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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Styles and CO (was: (offtopic) My mom is a born hacker)
From:       "Gerold J. Wucherpfennig" <gjwucherpfennig () gmx ! net>
Date:       2003-04-24 10:33:06
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On Thursday 24 April 2003 05:00, David Johnson wrote:
> On Wednesday 23 April 2003 12:15 am, Gerold J. Wucherpfennig wrote:
> > Now you got me :-x
> > I wanted to express that we're still far away from the ease of use of
> > Windows (please don't flame me ;-)
> > and that's one of the reasons why many people use Windows instead
> > of one of the few UNICES.
> > We can do better than Windows and shouldn't let the distributer
> > do the whole job. This will lead to more KDE forks (RH,MDK,...).
>
> I promise not to flame, but I will counter your hypotheses with some of
> my own. These are in terms of the *desktop*, and not installation,
> configuration or hardware support by manufacturers:

So what's left?

- Applications?

Windows "has" more applications. Many aren't very good either, but a few
are better than any OSS tool out there. (Sure, they have the money to dev.
such killer apps...)

- The KDE infrastructure for applications? The common look among KDE
applications? The printing system?

That's nice and some of it is better than Windows (the Win32 api is a mess),
but the glue to the underlying system is missing. Another problem is bad
interoperability among toolkits. Windows has many toolkits, too but they work
together nicely.

Interfaces have to be defined

1. to the underlying system.
Distributors can then add the missing low level parts.

2. among different toolkits (long live freedesktop.org :-))
- interfaces to a (pluggable) printing system, file dialog and much
more.

>
> 1) Windows is easier to use for experienced Windows users, while KDE is
> easier to use for experienced KDE users.

Windows is an OS, but KDE is only a DE. So you seem to be talking about the
DE, but that's only one part of a system. And you can't just stay on the KDE
island. There are so many toolkits and useful apps that use them.
Or do you want to reengineer everything in QT+KDELIBS?

>
> 2) For brand new users having no experience with either desktop, or
> similar desktops, I seriously doubt that Windows is significantly
> easier than KDE, Gnome, Windowmaker, etc.
>
> 3) But brand new users are insecure, and they will be more likely to
> feel comfortable with a desktop that is also used by their neighbors,
> relatives and coworkers.
>

Brand new users don't matter. If they like and want to use something
they will have to investigate some time, no matter if it's Windows, KDE or
something else. (We don't need "Click here to start" tooltips).
It's just about making life easier for everybody.

> Overall, I sincerely believe that we HAVE done better than Windows. But
> most people can't see this because they know Windows but don't know
> KDE.

IMO some parts are better, but the overall experience
for average users is worse.
I like to do KDE hacking, use my custom build Linux / KDE HEAD system as
my prime time, daily, many hours a day desktop system.
But I can't recomment it to average users yet.


 
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