I’ve been playing around with Mandrake Linux 8.2 for a while now, and while pundits
have been saying that desktop Linux is dead, the latest KDE desktop is pretty damn good. The basic issues with cut-and-paste and program interoperability seem to have been ironed out since the days I last used Linux. Granted, fonts still could use a little more work, but they’re much, much better than the were. Many of the applications need some polish, but the core applications that come with KDE are very well done. Mozilla is identical across the platforms, and it’s own font rendering seems to have also improved considerably.
Still, the Microsoft strangehold on the desktop is likely to continue unabated, but Linux isn’t going to go away. It’s unlikely to be the media darling it once was, but for enterprising users, Linux on the desktop is definitely a viable alternative for most tasks. As long as Linux coders continue to refine the OS and progress continues to be made on useability and interoperability, Linux may yet have a shot at erode Microsoft’s desktop monopoly.
