Opinions expressed by contributors to Linux Today’s
‘Community Column’ and Letters to the Editor are not necessarily
those of LinuxToday’s staff or management.
Both letters are in response to
Letter to the Editor: KDE2: Questions regarding its
direction?
I have been a Linux user for some time as my principle small
business environment and personal, primarily with KDE 1.X and
occasional Gnome use.
KDE 1.X does seem to be more stable than KDE2 (even 2.1.1), but
I do not expect the same level of reliability at this stage, given
the total revamp of code for major portions of KDE2.
There is no question that KDE does and probably will be more
favourable to Windows users due to degree of similarity of use
function and appearance. However I would also NOT approve of
continuance of add-on “gimmicks” as la Windows to satisfy that user
crowd, since no amount of mimicry will win over many who “must
have” Microsoft products.
The main issue in my mind is “pre-loads” on major brands. Until
this happens it is unrealistic to expect Linux or any other *nix to
greatly penetrate the desktop market – which I do not forsee.
Wendell Anderson
New York, NY
Hi James,
I really appreciate your column published today in LinuxToday,
but I’m afraid to say that I do not agree with your issues about
KDE2 vs. KDE1.
I work for a small company (in fact, I’m the founder) in Brazil,
with 10 employes and 12 PC computers. Something about 2 years ago,
we were using Windows NT 4.0 Workstation on all our computers, and
the NT Server in the main computer. Since I discovered Linux as a
desktop enviroment (I’m using linux for about 4 years, but just for
the server enviroment, we do web hosting), I started changing the
things around here, in a small scale. After the release of KDE2,
all the people saw that great non-Microsoft desktop I was running,
and started asking me about why can’t they use Linux, and why we
were still spending money with Microsoft products, when we could by
boxed set’s of RedHat and other linux stuff for everything we need
for less than $100.
Just to resume, we are all very happy with KDE 2.1.1 running on
our RedHat Linux 7.1 with 2.4.4-ac5 kernel.
We cannot think in a console when we want to go to the direction
of the desktops. Talking clips, Wizard/Dragons, Popups, and all
these kinds of “pretty” things are part of the desktop. The good
news, is that we still can do everything we want with the console
way. I don’t like the sounds, even the speaker of my computer, so I
turn it off. If I want to hear any noice, I turn it on. It’s quite
simple.
Since the release of KDE2RC1, KDE 1.1.2 was completely removed
from all workstations at our company, and everybody is REALLY happy
with it, running Koffice, Staroffice, Konqueror (Sorry, but you
have to admit that it’s the better web browser ever made), KMail (I
prefer Eudora, but it’s too unstable when running with Wine),
etc..
About GNOME? I have to admit that I really, really don’t care
nothing about Gnome. They can made foundation, leagues,
corporations or anything they want.
Thank you, and good work!
________________________________
Thiago Vinhas de
Moraes
NetWorx – A SuaCompanhia.com
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