Advogato: Thoughts on the world of GUI’s

“Since I have been into Linux, I have really been concentrating
my efforts on the world of the Linux Desktop. OK…I admit it, I
came to Linux as a Windows user, but I don’t see that as any bad
thing.”

“KDE was one of the first projects that captured my imagination,
and since has given me the enthusiasm to learn C++, learn the Qt
and KDE libraries, and learn the fine art of communicating with
different people from different backgrounds in a professional
manner. The crux of what I want to say in this article are my
observations as a developer for a desktop for Linux (and other
UNIX’s too of course). Oh and these opinions are mine by the way,
so if you disagree and want to flame someone, please don’t go and
have a go at someone else.”

“Desktops for Linux sure are a funny thing, and there seem
to be a number of issues in which people want to either express an
opinion or they don’t. An example is the X Window system. In my
opinion X is a dog. It is a hefty chunk of software which sits
under the desktop software and slows the system down quite a lot. X
does have many advantages such as network transparency, but I ask
the question “does the featureset of X warrent its weight on the
system?” I am by no means an expert on X and I do not wish to
profess to be, but I get the impression that X is an old technology
that is having trouble being dragged into the modern age. An
example is anti-aliased fonts and support for truetype fonts. Only
recently have these features made it into X. I feel development of
X needs to speed up on implementing features such as this, and
optimising the system.”

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