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Go with the standard:
http://www.file-extensions.org...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...

And of course, you have used the most absurd examples that you think are possible.

"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" - Albert Einstein

You unwittingly used examples of engineering stations and scientific applications used to process very complex data. Look at the quote above. The only thing understood today is "simple" to the exclusion of all else.

I went through this with some SAP idiots who while dealing with very complex data insisted on putting everything behind tiny little icons. It ended up being a complete mess of an app with "information behind a thousand doors." It was jarringly disconnected fram any real workflow and was roundly rejected by the people who were forced to use it.

And the only reason it was used at all was it turns out SAP was bribing certain "decision makers" to use it. Yep.

If you make software for idiots, guess who are the only people who want to use it? Yep again.

Go with the standard:
http://www.file-extensions.org...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...

And of course, you have used the most absurd examples that you think are possible.

"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" - Albert Einstein

You unwittingly used examples of engineering stations and scientific applications used to process very complex data. Look at the quote above. The only thing understood today is "simple" to the exclusion of all else.

I went through this with some SAP idiots who while dealing with very complex data insisted on putting everything behind tiny little icons. It ended up being a complete mess of an app with "information behind a thousand doors." It was jarringly disconnected fram any real workflow and was roundly rejected by the people who were forced to use it.

And the only reason it was used at all was it turns out SAP was bribing certain "decision makers" to use it. Yep.

If you make software for idiots, guess who are the only people who want to use it? Yep again.

Go with the standard:
http://www.file-extensions.org...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...

And of course, you have used the most absurd examples that you think are possible.

"Everything Should Be Made as Simple as Possible, But Not Simpler" - Albert Einstein

You unwittingly used examples of engineering stations and scientific applications used to process very complex data. Look at the quote above. The only thing understood today is "simple" to the exclusion of all else.

I went through this with some SAP idiots who while dealing with very complex data insisted on putting everything behind tiny little icons. It ended up being a complete mess of an app with "information behind a thousand doors." It was jarringly disconnected fram any real workflow and was roundly rejected by the people who were forced to use it.

And the only reason it was used at all was it turns out SAP was bribing certain "decision makers" to use it. Yep.

If you make software for idiots, guess who are the only people who want to use it? Yep again.

Go with the standard:
http://www.file-extensions.org...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...

Go with the standard:
http://www.file-extensions.org...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...

Go with the standard:
http://www.file-extensions.org...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots...

Yay olwm!

Wait, GNOME3 does not play nice in a virtual environment so you are left with Microsoft??? where did that come from?

Dont use Gnome3, I never use a gui on a server but if you are making a terminal server as you say then use any of the other WM's From KDE to FVWM, there are lots of WM choices and you are not just stuck with the default. Well with linux you are not stuck with the default, cant say the same for Windows.

See http://xwinman.org/

I would love to support your cause, but I need to ask you a question. What is the linux equivalent of this "go to your windows" step?

fvwm95

(To remain on topic: fvwm95 is about as about as ugly and uninspiring as /. beta. NASA itself hates fvwm95 almost as much as it hates /. beta.)

TWM is one of the oldest window manager. Its long name is "Tab Window Manager". I remember using it on a Dec Alpha 120 MHz (using OSF1, also called digital Unix), in the 90s. Wikipedia has some nice screenshots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twm

olwm (OPEN LOOK Virtual Window Manager) is quite old too... http://xwinman.org/olvwm.php

Oh god, please be joking... I had to look this pile up...
http://xwinman.org/screenshots/twm-system.gif

Maybe the point is, Ubuntu has abandoned "works out of the box" -- not that that ever happened. Most of us who want to use Ubuntu really want to use Windows 7, when it works, or Mac OS, when it works. It's a pity to trade on the reputation of Torvald's kernel, when we'll have to skip 11.04 and 11.10 on the recommendation of Canonical, and 12.04 on the principle that it's probably just another beta. Is that two years before Ubuntu is Ubuntu Again? I pity the support community, who is growing up and has to get on with its careers.

NO they do not want Windows XP(Not 7) or Mac OS X. I cannot stress that point enough. The post above exemplifies even you do not want that. What you are describing is only the applications changing environment. What they really want is in the main hardware+software to keep working...but they want the new features; the faster; the shiny, and without regressions. Ubuntu I think is close to being just that.

