Actually, I was a pretty vocal critic of many aspects of KDE 4 initially. I really like the core "pillars" as Aaron Seigo calls them. Phonon, Sonnet, Akondi, Nepomuk, Decibel, and even Plasma are great ideas.
But I didn't like the initial desktop shell. I didn't like some of the design decisions. However, in time KDE 4 added back most of the KDE 3 functionality, with all the new KDE 4 functionality as well.
In acknowledging that I now like KDE 4, I'm admitting that my earlier reservations about KDE 4 may have been wrong.
And last time I checked, trolls make incindary comments solely for the purpose of illiciting strong responses. Saying that I like KDE 4 doesn't constitute as trolling. That is merely an opinion.
I suppose people might assume I'm trollinmg when I say I loathe Gnome. However, I just happen to loathe Gnome. (Note, I am a little intrigued by the new Gnome Shell concepts).
I'm guessing it isn't that the Java applet won't run in Linux, but rather that the website is balking at the User Agent string. I bet if wvmarle used a User Agent switcher, it would work fine in Linux.
I imagine anytime you create thumbnails for half a terrabyte of images, it will take some time, regardless of which file manager you use.
I was worried when I heard Dolphin was designed to be very simple. But I can't argue with the final product. It has all the features I want. As a dedicated file manager, the UI is an improvement over Konqueror. I can also heavily customize the UI to look and operate how I want it.
If you really still want the KDE 3 file manager, KDE still ships with Konqueror as well. You can make it your default file manager if you wish.
I can't tell you how many people familiar with XP who tell me they struggle with Vista. Or people who were familiar with Office 2003 tell me they struggle with 2007.
Conversely, I switch people to Linux all the time. My standard disclaimer is that if they hand me a box riddled with spyware and viruses, they're getting a Linux box back. I want them to try it for a while. If they don't like it, I will reinstall Windows.
Not a single person has requested Windows back. (Technically, I did reinstall Vista for a gal, but it was when I realized her Zune wouldn't work in Linux. It wasn't because she found Linux difficult).
Kickoff isn't that far removed from the Vista/7 Start Menu. The classic menu is like a classic Windows menu.
Window management is like Windows.
A modern Linux desktop is fairly consistent with most of the expected behavior that a Windows user would want. New features are usually fairly intuitive. I'd contend that using KDE is just as easy as using Windows, if not more so.
Familiarity would be a huge advantage for Windows, if they remained consistent. However, they haven't. When Vista rolled out, many (if not most) configuration dialogs and options moved for no good reason.
I think that advanced users actually have more trouble moving to a new OS, because they feel they are leaving a whole bunch of knowledge and familiarity behind. Basic users just want to know how to get to their email and the internet.
I appreciate your efforts. However I post my opinions as they are. Some days I get modded up and others I get modded down. It happens.
Certain opinions (I'll take XP over Gnome and Ubuntu, or I think Apple is as evil as MS) almost always get me modded down. I still post them because I honestly believe those things.
I really enjoy the concept of democratic moderation and karma rankings. But I don't believe in catering my posts to manipulate them.
Businesses don't care which piece of software gets the job done, so long as the job gets done. Some suits trust names they know, but most users just want to complete their tasks.
More and more businesses are discovering the Linux and Unix provide solutions they didn't know existed. They're also discovering those solutions not only get the job done, but save them millions in the long run.
Every software migration causes some headache, even when staying with Microsoft and upgrading. Only some upgrades save more money than they cost.
I've heard some say KDE 4 just copied Gnome. Dolphin appeared to take some inspiration from Nautilus.
Others insist Dolphin is just a clone from Vista explorer (which I don't get).
Others insist KDE 4 is just a Mac clone.
I honestly find the Gnome, KDE 3, KDE 4, Vista, XP and Mac OS X desktops to all be pretty unique. But maybe I just focus more on the differences more than the similarities.
I know when I'm sitting at a Windows desktop, I crave and miss certain functionality that is not available to me.
The only time the opposite is true is when I'm on a Linux box and I say, "I can't sync to my iPhone right now!"
