Is It Windows 7, Or KDE 4?

An anonymous reader writes "Is it Windows 7 or KDE 4? In this video, ZDNet takes to Sydney's streets to find out what people think of what they think is a Windows 7 demonstration. The results are surprising." Or maybe they're not surprising at all.

Comments

not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

9/10 people polled also couldn't tell the difference between rabbit shit and deer shit.

Re:not surprising

[Chrisq]

9/10 people polled also couldn't tell the difference between rabbit shit and deer shit.

And nine out of ten couldn't tell the difference between your statistics and bullshit.

That said it is a useful comparison.

Someone who is just walking in the woods probably cannot tell rabbit shit from deer shit. A tracker or someone dependent on hunting for food certainly will.

Someone who just needs to run a browser and word processor probably can't tell Windows 7 from KDE. Someone who needs to configure and administrate systems for an organisation certainly will.

Re:not surprising

[SolitaryMan]

Someone who just needs to run a browser and word processor probably can't tell Windows 7 from KDE. Someone who needs to configure and administrate systems for an organisation certainly will.

True.

I actually had a long argument with my SO about Linux vs. Windows issue. My main point was this: whenever she experiences any trouble she still complains to me, and for me it is much easier to deal with Linux. So she gave it a try and it all went OK to her own surprise, she had no troubles using FF, Gimp and Pidgin.

Re:not surprising

[Tiber]

I have the opposite problem. My wife won't touch linux but still wants to use my PC.

Then she gripes that it doesn't "automatically log in" or gives me the "we should share passwords".

I say to her, "Do you know shit about Linux?" "no" "THEN YOU DON'T NEED MY PASSWORD FOR SHIT".

Re:not surprising

[gsaraber]

Dude she just wants your password to check your email and make sure you don't have anyone on the side :)

Re:not surprising

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I say to her, "Do you know shit about Linux?" "no" "THEN YOU DON'T NEED MY PASSWORD FOR SHIT".

Careful, sledgehammers need no passwords.

Re:not surprising

[jgtg32a]

Did you mean ex-wife in your post?

Re:not surprising

[gutnor]

I'm sure that most people will see the difference when trying to install a game, sync their PDA (with the instruction on their constructor webpage not matching what they see on their screen) or try to open the crappy humor Powerpoint filling their mailboxes. No need to be a admin to see a subtle difference between linux and windows if you don't have a diligent kid/friend that take care of every single installation problem for you.

This video reminds me of all those "infomercial" showing the latest innovation in carpet cleaning or kitchen robot ...

Re:not surprising

[Tiber]

Nah, the dead can't talk.

You know anything about putting my honda back together?

Re:not surprising

[gestalt_n_pepper]

9 out of 10 people polled couldn't tell the difference between 9 and 10.

Re:not surprising

[Creepy]

And nine out of ten couldn't tell the difference between your statistics and bullshit.

that's because 9 out of 10 statistics are made up 73% of the time.

Re:not surprising

[c-reus]

as seen on bash.org

Re:not surprising

[Hatta]

This is why I have no problem with my GF running windows. If it breaks, I don't know what to do with it anyway, so it's not my problem.

Re:not surprising

[Darundal]

Until she figures out what happens when you put a period at the start of a files name.

Re:not surprising

[Tanktalus]

My wife does digital scrapbooking. She was using a cheapo scrapbooking app, but started to find it too limiting. She started to insist on a purchase of Photoshop, which I resisted. So she got the free trial version, played with it for 30 days and loved it. I asked her to give gimp the same 30 days, and she did. We never did make that Photoshop purchase - she has managed to find gimp tutorials online and even a dead-tree book that has all sorts of hints, tips, and ideas for gimp. Now she does all her scrapbooking in gimp. Maybe I'll be able to sneak a switch over to Gentoo from XP on her box now. :-)

She's no techie, she's artistic. (NOT AUtistic, ARtistic.) Took a bit to get over the learning curve to the point where she was productive, but it wasn't terribly worse than the learning curve for Photoshop.

