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Granted, I don't know what the author meant by this, but I personally see windows as a dying platform. Not because of it's user base (which is obviously very dominate) but because there is not much interesting happening as far as development of new and cutting edge ideas are concerned. Quite honestly it has become boring and lethargic. Cutting edge has become too risky and they cater more towards maintaining backwards compatibility than towards the cutting edge.

To contrast, can you tell me about the "cutting edge" ideas that are developing on other platforms?

Cross-platform application development, open protocols and open standards?

Ok, not cutting edge, but a refreshing change, none the less...

Very simple:

1. Get yourselves a Kubunto or Knoppix CD.

2. Load KDE

3. Try to find out what you can do with Konqueror (without Konqi ever bloating!):

- File Browsing
- File Browsing, split Window
- Additionally open a directory in a new tab
- now type a http:// URL into the URL bar
- now split the view again
- now type man:ls in the URL bar
- create another tab
- enter ftp://username@your.next.ftp.server.com
- if there is a pdf file, click on it.

You should now have 3 tabs, first with split windows for file browsing, second with web browsing and man page displaying, third with ftp file browsing or an open pdf document.

Now count the buttons in the button bar. Are they more than you have in Windows Explorer? Sure, but not by much, for sure the icon count is low enough to make the statement "it's not bloated" a true one.

And now USE this setup. Copy files here and there - ftp to local, local to ftp.

You will find out, that Konqueror is to Windows Explorer what a Mercedes is to a Yugo. Both can get you from Vienna to Rom, but the Mercedes is less noisy, safer and can play CDs - the Yugo can't.

That is probably the reason why the Author meant Windows is a dying system.

Now try to uninstall Konqueror without removing the KDE itself. Then you will see the difference between IE-driven Explorer and Konqueror.

... so you intended to prove the superiority of Windows Explorer with that post?

imo .net 3.5 is by far the most modern and interesting platform to develop on. it isnt even comparable to obj-c on apple, or even worse, c/c++ on linux.

Hmm.. No. Qt and C++ are just as good as .NET to work with. And the difference is that you can write a whole platform in them, which you can't realistically do with .NET, because your performance will be terrible. Not to mention that you'll be locked in to windows (mono doesn't really count).

Sorry, but that's just so wrong. .NET apps are compiled to native code. "Terrible" perf? Uh, I don't think so.



Huh? Why doesn't mono count? It's open source, it's freely available, and it works. Now. It sounds to me like you're basing your objections primarily on ideology, not reality.

First off, there is nothing stopping you from doing a full system on .net, or any modern managed runtime. .Net will Just In Time (JIT) compile to native code on the first run (or at install time), in some cases giving you better performance then C++ due to cpu specific optimizations. You do get some overhead from stuff like garbage collection and security checks, but that is vastly outweighed by the complete elimination of whole classes of bugs and exploits.

.net has alot of really cool features Qt doesn't. LINQ is a single syntax to query virtually anything, from an RDBMS to an XML file to a collection to amazon. LINQ2SQL is a built in, really well done OR/M. We have had pretty much the best implementation of generics out there for awhile now (allowing you to define type as an argument). On other languages, they just do some compile time magic to do the boxing/unboxing for you. With .net, it is actually a part of the platform, so foreaching through a List<string> is actually more performant then using ye olde ArrayList. We just got lambdas, which is a really concise way of doing inline anonymous functions. On the VB.net side we got XML literals, which while is really weird at first glance, really makes it quite possibly the best language out there for XML work now. On the asp side, we just got a rails style MVC framework (for those who don't dig the MVP model), we've got a REST framework that you can plug in on top of the LINQ2SQL OR/M called astoria that should be coming out fairly soon. And to my knowledge, doing web services is way easier then any other platform out there.

We are also getting a really nice functional language with this release called F#. That also brings up the whole language agnostic aspect of the framework. You can combine any number of languages you like into a single solution, meaning that if you have heavy duty recursion needs, there is nothing simpler then just adding a library in F# to your C# application, with no interop headaches or overhead. It is really nice to be able to pull out the best tool for the job, and to be able to immediately plug into any code published on the net.

There is WPF, which is a nice separation of concern, generating the UI from a separate xml file. While not exactly a new idea, IMO XAML beats the competition in terms of features and flexibility, and MS has actually started releasing XAML tools specifically targeted at designers, which has not been done on other platforms. That is a huge deal for corporate development, instead of the designers generating a mockup and then the developers copying it, the designers can create the actual UI, and the developers just plug into it.

Not to mention an incredibly rich platform with far more scope then anything out there (except possibly java). On Qt you have desktop and mobile support. With .net, there isn't much that you can't do with it. One of my favorite parts is how transferable the knowledge is. There is very little difference from coding a ASP.net webform, to a winform, to an app for your cell phone. There are difference, but generally only in the front end, and even then for the most part the ideas are all the same.

