Philoking.comfrom Jason Burns’ perspective…

I can’t figure out why they waited to bring the goods with 4.1, but here it is, and it’s a marked improvement.

Check it out here

This morning, I woke up, reached for my phone to turn off the alarm, and looked at my unread emails. I sign up for Google Alerts and they tell me when philoking is mentioned around the web.

This morning I woke up to see a list of KDE reviews and my name was the last one with the text:

PhiloKing - Had to include this whinging tantrum from an admitted Mac/Windows fanboy

Wow, that’s pretty harsh. For one, I don’t really think I am a fanboy on any front, the OS Agnostic part of my site means I talk fairly about Linux, Windows and OS X. That’s why I booted up KDE 4 in the first place to take a look. But seriously folks…the point of the article was the default experience with KDE 4 is very bland looking. I absolutely know you can make it shockingly beautiful with Compiz or Beryl, I have used both.

Let’s take a comparative view of them and see what the default experience looks like and which look professional and which don’t.

Windows Vista	Mac OS X Leopard	KDE 4

So it may not be fair to the one that doesn’t have the billions of R&D money that Microsoft or Apple have, but look at Compiz and Beryl. Those are both open source movements. Why can they both get the polish and pizzaz they have, but KDE 4 looks like OS2 Warp or something.

I don’t find my comments to be a "Whinging Tantrum" just an honest opinion of the default startup state of KDE 4. It needs help folks, it’s boring.

I must admit I had very high hopes while downloading the unseen KDE 4 Preview. It’s a SuSe Live CD and was a snap to get running in Parallels. What was I expecting? With the state of next-Gen OSes, my expectations were nothing less than a good knock-off of OS X or Windows Vista. After loading the preview, what I got was this:

It’s not even as good as Windows XP, much less Vista or OS X. The task bar is a big hulking thing of very little use. Who on earth needs a clock so big? It’s an improvement over KDE 3, but with the time in development, I expected much more.

The Main Menu

The first thing that came to mind when I saw this menu was, "boy, I sure hope you don’t install too much software." The menu system is simplified, sure, but if you had much, it would be a bear to navigate it based on such simple tiers.

The icons are fine, but where is he gloss and shininess that we expect from our latest OSes.

Don’t worry, I know you can get Beryl or Compiz working to get your 3d groove on, but these are often complicated and not out of the box solutions.

That means for you Linux faithful, this is what you have to show your friends and family as you try to pry their hands away from their Windows machines or Macs. I would call that a tough sell.

The Widgets

OS X has the dashboard, Vista has sidebar widgets. Both are more graceful and better looking than the tossed in KDE widgets. Look at this sample. Beyond usefulness, they just look cheesy. I wouldn’t want these up all of the time.

Keep in mind this is a very small VM window, so I am sure it would look better at a higher resolution, but they key point I think we should take home from this blog is

For Linux to make any serious move, there needs to be some real innovation. Let’s face it, people are all about style and without spending some serious geek time, Linux just isn’t stylish.

I don’t want you to take from this article that I hate Linux. In fact I think Linux is a lot of fun to work with. Tweaking it is a geek’s dream. The problem is how do you take it beyond a server and hobbyist operating system and put it in the mainstream. It has to have an edge, something that makes people want to use it.

It’s time to let go of the, "It’s free, it’s open source!" argument. Most people get Windows or OS X with a new machine and never pay for it. Price is just not a factor in most computer users minds.

In the spirit of showing what Linux CAN do. Why don’t those of you who are chomping at the bit to flame this post hope on my comments and link to how cool you CAN make a Linux desktop look with a little work.