Linux.com

With 90%+ market penetration and with an admittedly flawed version in Vista having a larger installed base that all other desktop competitors combined its really hard to see how windows is dying. Given that I am interested in running some KDE apps (konqueror and amarok come quickly to mind) on Windows.

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I agree, Windows is not going anywhere soon. What is dying, however, we have seen it with FF, and certainly in the enterprise, and many many countries outside the US is the market dominance. 4 years ago, MS got to dictate the way people computed. That is dying, as is the death grip it has had on OEMs. To a large extent, it is intact here in the US, but on commodity PCs, business in Europe, Asia, Central America, it is growing and being offered by the big boys. As that penetration grows, the arbitrary and proprietary locks built into most Windows products will see a slow fade to black. Now, back to the story, the KDE port has a two-fold impact in accelerating the "dying". 1) Once you get used to all KDE apps on Windows, toss in FF and Gimp and OO, how hard is it to move to a pre-installed Linux and 2) It gets more exposure to open source for all users. Many associate Open Source as "shareware", which it isn't.

TripleII

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