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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Are we going to do anything about this?
From:       Eric Laffoon <sequitur () easystreet ! com>
Date:       2001-12-24 9:09:04
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The points returned back on this are very valid as well. Things don't get 
done by themselves. It takes a lot of work. Most people on this list are too 
busy with the code.

You could easily make a number of divisions on several criteria for people 
using computers. When MS introduced win95 they basically said it was not for 
mission critical work. For my part if something is not important enough to me 
to be mission critical I can't see doing it unless perhaps it's a game... 
which I have little time for anyway. In the 90s I switched to OS/2 and then 
Linux. I am one of those people willing to trade off somethings for several 
critical factors. Control, stability and security. I have yet to find 
something attractive enough to cause me to sacrifice these things because my 
records have shown that losing these in the long run, even in the short run, 
costs me way too much. Many people do not have sophisticated demands. I know 
I am in the minority because I won't tolerate shoddy work... so in my company 
I mandate our work is done on Linux/KDE. ;-)

I've long said people would not tolerate cars being as unreliable as windows. 
Unless you disagree it is simply a matter of widespread mediocrity and a lack 
of understanding things could be better. Also known as "the devil they know".

I know people who are not so computer literate who hate windows because of 
all the dumb wizards that treat them like idiots. In my experience trying to 
work on windows boxes the first thing that drives me insane is missing my 12 
desktops. the list goes on from there. My windows friends are blown away by 
what I can accomplish on the command line too.

As for the Word and Outlook... the reality is that they are at the heart of, 
what I was told a year ago in a networking conference, 4,000 new "viruses" 
(worms) a month unleased on shoddy architecture. The worst part of this is a 
lack of open file formats... something I think we can all agree was a big 
miss in the recent antiturst trial.

There are decent solutions today and better ones on the way, but then KDE has 
a fraction of the lifespan of the blight from Redmond. Put in that 
perspective and even discounting for being able to copy features in existence 
the usability of KDE is nothing short of remarkable! In fact a recent review 
in a New Zealand magazine put KDE ahead of Win XP for usability.

I don't disagree that KDE has not surpassed windows in a lot of areas, 
especially applications. However I personally don't feel a need to subject 
myself to torment and further licensing treadmills to understand what makes a 
good app.

Now I will end this and go back to what KDE people focus on that makes it so 
great... coding. Since this is a development list I hope your next post will 
be more constructive. I think most people on this list have identified the 
problem and are working on it... more code has to be written. ;-)

Cheers

On Wednesday 19 December 2001 10:28 am, Ben Woodhead wrote:
> The first step in solving any problem is to identify the problem, why do
> people in linux keep saying well take the first step. I do appologize if I
> have affended anybody, kde is a very nice desktop. There is no question
> about it in my mind.. But there are some very small areas that people that
> don't use computer will get caught on.. Theres not many but there are a
> few..
>
> Anyway, why are people having a problem with what I said, there was an
> active discussion regarding why kde is not in business, I really felt that
> the people that were discussing this were wrong about why linux and kde
> were not addopted yet. If you were not part of the original discussion why
> are you attacking me.. I have done more about this the a lot of people, I
> am not an active KDE developer, which makes all of you better then me, I
> know..
>
> But, tell me, how many people have pushed there bosses to move to kde, or
> there board of directors, or taken the time to do case studies on people
> using kde, what is causing people problems, what is good, what is bad..
> Where are the little slick things, that are often overlooked but very
> noticable when missed.
>
> I didn't just send a message to the board to piss everybody off and get
> attacked back. I was responding to a discussion regarding this topic, a
> topic that i happend to be spending alot of time working on..
>
> The biggest thing is why are people missing the point.. Perhaps it was the
> way I wrote it.. There were a lot of places that the spell checker toasted.
> The point is not "how polished kde is". It was about "kde in business", and
> what everybody should have gotten was without Outlook and Word, not going
> to happen..
>
> If you want to write software because you want good software, then great
> don't read discussions regarding people trying to get kde in bussiness,
> just continue on your marry way and don't worry about it (that was not ment
> sarcastic, I really mean that), but if you intentions are MS related, then
> you should be looking at ms really closely. If you are aiming a bussiness,
> then start looking at bussiness users. Bussiness users are looking for Word
> (because they have not choice, also a lot of people have a really hard time
> going from word to wordperfect, can you even amagine what would happen if
> you changed to koffice, change the color and there are going to need
> training).
>
> And even more important the anything else is contacts, you have to be
> thinking contacts if you in bussiness. Outlook make that easy.. Everybody
> in this list could tell me why qt is better then any other library, what
> makes you any different then anybody else. The only thing that changes is
> the topic.
>
> I would like appoligize for the typoes in my original message, I used kmail
> spell check from a cvs version and it replaced nothing and put the text in
> different places, I tryied to fix that but I can see that I did miss a few
> places.
>
> Merry Christmass,
> Ben Woodhead
>
> Am Mittwoch, 19. Dezember 2001 15:50 schrieb Ben Woodhead:
> >  Hello Everybody
> >
> >  I would like to say something about why KDE and Linux are not common in
> > business environments.
> > I red an article a few weeks ago, regarding linux magazine having windows
> > advertisements. The person who wrote the artiacle had alot of good
> > points, 1 was that we can not ignore windows and 2 we should all spend
> > abit more time in windows, or with people using windows topolished see
> > the little pollished differences between the two.
>
> <snip>
>
> I agree with you that KDE/Linux needs to be more polished but since I still
> did not find time to seriously take on this task I keep quiet on this
> issue. Are you willing to contribute in a major way to polish KDE? If you
> are, just start it and people will contribute. But it is pointless to point
> out an issue and not take the first step to solving it.
>
> Greetings,
> Klas
>
> >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to
> >> unsubscribe <<

-- 
Eric Laffoon                    sequitur@kde.org
A member of the Quanta+ Web development team
http://quanta.sourceforge.net
 
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