Re:not surprising

[JCSoRocks]

Apparently 1/10 enjoys studying fecal matter.

Re:not surprising

[ozmanjusri]

the truth goes: "You'll never find my porn stash, hehehe, hehe, heh".

Meh

I linked my porn stash to a directory called .secret in my girlfriend's home dir.

She thinks she's clever for having found it, and gets some great ideas from the porn. It's a win-win.

Re:not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider myself fairly computer literate and I can't tell the difference between Windows Vista and Windows Vista.

Re:not surprising

[supernova_hq]

Then just give her "a" password, not "that" passord. It's pretty easy to create a user and not make them show up in the login screen ;)

Or just make a TrueCrypt File called "corruptedVideo.mpg" and put all "that" stuff in there.

If there's one thing I've learned from women, it's that the only way to win a fight is to make her think SHE won!

Re:not surprising

[MrHanky]

Or it would be, if you had a girlfriend.

Re:not surprising

[dwarg]

Bucking for some informative karma I've tracked down some visual aids for our comparison:

Windows 7

KDE 4

Your welcome.

Re:not surprising

[AlXtreme]

So she got the free trial version, played with it for 30 days and loved it. I asked her to give gimp the same 30 days, and she did. We never did make that Photoshop purchase

Same experience here with The Gimp. As long as SO hasn't become entrenched in using a particular non-free application, she grasps new free apps easily. I hadn't expected her to get used to the gimp (as every gimp article on /. might have you think) as quickly as she did. Perhaps not being English helps in this case :)

Getting her switched from Microsoft Office however is a different story. Having used it for years, she was wary about OOo and balked about not being able to find various options easily.

It goes to show that moving users from what they are comfortable with is a difficult process. If the new app doesn't have a clear win (Firefox + AdBlock for instance) users won't switch easily. But if the user is new to the domain, they will try it with an open mind and learn quickly.

Re:not surprising

[blueZ3]

I think it would be more accurate to say that "people, outside their area of expertise, are generally clueless"

I consider myself somewhat of a Renaissance Man--I program, write, fiddle with electronics, skeet shoot, draw, wrench on my motorcycle, play a musical instrument or two, do carpentry and so forth. I find it moderately amusing to hear geeks who wouldn't know their way around an engine compartment tell auto mechanics that they're clueless--or nerds who can't carry a tune in a bucket tell musicians the same.

It's important to keep in mind (perhaps especially here on /.) that the average person isn't a computer expert. They use the computer the same way they use a car, or a stereo, or a blender--they don't necessarily understand (or care about) the differences between models, they just want something that works.

Re:not surprising

[Zero__Kelvin]

OMFG! You defeated my encryption by putting a period before the filename? Dude, I wanna learn to hack from you!

Re:not surprising

[StikyPad]

NOT AUtistic, ARtistic.

Wait, are you saying that your wife does NOT live in her own little world AND effectively communicates her wants/needs? I'm not sure you appreciate the full magnitude of your discovery, sir. Please.. go on.

Re:not surprising

[H0p313ss]

Or it would be, if you had a girlfriend.

#include <stdyourmom>

Re:not surprising

[muridae]

Right, but how many people go around saying "Oh, I never drive a BrandA cars, I've always driven BrandB cars. I wouldn't even know how to drive a BrandA. The buttons might be in the wrong place, or the shift lever might be at the rear passenger door. I just wouldn't know where anything was?" I've heard the strangest reasons for not switching to Linux. One was simply "The Start button looks too different." Yes, the start button was enough to scare them. Heaven forbid that they ever get in a car that had the gear shift on the wheel column instead of the floor.