I found your post ironic , becuase there are regressions most oddly come from Torvald's kernel+binary drivers. Its why people often advocate a more conservative distribution or a LTS release...but that comes at the cost of well think what changes have happened to Linux Distributions since the launch of XP this some random screenshot http://xwinman.org/screenshots/gnome-matt.jpg from October 2000. You still want that. As for hardware support...things are better, and by better I don't mean exotic hardware not working. I buying hardware from a list in a text file on your distribution.

Ironically again the reason I said XP above not windows 7 above is because come April next year the choices of the new exciting new desktop...exactly what Window 7 was...Gnome 3 or Unity is just that.

Linux has always taken ideas from Windows. It was the first Unix to really go after the Windows crowd, essentially the first Unix community built by people that had grown up in a windows environment. Here is the most popular desktop in 1996: http://xwinman.org/screenshots/fvwm95.gif

I remember a discussion a year or two ago here on Slashdot how X was badly in need of replacing. Sounds to me like Canonical have the right idea, and the impetus to make it happen.

People have been saying X was in need of replacing shortly after it was created (and yes, that was before I was born). Does X have issues? Sure. Are they dealbreakers? Obviously not, otherwise X would have been dropped instead of being forked those many years ago.

I've not had a look at Wayland, but it sounds to me like the same-old, same-old whining by "end users" and "gamers", specifically "waaah! my 3D isn't fast enough!". As for the speed, 90% of users don't care how fast it is (which I might add, X is not that slow; *by far* faster than VNC and RDP over the network, and none to shabby with accelerated drivers on the local machine). As for the complexity, 90% of programmers are using a toolkit that eliminates the difficulties in programming for X. And X has it's benefits (such as network transparency, which *will* become more important in the future; this whole "network isn't important, we should optimize it out" thing is a fad).

The thing that bothers me about Wayland is that it seems to want to enforce policy and have it's own windowing system built in. I *like* the fact that there is no One True Desktop for Linux (or X); I can pick a different desktop any time I please, and still run graphical applications from my headless servers. And no, VNC and RDP don't come close; I don't want to have to dedicate a desktop just to run a single GUI app from my servers, and wait for the horribly slow refresh. I also like the fact that X is lightweight enough to run on my netbook and my smartphone. Which also means I can run graphical apps to or from either of those, and from my aforementioned headless server.

As for those saying that Wayland will probably have support for X11 "much as Windows and Mac do", I say to them, the way Windows and Mac "support" X is one of the reasons I don't run Windows or Mac.

To the left of the screen? No, no, no... it's called "the wharf" and it sits at the right of the screen: http://xwinman.org/screenshots/bowman-matt.gif

No, the Worf stands in the back at Tactical: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worf

To the left of the screen? No, no, no... it's called "the wharf" and it sits at the right of the screen: http://xwinman.org/screenshots/bowman-matt.gif

When you get away from Windows, you can not only choose the UI (bash, ksh, zsh, etc) or GUI, but also change it. Before Microsoft became such a problem, it was the norm for people to not just tweak but show off their customizations. I know that most people really piss and moan about tweaking the defaults, but it is possible. The knowledge is gone from the mainstream, but the functionality is still there.

Whether you use KDE, CDE, Xfce, or GNOME you can choose not just the theme (appearance) but also the behavior. That goes especially for the window manager. You can do more with the window manager than deciding to have jiggly jello effects or not. When you talk about the GUI on a Linux, Solaris or BSD distro you're usually conflating about three things : the desktop environment, the window manager, and the settings for those two. It's not even necessary to run a full desktop, you can get by quite handily with just a window manager. Check out Enlightenment, OpenBox, Scrotwm,

Of course the desktop environment and window manager will come with default settings but those can be changed. If an in-your-face example is needed for just how much these can be configure to meet your needs install plain vanilla FVWM and give it a try. Then after that, install FVWM-crystal theme. Night and day different is there.

Is there an easy (non-code, maybe even scripting) way to change the look of the UI?