Presumably you preferred KDE 3 to Gnome, and that was why you ran KDE 3. I hear many people who didn't like KDE 4 say they jumped to Gnome because KDE 4 wasn't as good as KDE 3.
Why not just stick with KDE 3? That's what I did for a long time.
However, I did recently switch to KDE 4, and my wife just switched to KDE 4 this week (mainly because she wanted her main laptop to run openSUSE 11.2 and have EXT4 like the netbook).
I fell in love with Window 7's Aero Peek. I can replicate that with Smooth Tasks plasmoid. I was against Kwin reinventing the wheel with composite effects rather than trying to integrate code from the compiz-fusion team, but I can't argue much with the final product.
Kwin is powerful, sexy, and stable. And they're working on integrating 7's neat window tricks in KDE 4.4. The notification system is great. The system tray is fantastic.
I still have no need for widgets on my desktop, but I use Folder View as my desktop containment. I get icons on my desktop, tons of different "wallpaper" options (like slideshow, a functional globe that I can spin/zoom, weather-based wallpaper, etc), but I can also filter and customize which folder of icons is shown on the desktop.
Air as a plasma theme complements Oxygen as a widget and windeco theme well (as opposed to the poor contrast of Oxygen with Oxygen oddly enough in KDE 4.0). KDE 4 wasn't great at launch, but it is great today.
I still don't like Kickoff. It looks pretty, but it is slow to navigate. That being said, I operate out of krunner most days. Krunner is pure genius in KDE 4.x.
I'm still waiting for a usability revolution. And I still want a tighter, sexier widget theme. I want a cross-breed of Oxygen and Domino (from KDE 3 days), but tight.
I installed Arch briefly on my wife's laptop when she told me I couldn't run Gentoo on it anymore because she wasn't going to wait for compiling. Sabayon and Arch were the first two binary distros we tried on it. I liked Arch on the whole and had zero complaints with it. It ran fast. It was easy to manage. I loved the KDE Mod version of KDE 3 they had.
The only problem was that her wireless didn't work with their madwifi packages, but it worked with openSUSE. Note, it didn't work with Kubuntu either, so maybe that isn't a huge knock on Arch.
I just discovered there is basically no way to synch a Zune in Linux, and had to reinstall Vista for a friend of mine.
I know there are alternatives to the Zune pass (Rhapsody I believe is an example) but if you have the Zune hardware, you're largely stuck with Windows. The only solution I found to keep Linux was to install Vista and the Zune software in a VM.
Installing Vista made me feel dirty. I'm still a little ashamed.
Windows 7 beta had an awful lot of trouble running my XP games. I hear it is better in the final release, but I haven't tested it yet.
Wine is getting better and better at running games. If you like older games, Wine might run more of your games than Windows 7. Not to mention Linux has tons of great, free games.
Linux played nicer with my Radeon HD 4850 when I bought it in march than the 7 beta did.
Most webcams just work in Linux with no driver downloads or tweaking. Many old webcams don't have newer drivers for Windows. Honestly, I'd bet Linux today supports a higher percentage of webcams than Vista and 7 do.
I use Wells Fargo and e-banking works fine in Firefox. Which e-banking site requires ActiveX? If it doesn't use ActiveX, you can likely use a User Agent Switcher in Firefox, and then it will work fine in Firefox.
Seriously, which major bank's site doesn't work in Firefox?
Firefox holds a larger market share than IE now. I can't recall the last time I ran into a major site that didn't work in Firefox on Linux, except for video playing sites with custom plugins.
Have you tried Linux recently? Download an openSUSE 11.2 beta and install it on your computer of choice. I bet 100% of your hardware just works. You may need to install a video driver (1-click install) if you want full 3D acceleration, but many chipsets get 3D support even with open drivers.
I just installed Vista for a gal on her laptop that got hosed. Vista didn't recognize the chipset, NIC, wireless, bluetooth, video card, etc. out of the box. I had to have a second computer to download all the drivers, that I had to hunt down from multiple sources. Even worse, on Linux, a simple "lspci -v" would tell me exactly what hardware I had, so I knew what drivers to grab. Windows told me jack and shit. I spent an hour after install hunting down drivers.