No, the reason tech people say non-computer people are clueless about computers is because the ones that stick out in our memory are so willfully clueless. They are the ones who would get in any car and find the buttons they need, but change the color of an icon on the computer and they are lost. The blender breaks and they buy what ever one is on sale, but when they need to check their email they "Only know how to use OutLook Express. What is this 'webmail thing' you are talking about?" And stereos, geez, Talk about moving the buttons around, every one I've ever owned had the volume dial in a different place. But the volume icon in KDE is right next to the clock, same as windows normally, and most of these 'clueless' users wouldn't want to find it. They would rather just complain that 'it doesn't look the way I remember it.' I don't know what it is about computers that induces this autistic-like behavior, but that's exactly what it looks like.

I settled the issue with my parents. I told them that unless they could name an application they wanted to use that I could not get them under Linux, then the next time they wanted their computer fixed it was getting Linux installed. A nice windows-like theme and KDE, sure, I'd go ahead and do that for them, but I was not supporting windows. My mother actually asked me to pirate her a windows CD, just because she didn't want to 'learn a whole new computer'. I handed her my laptop and asked her what she thought, and she thought it was a "nice windows theme, but that wasn't linux. I've seen linux, that's where you type away in that little text box with no pictures."
Now they run Kubuntu, and the only problem they've had is that the LTS version hasn't updated firefox in ages. Next time they ask about it, they get moved from LTS to stable, which frightens them. I can't wait till they ask again and get moved to bleeding edge nightly builds.

Re:not surprising

[Abreu]

Actually, this is a point of contention between me and my wife... Ocassionally, when Im on the computer she wants to check her hotmail email or stuff, and becomes angry when I tell her she cannot login into Pidgin unless she does it from her own user account.

"But MSN in Windows allows you to sign out and sign in again with a different username!" She says

"Yeah, but UNIX has a different philosophy, every user should have its own desktop and its own settings!"

"Why? You and all your Linux friends are a bunch of paranoid idiots! What's the point of so many passwords? Who do you think is going to try to hack you?"

"[sigh] You can then reboot into windows when I'm done with this..."

Re:not surprising

[KrimZon]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mojave_Experiment#Reception
"Participants weren't asked to work with peripheral devices (such as printers or scanners), nor were they asked about compatibility with older software or hardware.[4] Participants did not have an opportunity to try the software themselves[2], but were only demonstrated certain features by a salesman."

So while calling it Mojave prevented the bad hype from geeks, they still showed it to people in a very limited capacity that didn't actually show any of the things that were being criticized. Mojave proved very little, and this video is sort of analogous to that.

With as much certainty as the Mojave Experiment provided us with, this video demonstrates that Linux and KDE are indeed desktop ready and 100% compatible With windows. It's only when you tell users that it's not Windows that they start believing the M£ propaganda and claim that all of a sudden they can't run GTA4.

Re:not surprising

[StikyPad]

Don't confuse the fact that women remember what shoes another woman was wearing 3 years ago in March with some sort of all-encompassing perception of reality, because it's not. And seriously, when's the last time a woman ever told you exactly what she really wanted or needed? The only time that happens is right before or after a fight/breakup, because they're so upset that you didn't know to begin with. "You should have known I wanted you to vacuum upstairs because I left the vacuum cleaner sitting in the middle of the floor!"

My bad.. I just thought you left the vacuum out.

Re:not surprising

[Aphoxema]

References to Windows are one of the only times I see geeks proudly proclaiming their ignorance....It's just an OS by a company, not some insane enemy to be avoided at all cost =/

Hence "itsatrap" on every article about Microsoft supposed altruism.

They are the enemy, they declared it many, many times! The everyone-not-Windows crowd might not have a problem with Microsoft (and therefor Windows) If they didn't have so much history of UI/feature theft, assimilation of over a hundred of corporations, investing in corporations like SCO to assault the public image of Linux, claiming Open Source is dangerous and will destroy computing... Jesus, it's like a monkey throwing shit at you. You know the monkey's just doing what it does but you'll never in your right mind appreciate it.

