Why KDE Makes Windows Look Bad

I just read an interesting post on Slashdot about KDE 4. The next release due out in January will consume 40% less memory than its predecessor and will run happily and effectively on a 256MB PC with a 1GHz processor! Now, when did you last hear a boast like that coming out of Redmond? And that is exactly why Vista is such an albatross for Microsoft because for all the extra bells and whistles you don’t get enough bang to offset the buck. Moreover when you realize that Wal-Mart’s $200 PC (which runs a Ubuntu distro called gOS) sold out in incredibly short order you can see the beginnings of a sea change in Microsoft’s consumer marketplace. Now some commentators have argued that as good as the Wl-Mart machine (and with a 1.5GHz processor and 512MB of RAM it should run KDE 4 like bat out of hell on speed) may be the lack of support available makes the deal look a lot less appealing. What a load of nonsense … consumers with Windows problems are in an equally bad situation when they try to get support for their cheapo Windows machines. The reality is that 2008 will be the Linux world’s desktop systems breakthrough year and by 2011 or thereabouts we’ll see Microsoft really scrambling to re-gain a lost market.