I use the latest Fedora KDE on my laptop and I find it to be a better Windows desktop than Windows itself. I cannot even say it is ascetic - everything just works really really well.
I have been evangelizing this message to my close circle of friends and colleagues lately. None of us are devs. I switched my laptop to Fedora this summer. All my windows problems evaporated. Search works, and is a button away. File organization works and my file manager doesn't freeze if it can't access a remote share for whatever reason (usually work VPN inefficiency on Windows). What is installed and uninstalled is genuinely under my control (not Microsoft's). And once I learned my way around the fifteen software installation methods (AppImages, repositories, flatpaks etc.) I even enjoy having the choices. My battery life is under my control, as is all interface with hardware on my terms (speaker/webcam behaviour/drivers).
I've been telling everyone who asks that Windows has lost the Laptop market. The market just hasn't realized yet.
Edit: It very much feels like being on a Symbian phone in 2005 or 2006. They were horrifically broken, couldn't load a web page, had no path forward towards even basic note taking, calendar organization, social media, or anything. But the iPhone hadn't shown up yet, so a majority of the world still used Symbian.
> I've been telling everyone who asks that Windows has lost the Laptop market. The market just hasn't realized yet.
It's not just the laptop market. Windows used to be a tool that allowed you to easily use your computer and programs. It no longer does this and is now mostly a vehicle to sell Microsoft's services.
KDE is solid but I think is just different enough to throw off less technically oriented would-be switchers. I think a fork of KDE that changes it to be more of a 1:1 match to Windows would be highly beneficial here, especially if this fork has a dropdown menu that can switch which version of Windows it mimics (lots of people miss 7 and XP and would find a zero effort way to get that experience back tempting).
Themes are great, but they're surface level and don't change the numerous little behavioral/UX differences between KDE and whichever version of Windows. They also require the user to have gotten as far as to discover that KDE supports themes and downloading, installing, and enabling the theme.
That's why I think a fork that implements the requisite changes would be of value.
What exactly would change ? Only thing I can think of 'normal' users using is ctrl-c/ctrl-v which already work in KDE (even ctrl-win-arrow for virtual desktops could be configured without a fork.)? Different icons/shortcuts wouldn't require forking KDE...Not sure what else you'd change?
If I sat down to compose the list, it'd be full of lots of small things. Think how under KDE, the file copy progress UI is a semi-persistent notification banner instead of a normal dialog like it's always been on Windows. While each of these differences on their own aren't likely to pose issues, in aggregate they can give an impression of the DE being more unfamiliar/alien (and thus, daunting) than it actually is.
I would probably also overhaul the settings app. For example, the whole Appearance & Style group and its two drill-down sections could be pretty easily reworked into a single panel that directly surfaces the most pertinent settings while tucking away the rest under an "Advanced…" button that opens a modal — with themes for example the average user will at most be interested in changing the global theme. Only advanced users even know the difference between window decorations, application styles, etc much less want to be able to change any of those individually.
Hmm - I'm not sure those sorts of things would require a fork per se, but I can see making it more familiar to windows/mac users could be a good thing. I was just curious as I was a big KDE fan back when I used Linux full time, and wondered what had changed.
The two biggest issues I'd have with Linux full time would be audio and video. I haven't even attempted to run Linux audio in like 5-10 years - it was always so titchy with multiple 'standards' to configure. Video was not quite as bad, as I don't game much so I just needed basic functionality. But now I have multiple 4k monitors, high dpi, and all that jazz, I don't know how big a pain it would be. I just run linux in VMs (standard device drivers and setup) or ssh into a linux server for now.
A fork wouldn't be explicitly required, but generally in established FOSS projects, when attempting to make changes that are either large or widely peppered throughout the project you're going to be fighting against headwinds from people who are happy with project as it is, which is understandable. You're likely going to find yourself spending more time on negotiating and politicking to get changes committed than actually making changes.
Audio/video has more to do the distribution being used than it does one's desktop environment, though the DEs can do things to smartly design configuration UI and surface the most commonly used A/V settings in the right places.
