After that it was Konqueror with the different protocols like "wk:" in the address bar to search Wikipedia.
Then when I learned more, it just seemed like Qt was a much more capable foundation to build a desktop on, and I wanted to bet on the winner.
In the end KDE did win the desktop... because they built WebKit (as KHTML) and everything is now a webapp and the desktop is otherwise irrelevant.
When, why and how became this a good thing?
> When, why and how became this a good thing?
Cheap instant all-terrain deployment trumps most other considerations, especially where technical onboarding is on the critical path to customer acquisition.
Why? Because that's what web devs are comfortable with.
How became this a good thing? When web apps became the easiest way to deploy cross platform.
A modern classic absurdity: Linux enthusiasts who purchase MacBooks and use them to do all their computing in shitty web apps.
Realistically, many people will use registry hacks and other forms of piracy to get those updates for free, of course, just like people did with Windows 7. Only businesses or people afraid of viruses will pay, but that's probably enough for Microsoft.
I find it quite confusing to seemingly target people still unaware that Windows 10 is going out of support, but also list FTP/SSH/git/SVN integration as a feature. The people who use version control probably know what alternatives are or aren't available (even if they'd rather not need to find an alternative).
If they wanted to make the offer look good, I think they would've put out special offers with OneDrive storage and a year of extra security support for $5 per month rather than $2.50 a month for just updates.
For me, every one of the older machines in my household (laptops and desktops) that are currently on Windows 10 that cannot run Windows 11 in a fully supported manner will be migrated to a KDE based Linux distro.
ESU costs $30 for one year, $60 for two years. That's a lot cheaper than a new laptop.
I have friends and family that will continue to run EOL Windows 10 which is worse unless I convince them to migrate to Linux.
The situation with Windows 10 feels quite different, because most people I know that use Windows are on Windows 10 currently.
YMMV but this isn't a real option for a lot of people.
One cost me a 100 mile round trip to turn airplane mode off after I assume she'd accidentally whacked the mouse wheel button on the icon instead of the browser which for some completely unknown reason does that?!?!?!?! I'm not sure that was even what she did but I spent ages trying to work out how she could have even done that in the first place.
Gnome, on the other hand, provides a totally different UI, so user immediately identifies that it is different and needs to be learned a bit. But thanks to Gnome being pretty coherent and simple in how UI works, it usually takes very little time to learn and then they just keep using it. I experimented with my parents, father is 70, mother 65, and they both earned default Ubuntu very quickly and don’t have any issues using it, unlike win10+, which constantly raised questions and frustrations that something changed (MS likes to bring idiotic widgets to panels and menus after updates no matter that nobody asked for them).
I did just consider buying her a Mac Mini and be done with it. That seems, to this day, the most suitable solution.
For linux newbies, I'd actually suggest checking out Linux Mint with Cinnamon desktop. I used to run Mint a long time ago and recently installed it for someone trying to change from Windows. it was nice to see that they still provide a good, preconfigured UX. And no snaps. It's probably simpler than KDE but not too simple.
Maybe it's a case of [1], but I think Plasma is ready for the average desktop user. The other parts of the system may have some ways to go.
#2: End-of-updates isn't the security vulnerability large software vendors make it out to be, in the context of PC use. The paragraph below the first picture is FUD.
Other than Aurora Shell, but many people prefer to separate ChromeOS from other Linux Distros.
