Even though the title is clearly trollbait, we are in an ideal position to clone Windows. Not Windows Vista, 7 or 8, but the features that were supposed to ship in Longhorn. Let's ape the best features of Longhorn, features that were never finished and never released, and that were cutted off when Longhorn turned into Windows Vista.

It goes like this.

0:15. Look at the spinning user picture. Isn't QML supposed to do something like that?
0:22. Music plasmoid. We have 3/4 of it; we are only lacking the ability to dock, the playlist and the shortcut. We already have all the plumbing in place, Phonon comes to mind.

This second video is even more interesting.

0:14. Nepomuk is a perfect candidate to this. We are essentially asking the user to tag these photos.
0:19. Nepomuk, again, can do all that.
0:22. Feature already released: animated transitions and absolute speed for the Dolphin file view.
0:40. We'll be fine if we integrate the face recognition capabilities we have in Digikam.

We don't need such a flashy interface, but look carefully how Microsoft tried to integrate the features from its botched WinFS (Nepomuk done at the filesystem level, basically) in the Windows interface.

More Microsoft mockups.



Now, see the idea? This is a File View in Dolphin. A semantic one. Just as I click on "Icons" or "List", I can have a "Calendar" view. The semantic info of when a photo was taken comes through Nepomuk.

Another Microsoft mockup: the Carousel.



The Carousel shows the semantic relationships between a project and all its assigned files, mails, contacts or data, or, as it appears here, all my Contacts in an arborescent display. This is an excellent showcase for Nepomuk. A 3D effect can theoretically be achieved with QML.

Take a read also to this review.

Microsoft's ideas were clear about WinFS. However, WinFS performance was abysmal back then in the alpha (any similitude with Nepomuk before KDE 4.4 is mere coincidence). Please, take a look to all ideas.

- Documents virtual folder. It's all your documents. It's not a real folder, but a virtual one. KIO Slaves and Nepomuk will be doing all the magic for us.
- Pictures and Videos virtual library. The same. All the pictures and videos indexed by Nepomuk are there.
- Music folder. Ditto. See how Microsoft stores the album info, in a way much like the music:// IO Slave, done by Sebastian Trueg not so long ago.
- My Contacts library. This library is accessible through a KIO Slave and displays all the contacts I have in Akonadi. It can be implemented easily with the tools we already have.

So, in short, we have now something that Microsoft didn't have back then, and doesn't have now: the Nepomuk Semantic Desktop. With the Nepomuk Semantic Desktop we can turn all of these ideas and mockups into reality.

Agreed that KDM hasn't kept abreast of developments, kwin seems to have cruised past it unnoticed. But that first vid is... No, I'd rather not comment The second vid don't play in Germany so no comment.

What I do like is the carousel - there is an online thesaurus which attempts this kind of visual representation and though it isn't all that usable the concept still appeals to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QOTlo0ROZI

Here you have a video of Longhorn 4072 (Windows Vista Milestone 6), the only release that had both Aero and WinFS, and the last Longhorn release before the Big Windows Reset. It has loads of differences with what was known as Windows Vista. Take a look at some of them; a lot of them are designed with a Semantic Desktop in mind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvsxPNt- ... re=related

Here you have the WinFS demo video. More ideas!

Damn, it took me a while to find a proxy that could play the second youtube video in germany.. Anyway, use this proxy if you live in germany to play that video: http://www.proxfree.com/youtube-proxy.php

As for the concepts. I never saw that stuff before but the login stuff and music player look really neat and appealing!

As for possibility. Right now it's possible to make this in QML but still a bit too difficult due to some QML parts not being fully developed yet. However, once Qt 5 (final, not alpha) is released this will be perfectly possible with their awesome effects done through shaders.

And with LightDM it becomes possible to make a login view using QML thus all the power of QML can be used in there as well. I don't think the login like done in those videos is 100% possible in LightDM and QML but that is certainly something that could be made possible.

As for semantic desktop stuff. All of what i saw in there is possible in nepomuk. Not that i know much about nepomuk, but i've seen video's and read this blog http://trueg.wordpress.com/ which shows some very nifty nepomuk tricks!

WinFS... Isn't btrfs about the same stuff? So perhaps we can have nepomuk stuff on a filesystem level in linux already!

Anyway, everything in the videos seems possible or close to possible. Now all we need is someone that wants to implement it

markg85 wrote:WinFS... Isn't btrfs about the same stuff? So perhaps we can have nepomuk stuff on a filesystem level in linux already!

No. Actually, Microsoft was being serious about a "Nepomuk system done at the filesystem level". They even wanted to replace NTFS databases (every Windows NTFS system has a folder called "System Volume Information" with a database) with a relational database managed through Microsoft SQL Server (the in-house equivalent to OpenLink Virtuoso).

After WinFS doom, Microsoft scaled back and never touched again the matter. Much later, they made something known as Resilient Filesystem (ReFS), and we can safely say ReFS is Microsoft's btrfs. ReFS and WinFS are definitely not the same thing.

1 year has passed... and there are results.

- The timeline:// KIOslave is scheduled to receive its special interface, but not in the near future.
- Special dynamic libraries are DONE and are here! (the search:// KIOslave, featured in KDE 4.10)
- Most of the graphically rich interface is WIP, and is being developed for Plasma Active.
- It seems we will see more about dramatic animations with KDE 5 (Frameworks 5 + Plasma 2 + QML UI Components)