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Linux Desktop Turns 10: World Yawns?

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zridling:
Got a kick out of this SJVN article: "while there are many excellent Linux desktops available, including Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE and SLED, the Linux desktop remains a niche player. "



Methinks Steven a bit harsh and perhaps expects too much for what is effectively an unfunded [desktop] OS effort. I loaded openSUSE a couple of days ago and it's very Microsoft-friendly, comes with the cool Droid font by Google, KDE 4.3, and am running Win7 inside VirtualBox without a hitch. Firefox is the default browser; OpenOffice the suite. Best of both worlds, man!

tomos:

It's very interesting to learn the history about Corel trying to make a go of it as a desktop OS -
pity they didnt make it...

40hz:
Not much of surprise about Corel not making it.

When the average person wants to buy a proprietary system, most will choose the well-established Windows environment. Corel didn't have a compelling enough reason for anybody to switch.

And I can't bring myself to feel all that bad about Corel not being able to make it as a NIX standard. Especially since they always seemed to be trying to figure out a way to circumvent the spirit (and legalities) of FOSS and somehow make CorelLinux a fully proprietary product.

You see this all the time. Somebody sees a FOSS product, uses it as the basis for their own product, and then tries to figure out a way to get around the"give back" clause of the GPL. Sometimes it's accidental, as (I'd guess) was the case with the recent issues between Microsoft and the ImageMaster Project. Unfortunately, there's been many times when these attempted 'end runs' have been quite deliberate.

zridling:
I remember that Corel Linux clearly. It had prominent placement in the PC stores for a brief time, and then in less than a year, it was dead. Problem was, they were trying to sell you WORDPERFECT!!! through Linux. One or two apps wasn't enough to make the switch back then. I think that was about the time that Apple began its second life as a gadget design company (neon bubble Macs).
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@40hz: Cisco is one of "those" code thief companies this past decade who thinks they can dip into open code and not return the favor. Been in court for a while now.
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On the desktop side, whenever I show others my Linux setup -- great fonts, good scripts, KDE, integrated Firefox, several good screen fonts, easy Win7 virtualization through VirtualBox, etc. -- they wonder where all this has been hiding. Like those Mac switchers, I'm having a blast on the platform.

40hz:
@zridling - Yeah, Cisco Kid ain't a friend of mine, that's for sure! The only reason it's gone on in court as long as it has is because of the depth of some pockets rather than for any legal merit.

Even Apple had the 'decency' (or at least the legal savvy) to adapt something licensed under BSD rather than GPL when they 'wrote' their 'new' OS.

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