Actually, let me make a much more concise attempt at responding to your comment.

References to Windows are one of the only times I see geeks proudly proclaiming their ignorance....It's just an OS by a company, not some insane enemy to be avoided at all cost =/

THE FUCK IT AIN'T.

Re:not surprising

[baegucb]

"I am not married" negates your comment. Try that when you are married :)

I fell for it....

[hal2814]

I'll admit I fell for it. But in my defense, they showed it to me in the morning and I was really tired that morning for some reason. It's like someone switched out my usual high quality Columbian coffee with Folgers or something that day.

It should be labeled under "fun", not "kde"

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean; even the editors themselves state that there isn't any conclusion to be drawn here; "we've learned nothing" because there simply are too many factors to consider. People don't know Windows 7 or people don't know KDE. Or people don't really care at all. So; fun movie, move along.

Thats it just show the eye candy.

[jellomizer]

Any OS can look impressive when you find a demo that shows off all the eye candy to its full extent. You could have shown these people DWM configured nicely they would think it would be the next generation OS, UI. Vista got good visual reviews too. The problem is when you start working with it, things change. KDE and GNOME while have a rather niced polished UI, you still need to do things the Unix/Linux way. The same with windows no matter what you do to the UI it is still windows and need to work with it.

What I find really funny comparing Windows/Gnome/KDE with a Mac. The Mac actually has a lot less eye candy, yet perception has it as having more.

Re:Thats it just show the eye candy.

[AvitarX]

My favorite piece of eye candy was the "static" when opening the photo.

When the hell is somebody going to fix that, and whos fault is it?

X? WM? Graphics Driver?

it's getting old.

Re:Thats it just show the eye candy.

[Simonics Zsolt]

I think this is what behind that "feature": http://www.kitterman.org/ScottK/2009/01/bug_254468_momentary_video_gar.html

Folgers...

[Sabathius]

We've secretly replaced Your coffee with Fogers Crystals!

The two guys' bottom line is nearly correct

[VolkerLanz]

We did in fact not learn all that much from their little street intreviews. Apart from that people feel uncomfortable with Vista (what did that lady say -- "hard to get user-friendly with"?) we learnt that they seem to like the default looks of KDE 4. That's interesting, but not all that surprising.
Still a nice little laugh, that video.

Re:The two guys' bottom line is nearly correct

[NightFears]

I think their point is that neither can any conclusions be drawn from Microsoft's spoofed Windows 7 interviews. People are willing to accept anything from an authoritative label. But that is not news, either.

Re:The two guys' bottom line is nearly correct

[Excelsior]

I think I learned quite a bit. I learned that when you get people in front of a camera talking about your product, they don't really pay very much attention to what they are seeing. If you look like a representative of the company, most people are going to say kind things.

Which to me, says an awful lot about the Mojave Experiment. It doesn't really matter what people say they think in that setting. It matters what they think when they install the OS on their own computer, and for Vista that hasn't been very good.

It also makes me question the effectiveness of usability labs I've sat through in the process of developing software for corporations. It's a painful process, and now I wonder if it is very accurate at all.

Is KDE4 actually usable yet?

[Viol8]

This isn't a troll - I installed it with Suse 11.0 last year and though it was supposedly a release version it was utterly unusable, unstable and missing important features. I had to install 3.5.4 to actually get some work done. Since then I haven't bothered to check what state 4 is in now as I felt the KDE team (and Suse) had, to be polite, been rather dishonest about it. Is it worthwhile looking at it yet or should I just stick to 3.5 for the forseable future.

Re:Is KDE4 actually usable yet?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, 4.2 is far, far better than 4. I use it and love it!

Re:Is KDE4 actually usable yet?

[the_womble]

I blame the distro. They should not have made KDE4 the default so early - they should have stuck with KDE 3 until at least 4.2.

AS far as I can remember KDE 4.0 was well know not to be really ready.

Re:Is KDE4 actually usable yet?