The toolset is a joy to work with and has an absolutely insane amount of documentation and resources. the much maligned tight integration in the stack ends up giving you a hell of alot of power. To my knowledge, there isnt anything like the asp.net caching api on other server side languages, and with httpmodules you can plug into the IIS pipeline programmatically.

Last but not least, mono does count. If you don't believe me, give it a try. They are pretty much completely .net 2.0 compatible (including ASP.net). Not only that, but its performance is suprisingly good. They are already being used as a scripting engine in a whole bunch of commercial applications (Second Life is the latest one), and it is a really solid platform in its own right. The big two things for me is that there is no Visual Studio yet, and WPF is going to take years to implement. Other then those two issues (and they are big ones), the experience is very close to what you get on the microsoft implementation.

All that to say, Qt is probably the best C++ platform out there, but its still C++. The future is in managed code, and imo .net is the best managed solution on the market.

>Cutting edge has become too risky and they cater more towards >maintaining backwards compatibility than towards the cutting edge.

This is maybe the biggest strenght of windows, come on !
Just try to run any games (except q3 and ut) made by Loki on any recent distribution. Or any commercial apps from Wordperfect to applixware which used to run just fine on any distro. What would you say to those who bought these programs and can't use them anymore or whithout incredible pains (such as installing another dynamic linker)...


As long as linux won't respect people investment, windows won't be a dying platform..



Djamé

Most of the old Loki games work fine here... SMAC, SimCity 3000, and might and magic anyway. If you're having problems try:

(Google-fu)

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Running_Old_Loki_Games

Yes, it's from Gentoo but it works on any distro... Most of the Loki games use a symbolic link to the executable, so it's quite easy to add the instructions on the wiki to a script, remove the symbolic link, and your done.

So if the game doesn't work it's a google search for "old Loki games", 4 lines of text, the ability to delete a file, and the ability to save a file. Failing that you could go play with a pile of rocks. :p

(And before you say: "Ohh that's too much work for Joe User!" this is the same Joe User that'll download a DOS emulator on Windows to play vintage DOS games so the point is moot. You can't handle an emulator if you can't handle Google and a text file.)

Yes, it's from Gentoo but it works on any distro... Most of the Loki games use a symbolic link to the executable, so it's quite easy to add the instructions on the wiki to a script, remove the symbolic link, and your done.

Come on you made my day, I just wrote before that having to tweak the dynamic linker was not considered as straithforward and guess what I found on the link you provided ?
The solution is to use an old version of glibc such as 2.2.5. However all the other libraries used by the game must also be compiled against an equally old (or older) version of glibc. (..)The game is then run by prepending the game binary to run the game with the old ld-linux.so.2 dynamic linker/loader

So 1) could you tell me what you taught me ? 2) Could you tell me how easy it is compared to just run an installer ?

Last time, I was upset about the reactivity of my mail reader (thunderbird) so i wanted to install an old version of Netscape communicator just to check if my memory was right about its speed and even with all the tricks I know (such as making work genuine version of Houdini and Wordperfect on mandriva 2006) I couldn't manage to get it work and I think that not being able to install apps I 've been working with for ages sucks like hell.

Cheers,
Djamé

Try running a Windows 9x game on XP without being an administrator.

At least you can easily get them to run, and since just about every windows user in the world as Admin rights on their gaming box it's hardly like it's a huge problem.

Edited 2008-02-04 15:33 UTC

As long as linux won't respect people investment ...

Pardon my descent into grammar-nazi-hood but:

Linux is *based* on people investment much more so than, but not exclusive of, capital investment.

As long as you value [old, but classic] games over the bulk of available productive, stable, but not easily backwards compatible functionality you should be running Donkey Kong or some other Mario-based system on WII, no?

Actually this is a bad example if you look at all the support consoles producers brougth to their old consoles
PS 2 : compatible with ps 1
PS 3 : compatible with ps 2 (and ps1 ? i don't know)

I may remember that there was some sort of compatibilty between supernes and n64 if you bought the proper cartridge adapter and actually
the wii can play old game through emulation (it's not properly talking binary compatibility but, the same can be said for mac os X ppc which was able to launch classic application and for mac os classic which was able to run 68k code (and of course, see Rosetta for mactel machine).
What does it mean ? it means that an os provider actually care about software (games or others) bought by users and doesn't threw away the baby with the bath's water every time he makes an update to the os (or a major change for that matter).
But this is an old debate so...

I'd argue more that the desktop is a dying 'platform.' No seriously. You suggest that MS has done nothing to bring anything new to the desktop. I won't disagree. But I suggest that neither has the Macintosh world or Linux.