Yes, there are many window managers (many of which are pretty good too) to choose from that *completely* change the look of the UI.

Is the UI as easy, fun, and colorful as the ad seems to suggest?

Gnome and KDE are. Well, Gnome is easier but kde is more fun ;-).

These may seem like dumb questions to some, but if Linux wants market share they need to build a brand and follow through on that brand promise.

The deal with linux is that it doesn't "have to" do any of this, because it's like a tank - it won't suddenly run out of money, or have to "go away" because of falling market share. It keeps getting better, and nothing can really bring it down.

I understand that the DVD format isn't free, but getting everything to work correctly was a bit of a chore. THAT is not freedom. THAT is frustration to a new user.

You are confusing freedom with convenience here...

Nothing says "hard core" like twm.

Pretty sure uwm or Unix Window Manager or something like that had pie menus as well.

E17 perhaps? Maybe some day... Enlightenment rocks. Here are a couple of screen shots of mine from back in 1999 (my other name back in the day was EvilGNU): http://xwinman.org/screenshots/enl-dfree.jpg and http://xwinman.org/screenshots/enl-dfree2.jpg

Enlightenment was the only reason I ever brought up a Linux machine at home. I was perfectly content with the BSD machines I had access to.

http://www.plig.org/xwinman/screenshots/enlightenment.jpg

that's the shot that made me "fall in love."

I mean, GNOME is nice and all, but seriously -- chasing after Windows' look and feel to try and bring in "converts" for some ill-defined reason seems doomed to failure to me. Show me something totally cool and awesome -- that's what got me, although I got my first UNIX exposure when I was 12 and was Captain of my high school's computer programming team (C/C++) for 3 years in a row, and captain of my college's ACM Team B my freshman year. I'd have ended up with it anyway. But to a 13/14 year old kid, Enlightenment screenshots were the sort of thing that made me go "so THAT'S what I can do!"

E17 perhaps? Maybe some day... Enlightenment rocks. Here are a couple of screen shots of mine from back in 1999 (my other name back in the day was EvilGNU): http://xwinman.org/screenshots/enl-dfree.jpg and http://xwinman.org/screenshots/enl-dfree2.jpg

Enlightenment was the only reason I ever brought up a Linux machine at home. I was perfectly content with the BSD machines I had access to.

http://www.plig.org/xwinman/screenshots/enlightenment.jpg

that's the shot that made me "fall in love."

I mean, GNOME is nice and all, but seriously -- chasing after Windows' look and feel to try and bring in "converts" for some ill-defined reason seems doomed to failure to me. Show me something totally cool and awesome -- that's what got me, although I got my first UNIX exposure when I was 12 and was Captain of my high school's computer programming team (C/C++) for 3 years in a row, and captain of my college's ACM Team B my freshman year. I'd have ended up with it anyway. But to a 13/14 year old kid, Enlightenment screenshots were the sort of thing that made me go "so THAT'S what I can do!"

Period PC hardware absolutely was capable of running X11. I bet quite a few idiots like myself did it at the time.

First, an 80486 was not really period hardware. The Pentium classic was on the market at the time that Windows 95 came out, clocked at 100MHz. It had been around for almost a year at that speed. This processor is a few percent as fast as modern CPUs.

Now, if you were to put Gnome or KDE on this hardware, it would be a pig. For me, I ran the Open Look Window Manager. It looks like this, which I think looks a little bit worse than Windows for Workgroups. But, man, is it lean.

All rolled up, that window manager, using colour depth common in the period, is probably more than ten times faster than a modern desktop. Through the mists of time, I'd say that Ubuntu, with modern hardware, seems a good three or four times faster than that old unix box, which fits.

For what it's worth, the experience was about as fast as the Sun boxes I had used at university a few years before. IIRC, they were running microSPARC I processors at 40Mhz. I don't remember the RAM, though. They ran OpenLook as well,which is why I used it a few years later. I was used to it.

You should know that X11 was released in 1987. It's not like they wrote and debugged it by desk checking, yeah? It ran on workstations available 20 years ago. Moore's law says there were five doublings of transistors per unit area between 1987 and 1995. To say that hardware in 1995 was too slow to handle security, protection, and a GUI is false on its face.