Wake up and smell the 21st Century. Old assumptions about Linux shortcomings rarely hold true anymore.
I ran the beta for 7 for a little while. It died, and then I discovered that apparently the "Repair Install" option died with Vista and isn't coming back. I didn't run the RC. I do have the Ultimate edition from the party pack, but I haven't installed it yet.
I plan to later, to run games on. But I use openSUSE daily, and I just don't feel I'm in any rush to install 7. If they're pushing drivers via Update in 7 more, then good for Microsoft. I really think they should make all drivers available in a central place. I hate when a vendor takes down a driver, and I can't find it anymore.
Ubuntu likes to ship beta releases of apps in their "final" releases of their distro. And their "long term" release for support is two years. I've worked for three large corporations, and each liked to keep their desktops for five years.
Red Hat only ships stable packages. They have five year releases. My only qualm is that Red Hat pushes 100% Red Hat. They want you to use their directory servers, etc.
Novell/Suse pushes interoperability. They have great packages and releases. What they need is long term support.
A Live CD in a kiosk mode is extremely easy to implement,. and people can't break it.
You can uninstall any apps you don't want people to run. You can create a fairly custom desktop shell, or not even use a typical desktop shell. Linux provides vastly more flexibility when it comes to a locked down experience.
For a modern desktop, then yes, you're not going to fit all the drivers and subsystems on a floppy.
But for a specific embedded system with very few subsystems, and basically no drivers, then yo u might get on a floppy.
The point remains that Linux scales up extremely well, and scales down extremely well. That is why supercomputers run Linux and small embedded devices run Linux.
Microsoft is terrified of reinventing its core products. Microsoft does push some innovation, and they do some core things right. But their biggest change was grafting their current broken OS on top of NT rather than reinvent properly. And despite the fact that they foresaw the internet being the core experience of your desktop very early on, they didn't forsee internet security issues. Even as they implemented terminal services, they still worked around a broken multi-user model. And even when they saw their kernel was behind the curve on performance, they instead decided to bloat it even more.
The headless Server 2008 was a step in the right direction. There were some claims that after Vista, they'd throw out their current API and start Windows anew, using an emulation layer (akin to Wine) to intercept old API calls. Vista's failure made 7 a necessity.
7 really isn't the savior press make it out to be. Most of the Vista UI regressions remain. With IBM and Google giving big-name credence to Linux on the HOME and BUSINESS DESKTOP, Microsoft should start quaking in their boots. IBM and Google have all the pieces to put together to deliver a really killer experience.
I overheard someone once say they want an OS that they can use in their car, in their phone, and on their desktop. They want it to be consistent, minimal, easy to use, and provide them seamless access to their data wherever they go. I suggested Google online services mixed with Chrome OS, and Android may deliver that to them within a year.
They paused, and then shocked, realized the future may be upon us very quick. And Microsoft is left with a prettied-up-Vista to show off.
Microsoft better wake up real quick with a real, next-generation operating system of the future. It needs to be secure, flexible, low-latency, scalable, modular and customizable. It needs to be their Unix. Only, Steve Jobs beat them to the punch with OS X.
Slowly, but surely, people will realize the Emperor is wearing no clothes. All the time, people see how sexy my KDE 4 desktop is. They ask me how they can get their computer to look like that. Then they hear it is free, legal, has no viruses, and easier to use than Windows.
Windows update has never once, ever suggested a newer ATI or Nvidia driver for me. When managing very old workstations at work (Optiplex 280s and such), Microsoft Update actually suggests an older, broken ATI driver.
Here is what I don't get. Microsoft has everyone submit drivers to them to be signed. This signature process is a joke. You just pay money, and they sign the drivers, regardless of quality. But if Microsoft is in possession of all these drivers, why aren't all signed drivers in Microsoft Update?
Oh wait, then people would hold Microsoft accountable for the quality of the drivers they sign, because they would also be shipping them via Update.
