I was talking to the infamous bumper the other night about how OS X is killing the open source desktop movement. Gnome and KDE seem to have lost their appeal to a lot of the moderate Penguinistas. A lot of these people are using OS X hotness now. Apple has been doing a bang-up job innovating on the desktop for the past 5 years while my Gnome Desktop still looks like a third rate clone of Windows 95. I’ve used recent versions of KDE too, and it fairs no better. Xgl is a step in the right direction, however, it still is fairly alpha right now.

I think the Mac might not be just killing the Open Source desktops, but the OSS movement itself. I don’t care very much about compiling stuff and trying to make it work on a Linux desktop anymore because everything that I could possibly want to use on Linux already works on OS X. So, I don’t spend time evangelizing Linux on involution.com. I’m too busy having a blast on my Powerbook much like an 8-year-old mesmerized by a large tank of colorful plastic balls. OS X comes in the back door because “IT’S BSD,” but way prettier. After that, you’re not coding Gnome widgets anymore. You’re sitting down with a latte, posting pictures to Flickr and using the word “cognoscenti” on Livejournal.

The problem has only gotten worse since I started using NetNewsWire. This fiendish little Mac program allows me to keep track of thousands of RSS feeds at once. I’ll be eating breakfast hitting next over and over again like a crack addict taking hits from the Macpipe. I’m starting to understand why Donald Knuth totally gave up email in the 90s. He could see the writing on the wall for how distracting this big old party can be. He could have never imagined Email+RSS+Livejournal+Flickr+IRC on a Mac (+ Starbucks in RL). I blame him for all of this in a lot of ways. Him and bumper.

* This post is ridiculously old, I typed it up months ago, but never posted it. I quit IRC and Starbucks thrice since writing this.