Hack The Planet, PhotoShop is The Ultimate Music Creation Tool!! 2409

On Friday 08 September 2006 16:48, Aaron stood up and addressed the mbuttes incomp.os.linux.miscas follows...:

It was conceived after CDE, actually, with influences from OS-2, pre-OS-X Mac OS, NeXtSTeP, and a little from Windows. KDE 1.x didn't look anything like Microsoft Windows.

No it doesn't. That is how most GNU-Linux distributions set it up, yes - apparently, there is a general belief that everyone new to GNU-Linux used to be a Windows zealot before - but KDE was intended to be used and does come installed (albeit not as the default GUI) on other UNIX systems as well.

The mysterious "K" in KDE, which I have heard explained in various ways - including by the KDE developers - all except for the real explanation, is actually a pun on CDE, which stands for "Common Desktop Environment" and which was and still is the most commonly used desktop environment on proprietary UNIX systems, e.g. DEC Unix, Sun Solaris, SGI IRIX, IBM AIX, et al.

The "C" in CDE is pronounced as a "K" when the acronym is expanded to its full meaning, and that's what gave the KDE developers their inspiration for the name of their own software. The pun is maintained by having just about every "komponent" of KDE having its name start with a "K", e.g.Konqueror,-Kontact,-Krusader,etc.

On all of my systems, KDE looks like a mix between pre-OS-X Mac OS and CDE. Just because it has a panel at the bottom of the screen by default - it also has a panel at the top of the screen in my set-up - doesn't necessarily equate it to a Windows-lookalike.

I personally already had the thought that having both a panel at the bottom and one (with a menu) at the top of the screen would be very desirable for a modern GUI back when I was using OS-2, long before Windows 95 was even as much as in alpha stage. And KDE 1.x looked more like Motif than it did like Windows.

Obviously because your own requirements aren't that strict, then. ;-)

I've just read a test of the latest beta for Vista, in a very Windows-centric and Microsoft-loving magazine. According to them, it's just another update to Windows XP, i.e. there's more eyecandy - provided that you have a graphics adapter with 128 MB or better, or else you can totally forget about the eyecandy stuff - and with a few extra functionalities, but not all too different otherwise. Well, with the exception of it requiring 1 GB of physical memory on 32-bit platforms in order to have multiple tasks running at the same time.

in the past and Windows 3.x for 6 months on my very first computer pending the official release of OS-2 2.x for non-Micro Channel systems, but that's about it.

Yet I know a great deal about Windows. And that's just because people keep on talking about it or referring to it as if it were the most important or greatest operating system in the world, not to mention that there are a great many number of people who choose to defend or advocate Windows because they themselves are too narrowminded to think out of the Microsoft Windows shrinkwrap box - if it even as much as comes in a box; I regularly do some freelance stuff for a local computer store here in town and I do know how an OEM Windows CD is wrapped up.

Microsoft doesn't even need to spread Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - not that they will let that stop them - because there's enough of that going round already among the Windows users and the Windows-using GNU-Linux newbies.

Sad but true: if you cater to the less intelligent by dumbing things down to their level instead of stimulating their knowledge and expertise, you end up breeding dumber people. Something ado with a human tendency to intellectual laziness, or so it seems. Quite contrary to what people expect when they hear the word "evolution", yet perfectly in agreement with Darwin's theory.

-- With kind regards,

*Aragorn* (registered GNU-Linux user #223157)