[DrgnDancer]

It seems to me that the solution to that would have been to call "4.0" "4-alpha". I'm not a big KDE user myself (I'm mostly forced to use Windows machines for my day to day workstations, and as often as not I just SSH into the servers to admin them), so I don't know what the issues are/were beyond what I've seen on /. comments, but it sure seem like they released a ".0" release without really finishing it. Which is what everyone screams at Microsoft for doing all the time. this little comment war breaks out every so often, and it always come back to "Well they/we admitted it was crap when they/we released it!". So why release it? Release the alpha as an alpha and release what is now 4.2 as the 4.0 release.

Not being either a developer or a (significant) user of the project I don't really have a horse in the race, but it sure seems like if a commercial product had done this kind of thing it would have been held up by the community as an example of why FOSS is better. Granted I don't usually pay $unspecified_large_amount_of_money to use KDE, so I guess that's something, but shouldn't a flag ship FOSS project hold itself to the same standards that it expects from its competitors?

Re:Is KDE4 actually usable yet?

[NotBorg]

The question is: Is KDE 4.2 better than 3.5.x?

I've found that 4.2
* looks nice,
* is slow to draw things on the screen,
* still has fewer things working than its 3.5.x predecessor.

Although I found that I could alleviate most of the slow screen painting using desktop effects with KWin's composition manager. However, like all the other broken composition managers out there, you get a nice desktop that can't run 3D applications.

Lure them in with spinning cubes and wobbly windows and then break their hearts by telling them that all 4 of the 3D games that exist on Linux won't fucking work until they figure out a way to launch the game with the bling disabled.

If you can live on candy alone KDE 4.2 is for you. If you want something more nutritional, KDE 3.5, or Gnome (How ya doing Linus?).

It's been joked that 4.5 will be good again and then they'll start over. We'll see. Hopefully their "revolutionary" architecture changes allow for smaller incremental changes in the future. Unlike 3.5 which apparently had to be completely scrapped and rewritten from the ground up.

I like the conclusion...

[gzipped_tar]

It is indeed surprising AND unsurprising.

The video ends with the two guys discussing "what have we learned today". FTFV:

-- Are you saying that we learned nothing?
-- Nothing.

Sufficient Reason To Avoid Both

[reallocate]

If you can't distinguish KDE from Windows, and vice versa, that's reason enough to avoid both.

"I use Windows iMac"

[WD]

So what does this experiment show? That people just aren't computer savvy.

Re:"I use Windows iMac"

[Loosifur]

I think that guy actually said, "I use Windows and Mac."

Re:"I use Windows iMac"

[sjames]

It shows that the supposed problem, "People just can't understand how to use Linux" is bunk. If they can't even tell it from the latest and greatest Windows, how can it be any more confusing for them than Windows is?

Put another way, if the users are going to be confused anyway when upgrading from XP, you might as well upgrade to Linux and get off the treadmill.

Re:eye candy

[jellomizer]

Compared to other OS's MacOS is actually quite lite with its eye candy. Oddly enough OS X focuses more of the function of the UI more then how it looks. Every effect has a reason for it, and is used to help people grasp rather abstract concepts better. Vs. Say Wobbly windows in Ubuntu Linux which only hinders usage in order to look fancier aka (Window stuttering when it gets close to an other window)

Re:eye candy

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll buy KDE4?!?!

I've got this pirate copy of KDE4.2... It's much cheaper than the original.

What does it show?

[mlwmohawk]

Anyone staging a demo can find a number of people to say oooh ahhhh.

Seriously. This is the problems with computers today. The perception of "usability" is not actual "usability."

We all know, at the end of the day, "usability" is how easy it is to accomplish one or more tasks, to a certain degree the ease at which you learn how to do these tasks, and lastly the predictability and reliability of accomplishing your tasks.

So, if something is easy to do, easy to learn, and rewards careful execution with consistent outcome, the thing is easy to use.

