Linked by Sean Oliviero on Wed 28th Jul 2004 05:54 UTC
The promise of Desktop Linux (DL) has been long coming. It's made significant progress since the mid-90s when GNOME and KDE came out, giving Linux users a somewhat modern desktop to work upon. However, it's been 7 years and DL hasn't progressed much at all since then. Today, DL is still nothing more than a UNIX-clone with a task bar, a start menu, and a desktop with some icons on it. But why has DL evolved at such a glacial pace?
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KDE and Gnome aren't the only usable desktops/X-environments available in Linux. Yes, they have useful system configuration tools but several distro makers offer similar tools, so KDE or Gnome are not really necessary at all (think of Libranet's Adminmenu). Once you've got your system configured to your liking, there are better alternatives to the bloated KDE and Gnome.
XFCE4 looks and feels nice and you can configure it's behaviour graphically. I like WindowMaker's look and feel even better, and WindowMaker also has a graphical program to configure the desktop. Fluxbox is a bit more simplistic but it has nice looking themes. My point is that you can install any of these smaller desktops and use them to launch your usual desktop applications. They are good-looking, easy to use, stable and fast. And they don't imitate Windows.
If you want to convert the Windows desktop users to using Linux on the desktop, you should offer something different, preferably something better. If people are offered KDE and Gnome as the only usable choices in Linux, they will inevidently feel that Linux on the desktop is the free but uglier, slower, and less user-friendly version of Windows. Instead, Linux distros should offer Windows users something refreshingly different. IMO, they should forget about KDE and Gnome altogether and build their Linux desktop around XFCE4, WindowMaker or Fluxbox.