We have been sitting in the same place for years. Choose your poison.

Some people have serious perception problems, or keep living in imaginary world they made for themselves, which is, by definition, unhealthy mental condition. Microsoft Windows have been installed on more than 90% PC's in the world during last ten years. That is the fact, hard, unavoidable fact. And, in those 10 years I have seen dozens of articles describing the end of Microsoft. None of them offered any sound argument for that except authors own wishful thinking.

Windows will go away someday, there is no doubt of it, but some substantial change is going to take them away. Such change has not happened yet, so please, keep your daydreaming for yourselves until then.

In the 90's Windows offered a compromise of user friendly and affordable system at expense of quality, stability and usability. Since then the way of using PC is the Windows way. And no platform is better in being Windows than Windows itself. It has nothing to do with quality, usability, security or anything else. It is a market leader position.

If you're not growing, you're dying.

It's tongue-in-cheek, anyways.

Response:
http://mrcopilot.blogspot.com/2008/02/windows-platform-death-revisi...

I don't get it. Windows is dying because some guys daughter like KDE?

Yes, we KDE users have some amazing mental powers. ;-)

To summarize the response:

"When I wrote that Windows is 'dying,' I actually meant something completely different than either the literal or commonly-accepted meaning of the word 'dying.'"

in the latest unstable version of kdewin( http://download.cegit.de/kde-windows/releases/unstable/kde-4.00.80 ) you can install phonon and amarok2 although it doesn't work perfectly but maybe it's the same on linux i haven't tried yet

No, that's the reason not to use Windows. Cygwin installer is a "huge clusterf**k", I wouldn't compare it to Linux package managers.

I wouldn't compare it to Linux package managers.

Why not? Doesn't look much different:

http://www.nongnu.org/synaptic/images/0.53-upgrades-only.png

Cygwin installer is way overcomplicated for stuff it does. Synaptic is much more than just installer. It's comparing apples to oranges because on regular Linux desktop you'd have base system installed by default. Also, Synaptic has search functionality unlike Cygwin so you don't have to actually scroll through hundreds of arcane-sounding packages. Not to mention more user-friendly alternatives like the Gnome application installer.

http://img131.imageshack.us/img131/6027/zrzutekranudodajusuprogka9....

For 80 bucks directory opus better does mop the floor - don't care what it does it with though.....

Either that or your spelling, or my eyes, or... or...

or I suck trolling!? am just newbie, don't be harsh

The following is new:
Past KDE releases depended lot on X11 and POSIX. Previous porting efforts to Windows and Mac OS X resulted in quite big unofficial patches. KDE 4 however uses Qt and other abstraction layers to a larger degree.
This is the result of officially embracing non-X11 platforms.

There is a big difference between a port of "a bunch of Qt apps" and a port of "a bunch of KDE apps".

The applications mentioned in this blog are using the KDE application framework, which means that this framework is now also available for developers of multiplatform applications.

Obviously, since KDE itself also uses Qt, a Qt application could deliver all features a KDE application can, but it would require huge efforts since the application developers would basically have to implement it all by themselves and even then it would be totally new, untested code.

Agreed. It's not going to be that interesting (IMO) until KDE replaces the actual shell completely, like Aston Shell does (http://www.astonshell.com/).

Otherwise, it's a collection of ported Qt apps, some working, some not.

Wow. Yeah, I for one can hardly wait for KDE to become that lame....

You can customize Aston's looks however you want, and it runs faster than the default shell. This is bad because.....?

Whereas the KDE implementation for Windows is a bunch of Qt apps. Yay.

KDE doesn't intend to replace the windows shell - ever. If you want the full KDE experience, use Linux/BSD/Solaris/whateverUnix. Just the apps (at least most of them) will become available for Windows. We'll try to ensure they are stable and usable, but our focus is and will be FREE SOFTWARE platforms.

Trying to fix Windows is useless, MS will just screw you some other way. Give up and use a proper, open platform.

A desktop shell is rather boring and uninteresting, and not very important when it comes to preforming your tasks eg. work.

It's in the applications you spend your time. A collection of high quality best of breed applications KDE (and the use of kdelibs) provides, are very interesting.

Huh? the speed and stability of the shell doesn't have an impact on work?

Yeah, humor is officially forbidden in the blogosphere...

That would explain why the blogger opted for juvenile flamebait instead.

Actually, it's really just the title that I object to. I have no problem with the assertion that KDE has something interesting to offer on Windows (or Linux).

In this context I think it's meant more humorous than flamebaiting. The article is actually interesting for whoever is interested in KDE on Windows.

Just read the article. The title was not meant to be funny.