KDE and Gnome, Gnome and KDE. That's the only two desktops in the whole entire universe, right? Gotta be just those two.

Anybody who sees Linux as being 50% KDE and 50% Gnome might as well go back to Windows and never visit our side of the tracks again. We don't want Linux adopted that badly.

Well I can't imagine it would be screaming fast, though there is little technical information on the Sugar GUI. It would really be good to see even a simple comparison vs fluxbox or something similar. Fluxbox ran nicely on a 333 MHz PII w/128MB of RAM that I used to have. However, we had in the early 80's reasonably fast, if simple, GUIs that ran in <32 KB of RAM on 8-bit 1 MHz CPUs, so even smaller is possible.

The lightweight fvwm and other window managers are definitely simple enough, the question remains can the be made all simple, candy-looking. Again, though, what are the requirements for Sugar and how does it compare?

"Except TWM. Bow before the TWM gods!!!!!"

from http://xwinman.org/vtwm.php

"It has however been left behind by more recent window managers, making it something of mainly historical interest."

Yes, some of us moderately clueless sods have to do research to understand the jokes... And, if you're not joking then you need to get a life and join modern society. :)

Absolutely -

The direction MS is going with windows will definitely not fill that niche - particularly for businesses that have to be cost concious and can't blow thousands or millions of dollars on new installations that support the latest and greatest from MS.

I wouldn't load Win98 on a 486 66 - even in 1998 - and as I mentioned that system only ran DOS before I got it. I do believe you can build a minimal Linux system on a Pentium 100 or better system that can appear just as full featured on the GUI as Win98 systems. The problem is no one in the Linux arena has that as a goal, that I am aware of (educate me if there are - as an aside, I do know there is a windows work-alike project called ReactOS that is going for binary equivalence to run win32 apps - and already has many native windows apps - MS Powerpoint, Adobe Photoshop etc.. - that will run on it).

To start such a project in Linux, you could list all the things you want to see on the system from an interface and tools perspective that a typical Win98 user would expect - and build to that standard. You would reach into your embedded systems bag of tricks to build highly tuned kernels that are fast, efficient, with a small footprint designed for those low-end processors. You would tweak the window manager to be more 'windows-like' (start with fvwm'95 or other lightweight window managers). On top of that you would add all the requirements for strange drivers - again the embedded approach would have merit - minimalistic and targeted. Finally, you would probably need to load WINE or Crossover Office in order to run ancient DOS and Windows apps that interface with the hardware or data produced by it - unless, of course, you could reverse engineer these applications and build them natively as a linux binary. I can see why this appears at first glance to be a daunting task.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything on the radar that targets this - which could be a missed opportunity for integrators - and a danger for those Win98 systems still attached to the network - as security erodes, or even those doing critical tasks off the net could be lost to corruption as drives fail over time - OEM installation disks notwithstanding. At some point these businesses will have to make a move - either replacing all the old gear, or spending the time building an open source solution that can have a lifespan longer than dictated by a vendor.

Not an easy problem; thankfully I don't have that problem to deal with - hence why I thought I could spend a few moments pointing out some alternatives.

Absolutely -

The direction MS is going with windows will definitely not fill that niche - particularly for businesses that have to be cost concious and can't blow thousands or millions of dollars on new installations that support the latest and greatest from MS.

I wouldn't load Win98 on a 486 66 - even in 1998 - and as I mentioned that system only ran DOS before I got it. I do believe you can build a minimal Linux system on a Pentium 100 or better system that can appear just as full featured on the GUI as Win98 systems. The problem is no one in the Linux arena has that as a goal, that I am aware of (educate me if there are - as an aside, I do know there is a windows work-alike project called ReactOS that is going for binary equivalence to run win32 apps - and already has many native windows apps - MS Powerpoint, Adobe Photoshop etc.. - that will run on it).

