Dislacimer: I've been involved in the KDE community in the past few years. However, im not a core developer or a decision maker and I just make very side contri

Dislacimer: I've been involved in the KDE community in the past few years. However, im not a core developer or a decision maker and I just make very side contributions. What follows are my thoughts and obviously not KDE's. Main issues behind Linux on desktop: 1) Motivation. Volunteers are doing an incredible job. Truly amazing. Outstanding. No word describes it. However, how much can you expect from them? Most linux-based companies care very little about linux on desktop. On server linux, almost whole industry is based on FOSS stacks (linux, bsd, etc). Why on earth you expect UI developers do a job as good as server-side people? Most of them are pure volunteers. Until more companies are interested on Desktop linux, the situation is more or less the same. 2)Complexity. The whole stack is very complicated and is not handled by a single entity. Kernel, X, Qt/GTK, KDE/Gnome. Now, add to that distributions with different release policies. Different mix of the whole stack, each one producing a unique end-product. Thats much different from windows where they even 'build' the whole stack. 3)Excitement on desktop has been decreased. Desktop in not sexy anymore. Tablets are. Linux on desktop is in middle of some confusion at the moment. Their job is to produce high quality user interfaces. Not just for desktop. And they have lots of potential there. They are moving towards other form factors as well. Which is a big change. 4)Community's attitude. You see, the FOSS community is very big now. However, most people's attitude is teasing linux on desktop or criticizing it. As far as I can remember, open source attitude was 'scratch your own itch', 'get involved', etc. KDE and Gnome communities are both very very welcoming toward new developers. For example, KDE has ~1 new contributor each day. Which is a proof that it is actually pretty welcoming. In my personal opinion, Linux on desktop is actually doing incredibly well. Despite the above points, we have very high quality applications. We have very high quality API's. Awesome technologies. Most of the work has been done. We have great looking, stable, efficient workspace and applications. What remains is a bit of polish. (Although I have to say, I personally cant stand windows for more than 5 minutes) So, dear FOSS community. If you think linux on desktop sucks, help making it better. Thats how linux and open source works. I would also like to ask KDE users to actually help KDE. You can of course contribute to it or Join The Game[1] and give us a little bit of financial help. [1] http://jointhegame.kde.org http://jointhegame.kde.org Edit: fixed formatting.