Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 27th Aug 2009 19:08 UTC
A complaint you hear quite often is that the Linux desktop environments, which mostly refers to KDE and GNOME, are trying too hard to be like Windows and Mac OS X. Now, even James Bottomley, Distinguished Engineer at Novell, Director of the Linux Foundation, and Chair of its Technical Advisory Board (put that on your business card) states in an interview that he believes the Linux desktop is too much like Windows and Mac.
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RE[4]: The TWM, Ion & Others...
by Doc Pain on Fri 28th Aug 2009 23:57
in reply to "RE[3]: The TWM, Ion & Others..."
Member since:2006-10-08
Understand, I'm not criticizing those minimalist WMs, but they're very much aimed at a small userbase of serious power users. And that's kind of hard to reconcile with being a widely used "popular" distro, targeting the mass market.
Yes, I don't disagree here. The most important feature among the Linux distributions, even the popular ones, it the choice they offer. For example, if a new user doesn't like the default Gnome (or KDE) interface, and he is told (or shown) by a friend that there's more, for example WindowMaker or a tiling WM, and he wants to try it on his own system, he is completely free to do so.
Of course, tiling WMs and other... specialized WMs and DEs don't seem to make good advertising material or marketing stuff. In order to be in the mass market, it's important for a distro to package what the target group of users expect, and that's KDE and Gnome, for the moment. The question still is: How good are they integrated with the underlying OS parts? That is the important job of those who "compose" the distribution and do the preinstalls / preconfiguration, as well as the implementation of distribution-specific control tools.
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Member since:
2008-08-19
To you. Well... to me, too, but there is a reason why such WMs exist. Reason: There are users who found that especially "minimalist" settings are the best environment for their individual work and productivity. "
Right, but you said "popular distro". Understand, I'm not criticizing those minimalist WMs, but they're very much aimed at a small userbase of serious power users. And that's kind of hard to reconcile with being a widely used "popular" distro, targeting the mass market.