I believe official ATI video cards (not MSI, or other brands of video cards with ATI GPUs) come with a CD with both the Windows and Linux drivers. They even have a cute Tux logo.
Frankly, this costs them nothing to add a file they already make, and put it on a CD they already make.
Yet it makes more of their customers happy. The question is, why doesn't everyone do this?
I didn't know there was a cheap option. I was replacing my phone, and my wife's. I was witting on two Best Buy gift cards for $100 each. So I was able to get two iPhone 3G-S's for $200 total. When I looked into an open Android phone, I saw that Google would sell me an unlocked phone for $400 each. I just didn't want to drop $800 on phones.
I believe the issue with Outline View (haven't checked recently) is that OOo needs a series rewrite in how in handles page layout and various views. From what I understand, this has been a known issue for YEARS but no one has stepped up to the plate. If this has changed, I'd love to be corrected.
There is also a big issue where Calc doesn't correctly read/handle external references in Excel. This is a killer, must-have feature. If you can't reference a cell in another spreadsheet, then you can't be taken seriously in an enterprise environment, or hope of replacing Excel. The feature was supposedly in 3.0, but didn't actually work. Then it was supposedly in 3.1, but didn't actually work. I'm looking forward to testing to see if it actually works in 3.2.
The weird thing is that by sticking with the usual suspects (Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile, etc) they are doing exactly what they fear, which is offering the same phone options as the competition. With Android, they have more control over customization, allowing each carrier to provide a unique phone OS experience.
Slashdot Mirror
Given that you posted AC, you may not see the response, but I really love your work.
Your Oxygen icon set is fantastic. I still don't like the Folder icon, but honestly, the rest of your Oxygen icons really are incredible.
I also really loved many of your early KDE 4 concepts. You were experimenting with seem neat looking ideas for how to handle tabs, progress bars, etc.
Oxygen today is pretty, but perhaps a little vanillia.
I would like to see a fork someday that ventures more into your early concepts.
Why are you so concerned with my opinions?
Actually, I was a pretty vocal critic of many aspects of KDE 4 initially. I really like the core "pillars" as Aaron Seigo calls them. Phonon, Sonnet, Akondi, Nepomuk, Decibel, and even Plasma are great ideas.
But I didn't like the initial desktop shell. I didn't like some of the design decisions. However, in time KDE 4 added back most of the KDE 3 functionality, with all the new KDE 4 functionality as well.
In acknowledging that I now like KDE 4, I'm admitting that my earlier reservations about KDE 4 may have been wrong.
And last time I checked, trolls make incindary comments solely for the purpose of illiciting strong responses. Saying that I like KDE 4 doesn't constitute as trolling. That is merely an opinion.
I suppose people might assume I'm trollinmg when I say I loathe Gnome. However, I just happen to loathe Gnome. (Note, I am a little intrigued by the new Gnome Shell concepts).
I'm guessing it isn't that the Java applet won't run in Linux, but rather that the website is balking at the User Agent string. I bet if wvmarle used a User Agent switcher, it would work fine in Linux.
My assumption is to capitalize on name recognition. I believe Google trends for Ubuntu almost match trends for Linux.
However, I would assume (hope) most IT departments should know what RHEL is, even if they've never used it before.
I imagine anytime you create thumbnails for half a terrabyte of images, it will take some time, regardless of which file manager you use.
I was worried when I heard Dolphin was designed to be very simple. But I can't argue with the final product. It has all the features I want. As a dedicated file manager, the UI is an improvement over Konqueror. I can also heavily customize the UI to look and operate how I want it.
If you really still want the KDE 3 file manager, KDE still ships with Konqueror as well. You can make it your default file manager if you wish.
I simply disagree.
I can't tell you how many people familiar with XP who tell me they struggle with Vista. Or people who were familiar with Office 2003 tell me they struggle with 2007.
Conversely, I switch people to Linux all the time. My standard disclaimer is that if they hand me a box riddled with spyware and viruses, they're getting a Linux box back. I want them to try it for a while. If they don't like it, I will reinstall Windows.