To start such a project in Linux, you could list all the things you want to see on the system from an interface and tools perspective that a typical Win98 user would expect - and build to that standard. You would reach into your embedded systems bag of tricks to build highly tuned kernels that are fast, efficient, with a small footprint designed for those low-end processors. You would tweak the window manager to be more 'windows-like' (start with fvwm'95 or other lightweight window managers). On top of that you would add all the requirements for strange drivers - again the embedded approach would have merit - minimalistic and targeted. Finally, you would probably need to load WINE or Crossover Office in order to run ancient DOS and Windows apps that interface with the hardware or data produced by it - unless, of course, you could reverse engineer these applications and build them natively as a linux binary. I can see why this appears at first glance to be a daunting task.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen anything on the radar that targets this - which could be a missed opportunity for integrators - and a danger for those Win98 systems still attached to the network - as security erodes, or even those doing critical tasks off the net could be lost to corruption as drives fail over time - OEM installation disks notwithstanding. At some point these businesses will have to make a move - either replacing all the old gear, or spending the time building an open source solution that can have a lifespan longer than dictated by a vendor.

Not an easy problem; thankfully I don't have that problem to deal with - hence why I thought I could spend a few moments pointing out some alternatives.

No TWM, MWM, and OLWM was what a lot of older machines had for a windows manager ( I still like Motif, call me old fashioned). WindowMaker, Enlightenment, FVWM, and the like are more like middle aged :)

No TWM, MWM, and OLWM was what a lot of older machines had for a windows manager ( I still like Motif, call me old fashioned). WindowMaker, Enlightenment, FVWM, and the like are more like middle aged :)

No TWM, MWM, and OLWM was what a lot of older machines had for a windows manager ( I still like Motif, call me old fashioned). WindowMaker, Enlightenment, FVWM, and the like are more like middle aged :)

There are a few. My favorites are:
http://www.enlightenment.org/
http://www.xfce.org/
More ways of making your desktop look different here:
http://xwinman.org/

Sun had a powerful window manager (for its time), Open Look Window Manager and Open Look Virtual Window Manager.
These were introduced about 1989ish.

http://xwinman.org/olvwm.php

Personally, I use XFCE. Faster than any windows installation I've ever seen. :-P

... the Common Desktop Environment, or CDE. After all, the last experiment was quite successful.

I have no clue why there should be a "K" or "Foot" instead of "Start Menu" and they should act like windows.

If you are confused too and like how OS X works, check http://xwinman.org/wmaker.php

Well, since Unix has *NEVER* had an objective study of it's desktop done, you will make history as a pioneer. Since it's survived so many smear campaigns, yours will, unfortunately, just add to the hot air. What, exactly, is the *point* of such a study, anyway? What does it change? I have yet to read a single such study that swayed my choices one iota.

Sadly, you're off on the wrong foot already. KDE-vs-Gnome. Hey, Dr Kinsey, there's just a few other test subjects you're failing to interview: http://xwinman.org/. So actually, you're flunking already. You are not doing a "Unix desktop study". You are doing a "KDE-vs-Gnome" study, and your results will no more be applicable to Unix in general than a study of Coke-vs-Pepsi would apply to all beverages.

It does not go without saying: Don't be paid Microsoft shills. Don't be paid by *anybody* for that matter.

Now, if I studied dogs, I wouldn't start with everything I know about cats and try to fit it all around that by comparing dogs with cats at every possible point. Similarly, Unix never gets taken as an operating system on it's own right. Everything is instead stated "It is not as good as or just like or better than Microsoft." How about judging something just once based on it's own merit, the way anybody studying anything else is expected to do in any other field? Consider your subject as if other operating systems did not exist. God knows, Microsoft is talked about in this manner.

Unfortunately, the focus will of course be on KDE and Gnome, the Heckyl and Jeckyl whose sole point of contention is "I'M a perfect clone of the Windows environment!" "No, I am!" "No, me!" "NO, ME!" So in fact, you're not the least bit interested in considering even KDE or Gnome on it's own right - this will be a Windows-impersonator contest. Never mind that counting from the invention of computers: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Babbage.html, computers have been around for one hundred and eighty-two years, and only the last 20 years http://members.fortunecity.com/pcmuseum/windows.ht m has seen the existence of a desktop system known as Windows. For a ratio of 0.10989011 of computer's history, you are going to compare the one system whose sole claim is that it made a lot of money in the United States to two other desktops expressly written to mimic it.

I'm really sure the world will be enlightened.

