Rant

They are still updating the Konqueror.

Let’s go back in time, ladies and gentlemen. The year is 2000. KDE is on their way to release KDE 2, the one famously known to be the one needed to be patched for FreeBSD. Based on Qt 2, which has finally been released under a reasonable license, KDE was there to fly.

KDE wanted to be a bit like Windows. Not only in terms of UI, which it… well, did, and the UI still resembles Windows in default configuration today. Microsoft had something nobody else wanted to do for good reasons. You see, since Internet Explorer 4 Desktop Update, and since Windows 98 by default, Internet Explorer wasn’t just the browser – it was also the default file manager in Windows. It was also mostly responsible for the desktop, as Active Desktop allowed people to set an HTML file as a desktop wallpaper, or render HTML widgets on the desktop. Cool – but in the long term, nobody asked.