The Linux desktop 050310
Well, I've just installed KDE3.2.2 on my Mandrake 10.1 system. Sitting back and using the system, my impression is that this is really slick.
OK, true, it doesn't have turbotax, or MS office, or your specific Windows program, but with the exception of turbotax, there are respectable replacements. We've been down this road, obviously, OpenOffice, Gimp, Mozilla, Firefox, XMMS et al, mplayer, kdetv, etc. etc.
mlw I actually agree with you here. I don't want a Linux system that looks and feels like Windows. Sure you...
The anti-aliased fonts are really pretty (just get rid of the sub-pixel color hinting and hinting in general -- it makes it look blurry). The GUI is snappy and responsive. My downloaded OSX theme is a good look.
All in all, really a good feel. No problems with my scanner, digital camera, TV card, DVD, etc. etc. I have dual 1280x1024 LCD flat screen monitors. One AGP card and one PCI card. Xinerama works better on Xorg than on XFree.
I look at my friends WinXP systems and they feel so limited. You can't change the look and feel. It nickel and dimes you to rest for all the features that Linux has. XP Server 2003 is a disaster, it seems to "lock up" for a few minutes here and there. (I have seen and reported this bug to M$, and it is a known bug)
If the mbutt market is indeed under the thumb of Microsoft, and I do not accept that it is...
If I didn't need Windows every once and a while for testing, I wouldn't have a single copy of it.
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