OK, that's the 1000th time I've heard that one, and I promised myself back when the count was in the mid-900's that I'd start saying this...so, congratulations, you're the first one to hear it: With all due respect(becasue you do have a wit about you), you're full of shit. You need to update yourself from Ygdrassil or Debian 1.0 or whatever you're running on a server. Try Knoppix or Mandriva (no, I don't mean for your server); Linux on the desktop has met, and SURPASSED every other system. Go look at the screenshots of KDE http://xwinman.org/screenshots/kde-anakin.jpg and Gnome http://xwinman.org/screenshots/gnome.jpg and Window Maker http://xwinman.org/screenshots/wmaker-matt.jpg and Fluxbox http://xwinman.org/screenshots/fluxbox-dbl.jpg, to name four out of 50 http://xwinman.org/ : if there's anything Linux isn't doing in this day and age (2005) on the desktop, it cannot be done. And I daresay that if there's a Window's desktop that comes close to the beauty and function of some of the *mediocre* Linux desktops, I'd like to see the screenshot.

OK, that's the 1000th time I've heard that one, and I promised myself back when the count was in the mid-900's that I'd start saying this...so, congratulations, you're the first one to hear it: With all due respect(becasue you do have a wit about you), you're full of shit. You need to update yourself from Ygdrassil or Debian 1.0 or whatever you're running on a server. Try Knoppix or Mandriva (no, I don't mean for your server); Linux on the desktop has met, and SURPASSED every other system. Go look at the screenshots of KDE http://xwinman.org/screenshots/kde-anakin.jpg and Gnome http://xwinman.org/screenshots/gnome.jpg and Window Maker http://xwinman.org/screenshots/wmaker-matt.jpg and Fluxbox http://xwinman.org/screenshots/fluxbox-dbl.jpg, to name four out of 50 http://xwinman.org/ : if there's anything Linux isn't doing in this day and age (2005) on the desktop, it cannot be done. And I daresay that if there's a Window's desktop that comes close to the beauty and function of some of the *mediocre* Linux desktops, I'd like to see the screenshot.

OK, that's the 1000th time I've heard that one, and I promised myself back when the count was in the mid-900's that I'd start saying this...so, congratulations, you're the first one to hear it: With all due respect(becasue you do have a wit about you), you're full of shit. You need to update yourself from Ygdrassil or Debian 1.0 or whatever you're running on a server. Try Knoppix or Mandriva (no, I don't mean for your server); Linux on the desktop has met, and SURPASSED every other system. Go look at the screenshots of KDE http://xwinman.org/screenshots/kde-anakin.jpg and Gnome http://xwinman.org/screenshots/gnome.jpg and Window Maker http://xwinman.org/screenshots/wmaker-matt.jpg and Fluxbox http://xwinman.org/screenshots/fluxbox-dbl.jpg, to name four out of 50 http://xwinman.org/ : if there's anything Linux isn't doing in this day and age (2005) on the desktop, it cannot be done. And I daresay that if there's a Window's desktop that comes close to the beauty and function of some of the *mediocre* Linux desktops, I'd like to see the screenshot.

OK, that's the 1000th time I've heard that one, and I promised myself back when the count was in the mid-900's that I'd start saying this...so, congratulations, you're the first one to hear it: With all due respect(becasue you do have a wit about you), you're full of shit. You need to update yourself from Ygdrassil or Debian 1.0 or whatever you're running on a server. Try Knoppix or Mandriva (no, I don't mean for your server); Linux on the desktop has met, and SURPASSED every other system. Go look at the screenshots of KDE http://xwinman.org/screenshots/kde-anakin.jpg and Gnome http://xwinman.org/screenshots/gnome.jpg and Window Maker http://xwinman.org/screenshots/wmaker-matt.jpg and Fluxbox http://xwinman.org/screenshots/fluxbox-dbl.jpg, to name four out of 50 http://xwinman.org/ : if there's anything Linux isn't doing in this day and age (2005) on the desktop, it cannot be done. And I daresay that if there's a Window's desktop that comes close to the beauty and function of some of the *mediocre* Linux desktops, I'd like to see the screenshot.

