Windows and Linux User Interfaces

Anonymous Coward writes "Greg Raiz, Boston based interface designer and former Microsftie takes a look at Linux and outlines key shortcomings and strengths of an OS that could take on a giant."

Comments

People Avoid Change

[aquatone282]

That's why I'm still booting CP/M on my Commodore 128!

Recruit VB Developers?

[0kComputer]

Microsoft has put most its eggs in the .NET platform and has abandoned tens of thousands of VB developers by pulling support and further development on VB6. There is an opportunity for the open source community to create a VB compatible IDE that could compile applications for both to Windows and Linux. Such an IDE in conjunction with WINE could bring not only applications but also developers to the Linux platform.

so basically the strategy here is to take the shittiest developers from the windows platform and get them to write garbage code on linux?

Jumping in the way of your flamebait tag....

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux and Windows UI pales in comparison to Mac OS X. So when I see these debates I only think of one thing:

Cripple fight!

Re:Linux is FINE

[jzeejunk]

My parents use it, my grandmother runs Fedora, and I convert others on a daily basis.

Wow you must all be living in your great grand parents' basement ;)

Re:My favorite line

[zlogic]

I've NEVER seen anyone code in VB.
Most people I know started with Pascal, then switched to C/C++/Java/C# etc.
BTW, this is a great idea for a Slashdot poll:

Would you like VB6 in Linux?
a) Yes, it's the best language on the market
b) Yes, it would allow me to use my VB6/win apps in Linux
c) Yes, VB is the future
d) Yes, if only CowboyNeal will be coding in it (tied up firmly to a fucking chair)

Linux doesn't need to get ready

[johansalk]

A week ago I started learning 'Unix' and all related stuff. I'm surprised at how fast I'm progressing. I'm also impressed by what I'm learning. I can use LaTeX and ConTeXt instead of MSWord, and they really kick MSWord's ass big time. I can use gnumeric and R project for statistics, and they really, really kick MSExcel's ass (I can cite studies where gnumeric proved far much superior and accurate, but I don't want their sites slashdotted). I can use grep, sed, awk and perl for parsing text. I can use vim for editing. I can use the superior cdraw, imagemagick for images (I can cite studies where cdraw and imagemagick proved much better in quality of results than photoshop, but I don't want their sites slashdotted). Soon I'll be able to use avisynth on linux.
Here's my point, people don't need to be beginners all their friggin' life. They should learn a little computing if they're going to use the computer for hours everyday. I wish I had done this much earlier, but had I not considered a switch to linux I wouldn't have; I have been using MS platform and related applications for 20 yeras and now I feel I have been encouraged to remain dumb for 20 years. In my experience, linux is the clear winner platform. I wish they'd teach linux skills in school - had kids learnt to use Bash, LaTex, Python, and R, this would be a much, much better world.

Re:Maybe true, but not necessarily desirable

[irablum]

Try installing XP and "restoring" win98

You know, to be fair, I tried this last weekend, and it worked. I was halfway through upgrading my win98 box to XP when the installer borked (I think because of an odd CD-ROM setup I have). As we all know, this is usually the worst possible moment for something to go wrong, as the system is between two (theoretically) stable configurations, but when I crossed my fingers and rebooted the machine, I was given a useful(!) error message, that gave me a clue as to the problem, a suggested work around, and the option to restore my Win 98 system. To my surprise my old system restored perfectly, I was able to set up the work around, and then installed XP with no more problems. It didn't even try to beat up on my GRUB loader.

I tried this last week. I had a machine which had Windows XP Pro installed and I wanted to put WIN 98 on it from my old MSDN. worse yet, it was a laptop on which I had to chose whether I wanted to use a floppy or a CD rom but not both.

I did accomplish my task, but it took reformatting the hard drive, 57,000 reboots, a couple of third party apps (one of which allowed me to setup a cd as a boot-floppy). It also took two evenings (about 10 hours!)

Ira