Posts: Kde

Linux is just an implementation detail

You can't imagine how happy I was today when I read the interview with KDE 4's developer Sebastian Kuegler. Question 6 asks him:

6. Are there any misconceptions about KDE 4 you see regularly and would like to address?

And around the middle of the answer, he says:

Frankly, I don’t like the whole concept of the “Linux Desktop”. Linux is really just a kernel, and in this case very much a buzzword. Having to mention Linux (which is just a technical implementation detail of a desktop system) suggests that something is wrong. Should it matter to the user if he runs Linux or BSD on his machine? Not at all. It only matters because things just don’t work so well (mostly caused by to driver problems, often a matter of ignorance on some vendor’s side).

Thanks Sebastian. I couldn't have said it better.

What virtually all application developers are targeting —or should be targeting— is KDE or GNOME. These are the development platforms; i.e. what provide the libraries and services required for easy development and deployment.  It doesn't make any sense to "write a graphical application for Linux", because Linux has no standard graphical interface (unless you mean the framebuffer!) and, again, Linux is just a kernel.

February 2, 2008 · Tags: kde, linux
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