OK, that's the 1000th time I've heard that one, and I promised myself back when the count was in the mid-900's that I'd start saying this...so, congratulations, you're the first one to hear it: With all due respect(becasue you do have a wit about you), you're full of shit. You need to update yourself from Ygdrassil or Debian 1.0 or whatever you're running on a server. Try Knoppix or Mandriva (no, I don't mean for your server); Linux on the desktop has met, and SURPASSED every other system. Go look at the screenshots of KDE http://xwinman.org/screenshots/kde-anakin.jpg and Gnome http://xwinman.org/screenshots/gnome.jpg and Window Maker http://xwinman.org/screenshots/wmaker-matt.jpg and Fluxbox http://xwinman.org/screenshots/fluxbox-dbl.jpg, to name four out of 50 http://xwinman.org/ : if there's anything Linux isn't doing in this day and age (2005) on the desktop, it cannot be done. And I daresay that if there's a Window's desktop that comes close to the beauty and function of some of the *mediocre* Linux desktops, I'd like to see the screenshot.

Well-designed windows programs work around this very well.
...
I think you are incorrectly assuming that your preference for the Linux/OSX experience extrapolates well to everyone.

If only more people discovered the alternatives, it would both out-class the current desktop market, and put to death that Linux can do nothing on the desktop but follow Windows around. There is literally something out there for every single taste and kink. Of course, we're *all* stuck supporting Windows-clones just for the people who insist that every computer in the world must look, smell, feel, taste, and sound exactly like Windows or they won't use it...but I digress.

We can and we do. It's called XFCE.

Agreed. And Ion and a lot of other innovative window managers/desktop environments. What about Rox?

Plenty of new stuff, in any case compared with MS which has how many new concepts for window managing? 0? I thought so.

I have seen Notes only as used in our company, and I can only imagine that it's the mail template we use and not Notes as such, but (and dig this)

our Notes does not support mail threading

No, this is not 1972. Yes, my inbox and all other mail folders are fucking flat lists. No, I also don't know how I'm supposed to work like that when I get 100 mails a day. (Mind you, there is a "Thread View", but it's only available for a view of all mails, not in the individual folders I sort my mail into.)

Best thing is I complained several times to IT, and they didn't know what I'm talking about. I made screenshots of Evolution for them. I dunno, does Outlook not use mail threads? Shouldn't everbody just know how that works?

And why the fuck should I as a user care about which server a DB is on, manually switch to another replica when the my main server is down, and remember to switch back when it is up again? I swear, I did seriously think to learn Notes administration just to find out whether our IT dept. is a bunch of morons, or the Notes dev team is.

Wrt to the window managers, there are some that implement tabs, but I think this is too little. An advantage of tabs on the app level is that different tab behavior may be needed depending on app - or at least the app needs to interact with the tabs cleverly. What I'd really like is a Gnome-aware Ion wm (with individual desktops that can have overlapping windows for the odd gimp session)

Um, yeah. It takes a Linux user to see that as an advantage.

I could say "The advantage of Mac or Windows is that you have tons of *applications* to choose from, as opposed to Linux where you are limited to about one in each category (e.g., Gimp, vs Photoshop, PaintShopPro, PhotoPaint, ...)."

Putting down an operating system for *one* of its aspects is really easy. Especially when you phrase it to make that one aspect seem incredibly important, and all others completely unimportant. Who cares if there's no graphics programs for Linux worth a bucket of warm spit? I have 17 different window managers to choose from! Look how productive I am!

all the Linux desktops

Really? All?

I see. Well, if your hardware is good then my next guess would be the gfx card drivers.
Does the X server crash (screen goes black, returns to login manager) or does it freeze? Does it say anything in the xserver log (usually /var/log/XFree86.log or Xorg.log)

Some xservers have memory leaks, does your box get slow and start to swap before it crashes? What GFX card/drivers are you using?
Are you using XFree86 or X.org?

Funny you say you like XP but prefer gnome over KDE.
Last time I looked KDE was much more similar to windows... ;-)

Maybe check out this page.
They have a nice overview of many available window managers (with screenshots), maybe you find another one that you like. At least XFCE, WindowMaker and blackbox/fluxbox are worth a look.

Good luck!