The Linux Rant

I’ve been a KDE user for many years. Maybe it’s just me, maybe the UI world is changing, but the newest incarnation of KDE sucks big time. All was fine until the 4.x series, then suddenly, the switch was made and what do we have now? All glitter, all bloatware. And what’s with the desktop icons? Where’s the simplicity? Do you want to confuse new users to death?
The first releases were so buggy that only serious promotion through blogs and news articles kept people’s interest alive. Then came “bugfix releases” that didn’t change anything from the overall look point of view. Mimetype icons still missing.
Let’s be frank here: KDE 4.0 didn’t deserve it’s version number. I wouldn’t have even called it a “Release Candidate”. It was alpha quality. Oxygen, Plasma, Phonon - they’re all good concepts, but when it comes to the user experience, the 4.x series is a total disaster. Plasmoids crash, the Panel crashes, applications crash, everything keeps crashing. And please don’t give me that “work in progress” crap, i’m not buying it.
Want my honest oppinion about KDE 4? As a user, I feel like the developers rushed to copy Vista and Leopard and failed lamentably. Forget the latest fashion and focus on functionality. Who needs sparkling windows when avery fifth click gives you a segmentation fault?

Newsflash people. There is no “Year of the Linux Desktop”. There will never be one. Before you start looking for sharp rocks to throw at me, let me start by saying I am a Linux user. I worked with all major distributions, roamed in Slackware land for about two years, tried to get accustomed to Red Hat’s RPM hell in a time when Linux was a wasteland and there were only a bunch of people that were using it. Several years ago I settled with Debian and later Ubuntu. All the distributions above were my main desktop operating systems as I ditched Windows way back in ‘99.
But one thing bothers me and drives me nuts every January. “Year of the Linux Desktop” articles. Now and then, one bright mind can’t sleep at night, so he decides to forget about New Year’s booze that hasn’t left his system yet and type a string of characters proclaiming THIS is the year of the Linux desktop. Not the next one, THIS one. It hasn’t happened yet, he can’t wait another 12 months, so THIS must be it. Then this individual goes on telling us WHY this is the year of the Linux desktop:
- because company X bought company Y, and because company X or Y is known to support open-source, therefore THIS must be the year of the Linux desktop;
- because project Z made so much progress in the last five years and it all must come to some conclusion. This year;

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