Now, where does flashy eye candy come in to that picture? It doesn't. That's why military vehicles are all drab colors. The criteria is utility not beauty.

Sure, I do *like* the way KDE 4 looks, but it is less usable than KDE 3.
 

Re:What does it show?

[mlwmohawk]

They DO act the same.

Point in fact, they don't. They have different action menus, options, etc. Dragging an icon from konqueror or dolphin creates something "different" and behaves differently than something from within dolphin or konqueror.

You've got it backwards.
Obviously I don't.

the Desktop as a folder AND as an interface is where you get things acting differently in different contexts.

"contexts" are bad things to users. Coming to a system it is difficult to grasp multiple contexts. Even as a regular user, "contexts" are a pain in the ass.

Would you like to write a document in a contextual editor like vim or OpenOffice.org?

The KDE4 desktop makes interface separate from data.

Yes, you've said basically that same thing previously and my response is the same, it is a bad idea.

You have to have a plasmoid to display a folder's contents if you want data on your desktop, which is completely in keeping with the concept.

The "plasmoid" is a cop-out for a well typed system. Why do you need plasmoids for the desktop but not in dolphin or konqueror? The desktop, conceptually, represents a physical space as does file cabinets. Just like your real 3D desk, why would a piece of paper be something different on your desk than in a file cabinet?

This is the foundation of UI design. Our lizard brains want things to be consistent.

They also always act the same... you never see a folder on the desktop in KDE4

And that is something I dislike as well. I *like* and would prefer to use folders on my desktop, because in the real 3d world, I keep things on my desk. Up until Kubuntu 8.10, I used my desktop they way I wanted to use my desktop.

you never see a program icon.

Why not? I keep things like my ipod on my desk, a couple USB drives, etc. By making the desktop artificially restricted -- "different" -- from the rest of the system you make it less easy to use.

It's in a plasmoid or in the file browser

A "file browser" corresponds to a real world entity. A file cabinet. What does a "plasmoid" represent?

What is the perpose of introducing a new concept? What does it answer? How does it make the system more usable? I've read a lot of the KDE discussions about plasmoids and they are all about an aesthetic preference from a few people, but not one discussion about how they are better or easier for end users.

It's doing exactly what you say is good, but you keep claiming that it's bad.

Then you are confused about what I have said.

Re:eye candy

[ByOhTek]

Am I the only one who doesn't want eye candy these days?

Don't get me wrong, I don't want the look of Pre-OSX Mac or early Unix operating systems, or windows 3.1... I don't want things that are painful to look at. Just a simple, quiet appearance that doesn't distract me from what I'm doing.

I can get that in Windows and KDE 3.5. I can get it in Gnome.

Vista screwed the UI, and I can't get it there (I can come close, but they made some things use the same colors, while in earlier versions of windows, they used different colors - such as input fields and non-input page backgrounds. Windows 7 hasn't fixed this.

KDE 4, MacOSX, Windows 7, Windows Vista... Too much bling and not enough customisation in the UI for me.

It's all about the...

[yoshi_mon]

Apps and games baby...Uhh, uh-huh, yeah.

Seriously thou, the rub comes in with what the Win32/64 platform can run more than anything else these days. Both Mac and GNU desktops are plenty mature enough to deal with what most normal users would want. The main thing is now the sheer force of inertia that the Windows platform has in terms of what it runs natively.

But no punchline...

[markdavis]

At the end, they should have said:

"Have you ever heard of Linux?"
"What have you heard?"
"What you say if I told you this was Linux and not MS-Windows?"

bait and switch and switch...

[argent]

I started the video, and it stuttered, and started over... with an actual demonstration of Windows 7. I had to reload the page to get the KDE4 prank video.

Was that supposed to be some kind of Zen test?

Re:eye candy

[MrNaz]

That's a bug in your legal system. I heard you recently voted a new president who may submit a patch.

