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Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much?
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June 27, 2009
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Does the Linux Desktop Innovate Too Much?
June 21, 2009
By Bruce Byfield
For the last eighteen months, the GNU/Linux desktop has been in a period of radical innovation. KDE 4 introduced new features and workflows. Mark Shuttleworth launched Ubuntu on a unilateral redesign campaign, starting with notifications. GNOME announced a new desktop that, so far as anyone can tell, will profoundly change the user-experience.
These innovations are likely to continue for at least another couple of release cycles, with upcoming versions of KDE scheduled to put social networking into applications and remote windows on to the desktops of passing computers.
Yet in the middle of all these experiments, nobody seems to be asking a basic question: Does the average user want any of these things?
Personally, I love these innovations, every one of them. I'm a tinkerer who likes to play with new things and write about them. Some of these experiments may succeed more than others, and some I consider outright failures, but I don't tire of any of them.
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Their number suggests that the free desktop is in a healthy state and has surpassed proprietary ones, and I'm proud of that.
However, people who share my enthusiasm for innovation seem to be the minority. Whenever KDE 4 is mentioned in an article online, the comments are sure to include ...
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