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List:       kde-look
Subject:    Re: Maybe a good idea : Konqi Desktop Buddy
From:       Dave Leigh <dave.leigh () cratchit ! org>
Date:       2001-11-26 14:58:57
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On Monday 26 November 2001 09:10, Henry Stanaland wrote:

> However much I support eye-candy and would readily say, "screw
> the people with slow/old machines" just like Macintosh does
> every few years, there are lots of people that do have slow/old
> machines and adding opengl effects could be beyond their computing
> power.  So you have to think about them(make it an option?)...or
> we can just say "Go use XFce because you are slowing our innovation."
> (My personal opinion is those people really are slowing down innovation...
> otherwise we'd have something like MacOS X already--why can't they just
> keep using Redhat 6.1 if they don't want to upgrade the machine?).

As someone who regularly upgrades his software I think I can answer that for 
you, Henry.

These people want up-to-date functionality.

Eye-candy, however pleasing it may be to some, typically adds no 
functionality. Look for a moment at the "features" that were added to MS's 
latest offering, XP. We now have fading menus, animated menus, hi-color 
graphics, etc.; NONE of which change the way you interact with the computer, 
ALL of which eat a lot more CPU than before. I performed an installation of 
XP as an experiment and found that, taking only the defaults, it now takes up 
2.38 GB disk space. In return for the increased processor requirements, 
increased memory requirements, and increased disk requirements, it performs 
NOTHING NEW of benefit to the users (it does quite a lot for MS, though, 
behind the scenes).

This is obviously Wrong. It's poor planning, poor design, and poor thinking. 
It abuses the customer. It's a mode of thought that benefits those people 
that sell. In order to use these features you have to sell new hardware; and 
the new boxen come with these features by default. It's a co-dependence of 
software and hardware vendors. Where companies and individuals are concerned 
it forces unnecessary spending on infrastructure at the expense of productive 
projects (i.e. "work").

Unix, Linux, KDE and GNOME primarily benefit people who wish to escape this 
co-dependent cycle. There is little reason why the hardware in use today 
cannot be used decades from now. Since the core functionality of Open Source 
software offerings on Unix is still maturing, however, it makes sense to 
upgrade packages regularly, not to stay abreast, but to BECOME PRODUCTIVE, as 
up to now we have been working with software that has been literally crippled 
with incomplete functionality. It does not make sense to have to constantly 
upgrade hardware to do this where the reason for doing so is purely 
aesthetic. For this reason it makes sense to separate eye-candy from core 
functionality, and make the eye-candy optional.

-- 
dave.leigh@cratchit.org
http://www.cratchit.org

Anything is possible, unless it's not.

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