Lately, there has been quite some bitching on the fringes of the KDE project about KDE4 and the direction it takes. Some people go as far as saying: “Give us back our old desktop!” I beg to differ. The old desktop has served us well for thirty-odd years since its invention by Xerox. It is beyond its due date by now. We need something new that meets the reality we are living in now.

Let’s start with the sheer number of files we own. Twenty years ago, a user owned a couple of hundreds of files. The hierarchical filesystem with folders, subfolders, subsubfolders and, eventually, files was perfectly suitable to manage them. My last file count in my own home directory (no system files!) revealed that I own over 200 000 files. Even if you are extremely anal about organising your files, how can you manage this number with folders and subfolders? You can not! Period. We need a new way to organise our data so that “information at your fingertips” stays true.

The personal computer has become a knowledge centre. Do you still have a printed encyclopedia? Probably not. You turn to Google or Wikipedia to look up stuff.

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