Henry Ford, the great American industrial pioneer, once remarked: "The best way to solve the problems of the city is to leave the city."
After reading this thread on the problems of the new KDE, I can only say that the best solution would be to abandon KDE entirely and choose something much simpler. What does KDE, or Gnome for that matter, offer that a simple window manager cannot? I would claim that the benefits are all illusory. The user is deceived by the scintillating visual effects into believing that he possesses a tool extraordinaire. But this is pure bunk. Using Openbox with a virtual desktop and the old-fashioned Midnight Commander file manager that runs in an X terminal, I could probably beat the pants off anyone, in terms of raw productivity, that is hooked on KDE or Gnome. Do we all understand the ancient idea of iconoclasm? Iconoclasm is the disdain of imagery, because images are entirely superficial in nature and ultimately will deceive, beguile, and prevent one from ascertaining the truth. It is no exaggeration to say that KDE and Gnome (as MS Windows) are based on luxuriant visual methodologies that can only obscure the true essence of computing. Of course, I realize that very few will accept this argument. More and more will embrace KDE or Gnome or their ilk as time progresses. The developers of X Window and even Gentoo will begin to disallow simpler configurations. Linux will then become a swampland of fantastic imagery but increasingly difficult computation. That's my view of things. Frank Peters