Not a single person has requested Windows back. (Technically, I did reinstall Vista for a gal, but it was when I realized her Zune wouldn't work in Linux. It wasn't because she found Linux difficult).
Kickoff isn't that far removed from the Vista/7 Start Menu. The classic menu is like a classic Windows menu.
Window management is like Windows.
A modern Linux desktop is fairly consistent with most of the expected behavior that a Windows user would want. New features are usually fairly intuitive. I'd contend that using KDE is just as easy as using Windows, if not more so.
Familiarity would be a huge advantage for Windows, if they remained consistent. However, they haven't. When Vista rolled out, many (if not most) configuration dialogs and options moved for no good reason.
I think that advanced users actually have more trouble moving to a new OS, because they feel they are leaving a whole bunch of knowledge and familiarity behind. Basic users just want to know how to get to their email and the internet.
I appreciate your efforts. However I post my opinions as they are. Some days I get modded up and others I get modded down. It happens.
Certain opinions (I'll take XP over Gnome and Ubuntu, or I think Apple is as evil as MS) almost always get me modded down. I still post them because I honestly believe those things.
I really enjoy the concept of democratic moderation and karma rankings. But I don't believe in catering my posts to manipulate them.
Businesses don't care which piece of software gets the job done, so long as the job gets done. Some suits trust names they know, but most users just want to complete their tasks.
More and more businesses are discovering the Linux and Unix provide solutions they didn't know existed. They're also discovering those solutions not only get the job done, but save them millions in the long run.
Every software migration causes some headache, even when staying with Microsoft and upgrading. Only some upgrades save more money than they cost.
I've heard some say KDE 4 just copied Gnome. Dolphin appeared to take some inspiration from Nautilus.
Others insist Dolphin is just a clone from Vista explorer (which I don't get).
Others insist KDE 4 is just a Mac clone.
I honestly find the Gnome, KDE 3, KDE 4, Vista, XP and Mac OS X desktops to all be pretty unique. But maybe I just focus more on the differences more than the similarities.
I know when I'm sitting at a Windows desktop, I crave and miss certain functionality that is not available to me.
The only time the opposite is true is when I'm on a Linux box and I say, "I can't sync to my iPhone right now!"
Presumably you preferred KDE 3 to Gnome, and that was why you ran KDE 3. I hear many people who didn't like KDE 4 say they jumped to Gnome because KDE 4 wasn't as good as KDE 3.
Why not just stick with KDE 3? That's what I did for a long time.
However, I did recently switch to KDE 4, and my wife just switched to KDE 4 this week (mainly because she wanted her main laptop to run openSUSE 11.2 and have EXT4 like the netbook).
I fell in love with Window 7's Aero Peek. I can replicate that with Smooth Tasks plasmoid. I was against Kwin reinventing the wheel with composite effects rather than trying to integrate code from the compiz-fusion team, but I can't argue much with the final product.
Kwin is powerful, sexy, and stable. And they're working on integrating 7's neat window tricks in KDE 4.4. The notification system is great. The system tray is fantastic.
I still have no need for widgets on my desktop, but I use Folder View as my desktop containment. I get icons on my desktop, tons of different "wallpaper" options (like slideshow, a functional globe that I can spin/zoom, weather-based wallpaper, etc), but I can also filter and customize which folder of icons is shown on the desktop.
Air as a plasma theme complements Oxygen as a widget and windeco theme well (as opposed to the poor contrast of Oxygen with Oxygen oddly enough in KDE 4.0). KDE 4 wasn't great at launch, but it is great today.
I still don't like Kickoff. It looks pretty, but it is slow to navigate. That being said, I operate out of krunner most days. Krunner is pure genius in KDE 4.x.
I'm still waiting for a usability revolution. And I still want a tighter, sexier widget theme. I want a cross-breed of Oxygen and Domino (from KDE 3 days), but tight.
I installed Arch briefly on my wife's laptop when she told me I couldn't run Gentoo on it anymore because she wasn't going to wait for compiling. Sabayon and Arch were the first two binary distros we tried on it. I liked Arch on the whole and had zero complaints with it. It ran fast. It was easy to manage. I loved the KDE Mod version of KDE 3 they had.
