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Story: KDE getting ready to go native on Windows

Posted by: Chevalier Dr Dr Ruediger Marcus Flaig (Wednesday 9 February 2005, 1:58 PM)

When I was young, similar things happened with the Mac...

First of all, Apple introduced a floppy disk that used a DOS compatible format, and lots of people were upset about this "contamination" (after all, the Mac's proprietary 800k disks *were* technologically superior) and that Apple was finally going to surrender. But in fact, Mac acceptance went up because people wanted to be able to exchange data between Macs and "IBMs".

Then Microsoft adapted Word, Excel and Access for MacOS, and lots of people were upset about this too (after all, Claris Works *was* technologically superior) and that Apple was finally going to lose its special flavour. But in fact, Mac acceptance went up because people wanted to be able to use the same programs on Macs and Windows boxes.

Okay... you are getting the picture. The Mac is doing better than ever by now. By contrast, Gepard and Sinclair, Atari and Amiga all failed, and Acorn's Archimedes, though by far the best machine in this list, has never risen to more than a shadowy existence among freaks. Why? Because they all were isolated solutions, incompatible with anything else. Ever seen Signum II on an Atari ST? The most amazing text processor I have ever seen. But... compatible with nothing. Interoperability, that's what counts in the Real World.

So I think offering a Windows version of KDE alongside with the Linux, Solaris and xxxBSD versions (I think that's it, or has it already been ported to AIX and HP-UX too? :-) ) is the best thing to promote open source in general. When average users will have got accustomed to the KDE desktop, OpenOffice, and Firefox, they won't be afraid of switching to Linux. And why should they? Lord, if there were no reason to except for KDE, we'd better drop all our developmental efforts! Linux is vastly superior in terms of security, stability and performance, not to mention price and policy. That's the reason why.

BTW, I think there is one inaccuracy in this article: Cygwin is not an emulator but a software compatibility layer, just as Wine for the other way, or X11 for MacOS-X, so the performance tradeoff should be marginal. Sure, it will be easier to install a native version.