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Dvorak: Linux too much like Windows
inode_buddha was among a handful of folks who submitted linkage to Dvorak's latest column where he talks about Linux being to much like Windows. It's not really a slam, just a challange to be more innovative and look beyond feature creep and UI concepts that are old and tired. Hard to disagree with most of it.
he's a hypocrite?!
you should have the balls to write an article critizing linux, and have all the nerds from slashdot calling your house to make death threats!
You can't really blam him. Who really reads PC news from a magazine anyway. I get all my news filtered through the opinions of slashdot for more a couple of years now, and I can't say that I miss the glossy pictures.
Not screwed up, designed for the English language, in fact I'm typing on it right now. I dunno if it was him that did it anyways.
Or even 24 times a day, if you've got people from 24 different timezones (or to complete the analogy, schools of software design) comparing it to theirs.
Methinks that Dvorak has been reading Slashdot too much and is starting to let the Soviet Russia jokes get to him.
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
Becoming like Windows? We can't have that. Linux might then become popular or something
Table-ized A.I.
ate. It's too arcane. It's too like Windows. It's too arcane. It's too like Windows.
Arrragh!
Linux can be damn near all things to all men. In some ways this seems to mean that everyone finds one thing about Linux they *don't* like and bitch about it, while ignoring everything about it they might well find they love.
Certainly, in this particular case, John is having to ignore virtually all of Linux to say what he's said here.
Hey John, KDE and Gnome aren't Linux. They're the most Windows like of Linux GUI's because they are the only one's that overtly set out to be so. Of course that means they get the most attention because *that's what most people want.* Duh!
Why not go out and try all the other available interfaces? But If you bitch, *even once*, about some other GUI not doing something the way Windows does while you're doing it you'll deserve a bitch slapping.
How's this for innovation John? No windows at all and a dozens of small "tools," rather than large "apps," that allow you to use them in various combinations that the makers couldn't even imagine, polished to perfection by three generations of geeks until they shine like pearls in the cyber sunlight?
I might also point out that "Linux" doesn't do anything. Literally. It just sits there. The *users* of Linux do things. Since it isn't a propriatary product it has no existence outside what people *do* with it.
One of the things that Linux users do is dick around with interfaces. In fact, Linux is probably the most used OS for such activities because of its price, availability and license, but primarily because of the inate flexibility of the OS. Some of this "dicking around" is going on with academic enviroments to which everyone is not privy.
But most of all John, 5 months, or a year from now, when you write a column on how Linux isn't being picked up because it's too arcane and unlike Windows, I'm going to remember.
For God's sake, pick a position or talk about something else.
KFG
Didn't he create that screwed up version of the keyboard as an alternative to the qwerty keyboard?
No.
He didn't write the symphony called "From the New World" either.