Timothy Pearson wrote:

> What triggered this was a new salvo from KDE4 claiming that 4.8 is the
> best desktop ever, and that those backwards TDE luddites should just use a
> minimalist window manager if they don't like KDE4.  I'm trying to prove
> them wrong. :-)

Draw a graph of Usability vs Features. It should look something like a parabola.

Too few features has low usability, because the interface is dumbed down. 
Gnome has a tendency to dip down into this "our users drank lead paint as 
babies" area too often.

Plus it has one of the most hideous and least usable file open/save dialogs in 
the known universe. There are alien species in distant galaxies that interact 
with their computers by flinging fresh excrement (a bit like YouTube 
commenters) who have a better file open/save interface than Gnome's.

Too many features (or perhaps I should say, "features" in scare quotes) also 
has low usability, because it's too damn hard to use, and requires too much 
computing grunt for useless eye-candy and poorly thought out functionality 
that sounds good in principle but isn't in practice. KDE 4 spends most of its 
time hanging around there, probably waiting for Akonadi or Nepomuk to finish 
whatever pointless task they're doing so the computer will become responsive 
again.

Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium, where you have the maximum 
usability from all the features you actually need and none of the cruft that 
you don't -- that was KDE 3, and that is TDE.



-- 
Steven