“The Linux community is designing two desktop environments.
Some think that’s wise, some think not. First of a
series.”
“Linux is taking over server rooms at a dizzying rate, but its
progress across consumer desktops is crawling at slug speed by
comparison. Linux pegged only two percent of the $89 million
desktop computer market in 1998, according to market research firm
IDC. Sure, IDC’s statistics only count “revenue shipments,” where
someone actually purchased a Linux license instead of installing a
free or duplicate copy. But one in fifty sales is hardly world
domination by any count.”
“What’s keeping Linux locked up in the server room? Besides
lacking a set of productivity applications as extensive (and
ubiquitously deployed) as Microsoft Office, Linux also requires a
consistent, user-friendly desktop environment, one that
nontechnical users can grasp and developers can count on. In that
respect, Linux runs on not one, but two desktop environments, the
German-born K Desktop Environment, or KDE, and the GNU Project’s
GNU Network Object Model Environment, or Gnome. Both are making
rapid progress, but both have a way to go to meet ease-of-use
demands.”
This story is broken into 5 parts, with the links between parts
not working.
Here is Part
2, Part
3, Part
4 and Part
5.