I’ve been watching TV a bit recently (It’s stage 3 of dealing with the trauma of not having homework anymore.) and I keep seeing this date pop up, with a little girl talking about “happy words.” It seems Microsoft Windows 7 is coming out soon. I’ve heard about it here and there, but it didn’t really register that the next version is coming in just under a month until I saw the commercials.
So far I haven’t heard anything bad about the upcoming windows release, which is quite a contrast to the months leading up to Vista. I looked around their website and there’s some interesting stuff, but nothing revolutionary. Nothing important we haven’t got, or will have soon in a better form. And it still has that nauseating default theme from Vista.
This makes the timing of the Kubuntu Karmic release very interesting. It really seems like this should be the big faceoff. A lot of good things are coming together for Karmic. KDE 4.3 provides a smooth desktop experience with a lot of little annoyances fixed. Finally most networks work (again) out of the box. Legacy KDE3 things are finally gone from the CD. It would be amazing if Kubuntu Karmic was the release you could pull out at the same time as the brand spanking new Windows 7 and blow away the competition.
And it’s close, but it’s not that release. It’s just the first release where most of the KDE 4 desktop has come together, but there are still some issues to fix, polishing to do, and a couple core apps need to stabilize. Another 6 months. Concidentally, Lucid 10.04 is also the next LTS. Perfect timing to really bring all the pieces together and make a polished release that will put the proprietary competition to shame. I’m really looking forward to Lucid. The drama would just be so much better if it was 9.10.
October 1, 2009 at 12:07 am |
I don’t know how you missed them, but there are a lot of issues with Windows 7. Vista set the bar *so low* that’s hard to do worse, so the press looks comparatively better. For example, Windows 7 supposedly “crashes less” – seriously, that’s an advertising points? That’s like a car company saying their 2010 model spontaneously explodes slightly less often than the 2009 model. It’s ridiculous!
Check out http://www.windows7sins.org – it’s worth a read.
On the 10.04 note, I know I’m surely looking forward to it.
Go Freedom!
October 1, 2009 at 11:50 am |
There’s some beautiful polish all around this release. It’s perfect
In GNOME, too, even! For example, now the volume control inside Rhythmbox and Totem directly affects the PulseAudio stream. This finally (and elegantly) solves that problem where one would have to check multiple volume controls to adjust the playback volume and puts it all under a single system. Really slick.
October 9, 2009 at 6:32 pm |
Well, things work well with Vista except for the fact that practically nothing has a really working driver yet. So it’s a matter of “nothing crashes because nothing works to start with” Okay I am exaggerating…
I know this has been said a thousand times but for me the biggest problem with Kubuntu/KDE is still the web browser. In theory I LOVE Konqueror. But fact is that it simply doesn’t work. The Firefox installer is a good idea but I think we need an extension which facilitates Konqueror-like integration for Firefox. File downloads should use KDE notifications for instance.
The web browser thing is really vital. While it may not seem to matter for the general “geeky” user base, research show that a web browser is the most popular piece of software in an OS. People use web browsers a lot.
I have high hopes for Kubuntu 9.10. Keep up the good work.
November 17, 2009 at 11:49 pm |
I am still using Windows XP, which is what….about 9 or 10 years old. It was a fine product. I get nervous using updated Windows after hearing about Vista.
April 20, 2010 at 4:20 pm |
Microsoft 7 is here! I think their tv ads are a little annoying though…”Windows 7 was my idea…” bleh