Very shrewd move by the KDE people. Realistically, if you want to create a good UI with limited manpower and financial resources, do you try to invent everything from scratch, or do you copy the UI of a competitor that has spent hundreds of millions on usability research? A lot of thought is put behind each design decision at the big software companies; a good rule of thumb is to borrow an idea unless you have a compelling reason to do otherwise. This frees up more developer time and energy to make Linux better in other areas.
Besides, what do you think is so horrible about Vista's UI? I've extensively used both Gnome and KDE, and much prefer Vista's UI. Usability is one of Linux's biggest weak points, IMO.
Hehe, no-one. But KDE are probably right to show a Vista knockoff. People like you and me already know its customisable, but people who use Vista might see it as a slightly nicer looking version of what they've got and be more tempted to try it.
I don't like the vista look, but this looks like a toy compared to it.
I hate to be critical, but those desktop & taskbar icons just ruin it. They are like the retarded child of apples icons, and you can almost guarantee they were drawn by a programmer not a designer.
I use linux every day and wish a great designer or two would work with them and gnome to give it the "polish" of other operating systems. A pixel here and there makes a huge difference if you ask me.
Other nitpicks: taskbar text should be vertically centered. Consistency in font appearance is a must. Text on the mail window seems to be off vertically by a pixel or two. The clock text is far too prominent. Etc etc etc...
You know, I really love the idea of KDE, their philosophy and recent developments and progress they've made... but I've tried KDE 4.1 and I can't make myself use it. Its superficial but I think its their visual style that I find somewhat off-putting.
I wish I had the time/drive and visual design skills to build a complete KDE 4.x theme, something far visually smaller, simpler and more minimalistic than what they have. I really like Google Chrome's motto ("Content not Chrome"), but haven't found a KDE look to satisfy that. The default ubuntu theme is also bad from this perspective, but it can be brought under control with this: http://martin.ankerl.com/2007/11/04/clearlooks-compact-gnome...
Get Cloudcity, made by the same guy who made Baghira, Thomas Lubking. http://cloudcity.sourceforge.net/. Best KDE theme, period. You have to compile it from source, but it's definitely my favorite KDE4 theme. Much cleaner than Oxygen. I just wish the KDE guys would do more to support it.
What I'd like to see is innovation in the UI field. Trying new, interesting ideas. Maybe even doing away with some of the old ideas - like the way KDE got rid of the desktop as a file-storage place. (Instead, allowing a widget to display any folder)
This would be nice...when I first installed Linux I remember remarking how nice the bread crumbs in Nautilus looked and worked. I don't know if they were the first to have this feature, but they were ahead of Windows in adopting it.