The only problem was that her wireless didn't work with their madwifi packages, but it worked with openSUSE. Note, it didn't work with Kubuntu either, so maybe that isn't a huge knock on Arch.
I just discovered there is basically no way to synch a Zune in Linux, and had to reinstall Vista for a friend of mine.
I know there are alternatives to the Zune pass (Rhapsody I believe is an example) but if you have the Zune hardware, you're largely stuck with Windows. The only solution I found to keep Linux was to install Vista and the Zune software in a VM.
Installing Vista made me feel dirty. I'm still a little ashamed.
Windows 7 beta had an awful lot of trouble running my XP games. I hear it is better in the final release, but I haven't tested it yet.
Wine is getting better and better at running games. If you like older games, Wine might run more of your games than Windows 7. Not to mention Linux has tons of great, free games.
Linux played nicer with my Radeon HD 4850 when I bought it in march than the 7 beta did.
Most webcams just work in Linux with no driver downloads or tweaking. Many old webcams don't have newer drivers for Windows. Honestly, I'd bet Linux today supports a higher percentage of webcams than Vista and 7 do.
I use Wells Fargo and e-banking works fine in Firefox. Which e-banking site requires ActiveX? If it doesn't use ActiveX, you can likely use a User Agent Switcher in Firefox, and then it will work fine in Firefox.
Seriously, which major bank's site doesn't work in Firefox?
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
Firefox holds a larger market share than IE now. I can't recall the last time I ran into a major site that didn't work in Firefox on Linux, except for video playing sites with custom plugins.
Have you tried Linux recently? Download an openSUSE 11.2 beta and install it on your computer of choice. I bet 100% of your hardware just works. You may need to install a video driver (1-click install) if you want full 3D acceleration, but many chipsets get 3D support even with open drivers.
I just installed Vista for a gal on her laptop that got hosed. Vista didn't recognize the chipset, NIC, wireless, bluetooth, video card, etc. out of the box. I had to have a second computer to download all the drivers, that I had to hunt down from multiple sources. Even worse, on Linux, a simple "lspci -v" would tell me exactly what hardware I had, so I knew what drivers to grab. Windows told me jack and shit. I spent an hour after install hunting down drivers.
Wake up and smell the 21st Century. Old assumptions about Linux shortcomings rarely hold true anymore.
I ran the beta for 7 for a little while. It died, and then I discovered that apparently the "Repair Install" option died with Vista and isn't coming back. I didn't run the RC. I do have the Ultimate edition from the party pack, but I haven't installed it yet.
I plan to later, to run games on. But I use openSUSE daily, and I just don't feel I'm in any rush to install 7. If they're pushing drivers via Update in 7 more, then good for Microsoft. I really think they should make all drivers available in a central place. I hate when a vendor takes down a driver, and I can't find it anymore.
Ubuntu likes to ship beta releases of apps in their "final" releases of their distro. And their "long term" release for support is two years. I've worked for three large corporations, and each liked to keep their desktops for five years.
Red Hat only ships stable packages. They have five year releases. My only qualm is that Red Hat pushes 100% Red Hat. They want you to use their directory servers, etc.
Novell/Suse pushes interoperability. They have great packages and releases. What they need is long term support.
A Live CD in a kiosk mode is extremely easy to implement,. and people can't break it.
You can uninstall any apps you don't want people to run. You can create a fairly custom desktop shell, or not even use a typical desktop shell. Linux provides vastly more flexibility when it comes to a locked down experience.
They're also launching Lubuntu with the LXDE desktop.
As much as I loathe *buntu in general, I'm tempted to give LXDE a spin. I might start recommending to it to people with older hardware.
For a modern desktop, then yes, you're not going to fit all the drivers and subsystems on a floppy.
But for a specific embedded system with very few subsystems, and basically no drivers, then yo u might get on a floppy.
The point remains that Linux scales up extremely well, and scales down extremely well. That is why supercomputers run Linux and small embedded devices run Linux.