Then again, your system is so broken you may want to consider a ground up re-write.

Re:eye candy

[MrNaz]

Xfce is your friend.

I use Xubuntu. Plain, clear, simple and *fast*. 8.10 runs out of the box everything on my ThinkPad laptop including Bluetooth. Get it.

KDE4 user

[DrYak]

I've been using KDE4 since openSUSE started including the previews.

I felt the KDE team (and Suse) had, to be polite, been rather dishonest about it.

I don't know but to me it always seemed clear that the 4.0 was more a "early tester" release.

By now KDE4.2 is starting to get really usable and really configurable and could be used by more casual users.

Sure, if you have tons finely tuned stuff in KDE3.5, you'll really miss them.

But KDE4.2 offers enough basic functionality to be usable by most people.

Is it worthwhile looking at it yet or should I just stick to 3.5 for the forseable future.

If you don't depend on highly specific KDE3.5 customisations,
or if you're ready to spend time re-tuning everything again in a slightly different way,
then KDE4.2 is definitely worth giving a try.

On the other hand if you absolutely require the same level of ultra smooth-polished user experience that KDE3.5 offers, you'd better stick with the KDE3.x branch for now and probably wait until somewhere around the KDE4.5 version. (maybe just giving quick shot to KDE4.3 and 4.4 just to watch progress).

Ditto for KDE5.x in a couple of years : stay with KDE4.5 until that one matures. ;-)

Re:eye candy

[JohnBailey]

Can I legally play a DVD on a Linux box in the US?

Yes.

Ask Dell. They now include a closed source DVD player app to cover this niggle. The rest of the world uses the free codecs and the libdvdcss library just fine.

Another Linux roadblock gone eh.. Soon people will have to come up with real arguments.

Set her up on another VT...

[mrclisdue]

I set up my wife on my PC on another virtual terminal - (ctl-alt-F8), it automatically logs her in on boot-up, and whenever she needs "her" stuff, it's all there for her. With all her own passwords. Plus, my "stuff" remains untouched - so whether I'm downloading torrents, or in the middle of composing an email, wp, graphic, presentation...it's all still there when she's done (ctl-alt-F7, back to me)

Simple.

cheers,

Re:Welcome to Niggerbuntu

[oldspewey]

You only read it as racist because of the context within this thread ... if somebody just saw a t-shirt out on the street that said "I am what I am because of how apes behave" they'd probably interpret it as being about evolution and a rejection of creationism.

Re:eye candy

[tixxit]

I didn't realize we were a bunch of robots looking purely to optimize our efficiency. I like wobbly windows. Why? Because it looks cool. It's the same reason I pay more for clothes and my car. Now, I would still like to mention that Ubuntu does not come with wobbly Windows on by default. That is a feature you have to enable, which, judging from your post, I guess you did.

Re:eye candy

[Just Some Guy]

I heard you recently voted a new president who may submit a patch.

Yeah, but it touches about 30 unrelated systems and runs magic code as root.

Re:eye candy

[Keyper7]

Mod parent up. Almost all attacks against eye candy are based on a false dicothomy between beauty and functionality. Wobbly windows are not useful? Well, probably neither is your wallpaper. Or the painting on your house. Or good-looking clothes. And as much as it may sound surprising, woobly windows do not get in my way, I like them and nowadays I feel unconfortable when I have to use another system that does not have them. Different people, different tastes.

Going all "eh, I prefer functionality" is like ignoring a incredibly hot girl because "since she's beautiful, she's probably dumb". One thing does not exclude the other, specially considering Compiz/KWin are remarkably fine-tunable.

Re:eye candy

[vivek7006]

"Another Linux roadblock gone eh."

How about Blu-Ray?

Re:eye candy

[hobbit]

It's when the eye candy gets in the way of the functionality that it becomes a problem. (To stretch your analogy, you can never go out with your beautiful girlfriend, because she takes all night to put her make-up and clothes on.)