Great news!
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Grishnakh Sep 11, 2011 10:01 PM EDT |
It's good to see more work going into KDE. But they need to do more. Google really should invest more money in the KDE project and help to advance it. KDE has the most Windows-like UI (but you can change it if you prefer something different), and is perfect for making the Linux desktop a viable competitor to Windows. Why should Google care? Simple: MS is probably their biggest rival, and MS only survives and prospers because of their two cash cows, Windows and Office. If more work was done to get a desktop Linux distro with KDE in place that could fully replace MS Windows in corporate desktops, tons of companies would no longer need MS site licenses or Windows copies for their countless office workers' cubicles. Without that giant flow of cash, MS would be doomed. It's really too bad that Red Hat, with their long established presence as a major distro, has basically abandoned the desktop, when the corporate world could really use a solution that replaces MS with a trifecta: Linux/KDE, OpenOffice, and an Exchange/Outlook replacement. If this were in place and promoted to companies, both small cash-poor ones and giant ones that stand to save enormous amounts of money with all their MS-based desktops and servers, MS's bottom line would quickly erode and they could collapse quickly. |
| Steven_Rosenber Sep 12, 2011 3:51 PM EDT |
Quoting:If this were in place and promoted to companies, both small cash-poor ones and giant ones that stand to save enormous amounts of money with all their MS-based desktops and servers, MS's bottom line would quickly erode and they could collapse quickly. Like most here, I'm a huge advocate of Linux-based solutions, but I don't see this happening at present. All my personal machines run Linux, and I'm using LibreOffice more and more, but Microsoft has to start making some major mistakes to turn the tide on the desktop. Windows 7 has been well-received, and the buzz for Windows 8 is heating up. I agree that Red Hat is probably best-positioned to make a dent in the desktop market, but it's not their lack of enthusiasm for KDE that's holding them back. Nope, they just don't see any money in it. Right now I see Apple as more vulnerable as they take focus off desktop computing. This is where Ubuntu is focusing its marketing effort, I think: people who want a Mac-like experience w/o the $1,000+ hardware that goes with it. |
| nalf38 Sep 12, 2011 3:57 PM EDT |
Grishnakh- I could be mistaken, but I've always had the general impression that most lxers aren't big fans of KDE. |
| herzeleid Sep 12, 2011 4:01 PM EDT |
What we need is an Exchange and AD killer. There seems to be a lot of work going on in those areas but no clear winner has emerged. I'd have thought Red Hat would pursue the AD angle with SSSD and/or Samba 4. Their apparent silence in that area says they are happy with their little niche, but I hope that's not the case. Now that Novell has been dismantled and distributed among various microsoft cronies I don't suppose it's realistic to expect anything from that quarter either. I had great hopes for IBM at one time, but it seems they prefer to simply use linux as a tease, and then come in hard to sell AIX and/or mainframes. If someone had the vision and resources to tackle this problem and pursue it without backing down, they could eventually see a huge payoff, but everyone seems only interested in the next quarter. Oh well, it's not over til it's over, right? |
| jdixon Sep 12, 2011 4:47 PM EDT |
> ...but I've always had the general impression that most lxers aren't big fans of KDE. More accurately, not big fans of the KDE devs and how they handled KDE4. > What we need is an Exchange and AD killer. Well, that and the capability to replace Office (in) environment(s) where it's integrated into the workflow, such as with SAP. Office/Exchange/Sharepoint has a large base of such installs. Exchange with Office Communicator is even being integrated into the phone system here at work. I don't see places using Microsoft products in that way giving them up very easily. Edit: Left out letters inserted. I badly need new glasses. I sometimes feel like a blind hog trying to find an acorn. |
| Fettoosh Sep 12, 2011 5:47 PM EDT |
Quoting:Well, that and the capability to replace Office environment where it's integrated into the workflow, such as with SAP That is what it will take to get businesses off the MS treadmill. Individually, FOSS products are superior to their MS counter parts, what is needed is a corporation with the resources and commitment to carry through. I too thought IBM would the one, especially when they released their famous ads (Love, Peace, Linux) (Genius Kid, the Heist). And who knows, may be that was their intention but they chickened out, or MS made them an offer they couldn't refuse, it is hard to tell, but one thing is certain, that IBM is not a big rival of MS any more, or at least it does seem to be any more. Google is surely working towards that but very slowly and in their own preferred way. They are working on the back-end getting the Could services infrastructure ready. They have e-mail and calendaring in top shape, document management and indexing also in top shape (They have onsite turn key index server to lease) and they are getting their Android based phone, and ChromeBook (as a thin Client) in a good shape too. All they need is to purchase or fork a good distro for full fledged desktop. Never know, they might have the right strategy and they definitely have all essential and required resources (deep pockets, technical resources, clout and name brand) to be successful in this effort. |
| Grishnakh Oct 02, 2011 3:04 AM EDT |
herzeleid wrote:If someone had the vision and resources to tackle this problem and pursue it without backing down, they could eventually see a huge payoff, but everyone seems only interested in the next quarter. Oh well, it's not over til it's over, right? Unless Google comes through, I think it'll take a foreign corporation to pull this off, because American corporations certainly don't seem to have any vision beyond the next quarter. |
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