Re: Some thoughts on the future of gnome

[Michael Schulz <mschulz creative-chaos com>]

Alan McGinlay wrote:

> Thats not really what I mean, I mean that by the time Vista is released
> there could be a windows version of the gnome desktop environment which
> users could install on their existing windows XP/9x OS. to them it
> would just be like installing any other piece of software except that
> it would replace the start menu and control of the desktop with the
> gnome environment!
>
> I don't know how this would work to be honest but progress is already
> being made in porting apps like gnome-meeting (I think it's basically
> ready) to windows, so why not the whole shebang?
>
>  
Ok I understand what you want to achieve, but what would be better for 
the user? This could increase
the size of the GNOME user community but would it do anything better for 
the user than today?
Are current Windows users really unsatisfied with the way Windows 
presents them a desktop or is it
more the applications themselves or the way the whole OS behaves? I 
think having the same set of
applications available across different platforms (this would also 
include Mac OS X) would benefit
the users more than adding an additional layer of complexity to the 
operating system. By porting the
whole GNOME environment to Windows and run it as a substitute for the 
Explorer (and I think there
have been discussions on the KDE side as well on that topic) you would 
create another "version" of
Windows which then would be difficult to support by the network of 
friends and neighbours.
You would also still have to carry all the stuff that Windows provides 
in terms of libraries as users
of course want all their Windows applications to function.
So I think it would make more sense to port applications to Windows and 
give the user a positive
experience rather than go for the World Domination(tm) approach by being 
installed on every single
operating system there is just for the sake of increasing the amount of 
users.

It's the applications that matter, not the OS or the presentation of the 
OS itself.

But that's just my 0.02$ :)

Michael