Re: [tlug] On Debian (Forget what I said in the previous mail)

[Jonathan Byrne <jq@example.com>]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 06:20:20PM +0900, Charles Muller wrote:

>I'll second that. Up until very recently, I had used Gnome almost
>exclusively, but after a few days with the latest KDE, Gnome will have
>to do an awful lot to get me back.

That was exactly my thought after KDE 3 came out.  I had been using Gnome
for quite some time at that point,  but when KDE 3.0 came out, it looked
better than before, it was fast, has a lot of good new features, and the
level of integration was just tighter and more polished than Gnome.
There remain some little things that I liked better about Gnome, but KDE
has erased most of that.  One thing I didn't like better was Sawfish. 
The first thing I would do with any fresh install of Gnome would be to
switch my window manager to Enlightenment.

KDE 3.2 is going to be excellent, and IIRC, the bits of KDE PIM will
all be integrated together and able to use Kolab as a cohesive 
client/server system.  This has the potential to become the Exchange killer
we've all been waiting for.  After all, apart from MS Office - most
of whose functionality can be replaced quite well with Star Office or
OpenOffice.org these days - the other big hold that MS has on the
corporate desktop is that so many organzations use Exchange.  The
ones who are only using it as a POP server and SMTP gateway aren't that
hard to pick off (that is, after all, something that Exchange has always
done relatively poorly).  The tough nuts to crack are using Exchange's
calendaring and scheduling features.  KDE 3.2 won't be the sudden magic
bullet that allows us to sweep Exchange off the desktop, but by the time
2004 is out, there will likely be sufficient off the shelf functionality
in that area that if someone writes a piece of translationware to stand
between A) Windows clients and Kolab - I hope I'm recalling the name
correctly, but I have the distinct feeling that I may be having a braincramp
on this :-p -  and B) KDE clients and Exchange and make them all play nice
together during a migration period, that would be a powerful tool for
pitching a Linux desktop solution to companies.  The cut in TCO they 
would experience from getting out from under both Windows clients and
Exchange servers would be significant.

Already, we've seen some municipal governments and companies going over
largely or totally to Linux for their workstations.  I think we're
going to see a lot more of that in 2004.


Jonathan
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