or "this is not", though they may try to skim out the really obviously bad ones.
We're not all PhD's are we, yet we can spot the turkeys.
First, we can spot *some* of them, yes. Are you going to guarantee that you or I can spot all of them? Let me put it this way -- I happened to see someone, around a year ago, get granted a patent for a lookup table optimization for computing a 32 bit CRC. I'm a CS major, but had I not the *previous week* been looking into implementing precisely this, and learned that everyone uses and *has used* this particular optimization for ages, I wouldn't have had any idea that there was a problem.
Second, the current level of patent applications is aimed at, well, getting past the current patent examiners. You can throw some undergrads in there, yes, and bump up the level a bit. It just means that the people filing the lame patent applications get a bit more advanced, a bit more complicated, a bit harder to read.
Third, "a great part-time job for university undergrads" sounds a bit risky. Getting patent is terribly lucrative, and putting some undergrad in for a part-time job doing rather subjective work where a single bribe could mean millions for the person granted the patent...I'd say it would be bypassed.
Federal safety standards for *residences*. [shrug] Maybe I oversimplified.
It's not *that* uncommon. In high radon areas, a fair number of houses are also too high -- the standards have a pretty decent margin to them.
Remember, one does an IPO because one needs money to expand.
Google is profitable, and doesn't really need tons of money to do anything at the moment. They also have an excellent future. I don't see them getting less important at all. If I were one of the Google owners, I don't think I *would* do an IPO. I'd hang onto my ownership of the company.
Though it may be less than useful to the general public, Google does not have an FTP search engine. The company just purchased does. I can see *some* value there.
The place has well above federal safety standards of radiation even today. Just walking through is unlikely to cause a problem, though I definitely wouldn't want to live there.
I suspect he will. He documented what he did, violated federal high-security areas...journalists aren't above the law, and this was particularly egregious. I could see him getting prison time for this.
When will the patent office get a clue? Doesn't *anyone* there make even the slightest attempt to search for prior art?
Not really the task assigned to them. They zip through their own patent db, and (I would assume) check referenced patents, but they don't have anywhere near the funding to be an authoritative source on whether a patent is valid or not. They're basically just a registry...and if someone tries to go after you with a bogus patent, it's *your* responsibility to challenge it. The PTO wasn't given authority to mark patents as valid or not.
Think of what it would entail (and keep in mind that patents are deliberately worded to be as broad as possible and yet sound as original as possible). You'd have to hire leading PhDs in every field to comb through all the data coming in.
but does any know the process used to review a patent application?
The USPTO is essentially just given the task of a registry, and their review is cursory. It means little in terms of legitimacy to be granted a patent. The USPTO doesn't take responsibility for challenging patents that shouldn't have been granted but were -- it's the responsibility of private business or citizens to do so.
One thing that emacs can definitely do is handle rebinding...
Urgh...too much money.
:-) )? Urrrggghhh...so expensive.
To be honest, BBEdit doesn't offer much that Emacs doesn't, in terms of functionality.
The Pro version used to ship with a nice GUI HTML table editor. Other than that, I'd say it's pretty handily outfeatured by emacs.
But I didn't buy a $3k titanium laptop so I could run an un-mouseable text editor in a terminal window (nor did I buy it so that I could install X and xemacs, so that's not a solution).
$3k for the laptop and MacOS (admittedly, the OS is factored into that cost), and then $150 to run an editor that isn't as flexible when you could be running xemacs in an OS that uses X as its native UI (And I used BBEdit for years before using emacs
BBEdit has a much shorter learning curve than emacs. OTOH, it's also much less powerful.
[sigh] I remember when Bare Bones was a small company that made inexpensive products, and didn't try all this price discrimination crap.
You know, the "foo is dying" posts, if well-written, really *are* funny. When you're having a conversation, moderators, don't *you* crack a few jokes?
Remember the Berman bill, where people caught violating IP rights could be attacked electronically?
Too bad we don't have a bill letting us electronically attack people caught abusing IP rights.
This stuff doesn't matter. The only thing that matters legally in a patent is the claims, not the abstract.
This isn't insightful. This is ignorant, and I feel dumber for having read it.
Ah.
There is no onus to clone the Windows interface.
Really. So, you believe than someone who has used Windows for the past five years will just as happily use Linux if the interface is completely different?
It's cloned because OSS GUI developers are quite simply unable to create anything better.
Already, despite the constraint to appear "Windows-like", OSS developers *are* out putting new UI ideas into play. GNOME has tear-off menus -- I don't see that in Windows. It also has menu accelerators that I, as a user, can rebind just by moving the mouse over them and tapping my desired key combination. KDE is making major leaps and bounds towards making *everything* a dockable pane.
That's off the top of my head (*and* I don't use KDE). What improvements has Microsoft come up with in the past five years? The Office Assistants?
However, if you're content to sit there and wait for MS' desktop dominance to subside, you're going to wait for the rest of your life. MS' desktop dominance has less to do with "superior UI design" and more to do with marketing.
And now there are competitors who offer a price edge, the ability to avoid vendor lock-in, and just as many services as Microsoft does.
Emulate service, support, consultancy, and business partnering.
That has nothing to do with OSS. Anyone can offer these services, and many do right now.
If you're selling people the idea of "Almost-But-Not-Quite-Windows", you'll "Almost-But-Not-Quite-Sell-Them".
It's not an attempt to be "another Windows", it's an attempt to keep close enough in UI to keep ex-Windows users comfortable.
No matter what other faults they may or may not have (fence sitter ahoy \o/) MS spend millions on research into human/computer interaction and user interface design.
And what has it led to?
A filesystem browser squashed together with a web browser (done for political reasons).
The Start menu (this has been torn to pieces on the Interface Hall of Shame).
WMP 9.
Outlook's custom widget (with the mailbox name).
Each version of Office using completely different widgets than all other apps in Windows.
All with poor UIs.
Most of the rest of what Microsoft's done has been heavily based on Apple's ideas, or HCI driven by technical flaws. There was the dual filename system because they made the poor choice to use 8.3 filenames. Then the Start Menu, because Windows developers used masses of completely unidentifiable data file names slapped in the same directory as the executable. MDI, which was produced for Windows 3.1 because the VM system sucked and MDI reduced load on it.
Occasionally they take ideas from OSS (did I read elsewhere in this thread about virtual desktops and taskbar applets?)
I *wish* they'd take the idea of virtual desktops. One of the biggest things Windows needs.
are more than happy to build interfaces based on the results of their millions of dollars worth of research and linux is all the better for it.
Is a combined web browser/file browser really that crucial or useful, or just included to help out ex-Windows users?
But I thought OSS was all about inovation right now?
To RMS, it's about freedom.
To ESR, it's about better software quality.
To suits, it's about lower costs.
As for "innovation", that's a word that's been more wildly misused than any other term that I can think of. If someone's crowing about "innovation", they probably haven't had a fresh idea in years. Freenet, rsync...now *those* contained clever, useful ideas that were new when they were written.
People said the same thing about IBM and business computer systems at one point. DEC was pretty overwhelming at one point. Apple pretty much controlled the personal computer market at one point.
If there's one thing certain about the tech industry, it's that no one holds their position forever. MS went from being a dinky applications vendor to having an enormous amount of control over the desktop because the then-dominant vendors screwed up and they had a couple of lucky breaks. The same thing will most certainly happen to some smaller company at some point in the future.
Maybe it'll be Apple, maybe a Linux vendor. If you think MS is here forever, though, I've got a bridge to sell you.
To give people a product they're familiar with. Once Microsoft has lost the desktop, then really radical improvements will start.