Microsoft is terrified of reinventing its core products. Microsoft does push some innovation, and they do some core things right. But their biggest change was grafting their current broken OS on top of NT rather than reinvent properly. And despite the fact that they foresaw the internet being the core experience of your desktop very early on, they didn't forsee internet security issues. Even as they implemented terminal services, they still worked around a broken multi-user model. And even when they saw their kernel was behind the curve on performance, they instead decided to bloat it even more.
The headless Server 2008 was a step in the right direction. There were some claims that after Vista, they'd throw out their current API and start Windows anew, using an emulation layer (akin to Wine) to intercept old API calls. Vista's failure made 7 a necessity.
7 really isn't the savior press make it out to be. Most of the Vista UI regressions remain. With IBM and Google giving big-name credence to Linux on the HOME and BUSINESS DESKTOP, Microsoft should start quaking in their boots. IBM and Google have all the pieces to put together to deliver a really killer experience.
I overheard someone once say they want an OS that they can use in their car, in their phone, and on their desktop. They want it to be consistent, minimal, easy to use, and provide them seamless access to their data wherever they go. I suggested Google online services mixed with Chrome OS, and Android may deliver that to them within a year.
They paused, and then shocked, realized the future may be upon us very quick. And Microsoft is left with a prettied-up-Vista to show off.
Microsoft better wake up real quick with a real, next-generation operating system of the future. It needs to be secure, flexible, low-latency, scalable, modular and customizable. It needs to be their Unix. Only, Steve Jobs beat them to the punch with OS X.
Slowly, but surely, people will realize the Emperor is wearing no clothes. All the time, people see how sexy my KDE 4 desktop is. They ask me how they can get their computer to look like that. Then they hear it is free, legal, has no viruses, and easier to use than Windows.
Then Ballmer starts throwing chairs.
Windows update has never once, ever suggested a newer ATI or Nvidia driver for me. When managing very old workstations at work (Optiplex 280s and such), Microsoft Update actually suggests an older, broken ATI driver.
Here is what I don't get. Microsoft has everyone submit drivers to them to be signed. This signature process is a joke. You just pay money, and they sign the drivers, regardless of quality. But if Microsoft is in possession of all these drivers, why aren't all signed drivers in Microsoft Update?
Oh wait, then people would hold Microsoft accountable for the quality of the drivers they sign, because they would also be shipping them via Update.
I believe official ATI video cards (not MSI, or other brands of video cards with ATI GPUs) come with a CD with both the Windows and Linux drivers. They even have a cute Tux logo.
Frankly, this costs them nothing to add a file they already make, and put it on a CD they already make.
Yet it makes more of their customers happy. The question is, why doesn't everyone do this?
I didn't know there was a cheap option. I was replacing my phone, and my wife's. I was witting on two Best Buy gift cards for $100 each. So I was able to get two iPhone 3G-S's for $200 total. When I looked into an open Android phone, I saw that Google would sell me an unlocked phone for $400 each. I just didn't want to drop $800 on phones.
This is the rare instance in which an AC may have made a very good point.
I hadn't thought about that.
Google offers up three versions of Android I do believe with varying levels of branding.
I'm not sure the carrier would be forced to customize it. However, they have the freedom to do so.
They claim that is what they want, but the do the exact opposite by tying themselves into platforms they can't customize.
I believe the issue with Outline View (haven't checked recently) is that OOo needs a series rewrite in how in handles page layout and various views. From what I understand, this has been a known issue for YEARS but no one has stepped up to the plate. If this has changed, I'd love to be corrected.
There is also a big issue where Calc doesn't correctly read/handle external references in Excel. This is a killer, must-have feature. If you can't reference a cell in another spreadsheet, then you can't be taken seriously in an enterprise environment, or hope of replacing Excel. The feature was supposedly in 3.0, but didn't actually work. Then it was supposedly in 3.1, but didn't actually work. I'm looking forward to testing to see if it actually works in 3.2.
The weird thing is that by sticking with the usual suspects (Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile, etc) they are doing exactly what they fear, which is offering the same phone options as the competition. With Android, they have more control over customization, allowing each carrier to provide a unique phone OS experience.