I just came across this article on NewsForge about KDE 4, the next generation of KDE.
As the dust settles from aKademy 2005, the annual KDE conference, it’s a good time to take a look at what the KDE developers are working on. Though KDE 3.5 isn’t even out yet, developers are already working on KDE 4. Plenty of work has already gone into porting existing code to Qt4, the GUI toolkit upon which KDE is based, and KDE developers are working on projects that could radically change how the world’s most popular free desktop looks and works.
KDE 3.5 is due out in late October. The 3.5 release will give KDE users and developers a mature, stable, and integrated desktop platform with a wide range of applications.
Its developers see KDE 4 as a chance to experiment and introduce new concepts and applications that do more than build on the strength of KDE’s existing architecture. Just as KDE 3 brought major transformations in that architecture, developers are looking to KDE 4 to transform the desktop experience and enable a surge in third-party application development. With a KDE 4 release not likely to happen for at least another year, the developers have plenty of time to experiment.
I now firmly believe that KDE 4 (Plasma) will be the “vista killer”. If they can match OS X’s speed and simplicity with Linux’s ‘Linuxness’, then people would probably start using it. Why? They don’t have to shell out money for overpriced Macs, don’t have to pay for an operating system, and will probably be able to use it on a computer they already own, or a low-end new one.
I can imagine computer manufacturers giving you the option of Linux preinstalled with a reduced price in the not too distant future (HP is going to start doing that soon with Ubuntu). If you can give them the same computer for $100 less (or however much Windows costs for new PCs), they’d be stupid not to do it. And once computer manufacturers start doing that and Linux has a respectable market share, more and more apps will be ported and it will be Bill’s downfall.
Check out the article, it’s a good read.
Oh, and here’s a comic.
Justin's Mighty Linux Blog 