Windows 8 Is 'a Work of Art.' But It's No Linux

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Windows 8 Is 'a Work of Art.' But It's No Linux

Posted by timothy on Thursday August 30, 2012 @08:21AM from the design-team-denied-your-request dept.

colinneagle writes "Earlier this week I installed the final version of Windows 8. And it is awesome. That's not a joke. Windows 8 is absolutely, unequivocally stellar. And yet, at the end of the day, I am right back to using Linux. Why is that? What is it about Linux that makes me so excited to use it — even while enjoying another operating system that I view as, in all seriousness, a work of art? Why do I not simply install Windows 8 on every machine I own and be happy with it? For me, it's the ability to slowly chip away and remove items from your user interface until you are left with only want you want, and nothing more. The option of looking at an item on the screen, right clicking on it, and declaring to said item 'Listen up, mister Thing-On-My-Screen. I don't want you anymore. Be gone!' Panels, bars, docks, launchers, widgets, gadgets – whatever is on your screen, there is probably a way to send it to whatever form of the afterlife is reserved for unwanted Desktop Crud. And, I'll tell you this right now – as great as it is, you don't find a whole lot of 'Right click, Remove Panel' in Windows 8."

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A Review? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 08:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

I don't visit a news site for opinion pieces.
1. Re:A Review? by Sir_Sri · 2012-08-30 08:31 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Especially not one as bizarre as this.
  The definitive feature of linux is being able to right click and remove a panel... good for it? That wouldn't even be a feature on windows, it would be a disaster, because my 70 year old aunt would accidentally remove something important, not be sure what it was, and call me to find out how to fix it. All the people in my office would remove things, want them back, and not be able to find them. Etc.
  You can have an opinion piece that makes some sort of interesting argument about why this feature really changes the computing experience, and how its absence in windows renders the OS unworthy to use, ok, that could actually be interesting. But TFA spends 3/4ths of its length on superficial discussions of things - and the places where a serious and sensible discussion could be made are given no real treatment.
  TFA sort of ends on what he should have started with - the different philosophies between linux and windows 8 - that could have made for a very interesting opinion piece that would have been worth posting on /. But it's not there.
2. Re:A Review? by Missing.Matter · 2012-08-30 08:38 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  TFA sort of ends on what he should have started with - the different philosophies between linux and windows 8 - that could have made for a very interesting opinion piece that would have been worth posting on /. But it's not there.
  That's because a rational discussion on the philosophical and design approaches of different user interfaces is not troll clickbait. The purpose of this article is to drive as many people here to flame about how Windows 8 is terrible and ugly and the worst OS in the world. And what do you know, take a look at first 5 posts below this one and you'll see exactly that.
3. Re:A Review? by cpu6502 · 2012-08-30 08:43 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  >>>That wouldn't even be a feature on windows, it would be a disaster, because my 70 year old aunt would accidentally remove something important
  Strange..... I've been right-clocking and removing shit off my Windows for years. My XP and Seven desktops are completely blank (except for the start button). I'm not sure where either you or the /. reviewer got the idea you cannot remove things from the Windows desktop.
  And yeah Windows 8 may be a work of art (pretty to look at), but I'd really like to get some actual Work accomplished thank you very much The digital equivalent of T&A doesn't let me do that. It slows me down and makes me want to switch to a OS for offices like Seven.
  
  --
  My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
4. Re:A Review? by leromarinvit · 2012-08-30 09:11 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  That's because a rational discussion on the philosophical and design approaches of different user interfaces is not troll clickbait. The purpose of this article is to drive as many people here to flame about how Windows 8 is terrible and ugly and the worst OS in the world. And what do you know, take a look at first 5 posts below this one and you'll see exactly that.
  Then it's a good thing we don't RTFA here. Slashdot - sticking it to greedy publishers since 1997!
  
  --
  Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
5. Re:A Review? by icebike · 2012-08-30 10:34 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  Seriously though, I believe win 8 is good work. Some idiot in Redmond decided that it was a good idea to unify both the touch interface and the desktop interface into one experience and for the biggest part of it they didn't do a half bad job.
  
  This is fine, IFF you have a touch screen. But baring that, the interface is just an outright non-starter.
  Even with a touch screen, scrolling like a whirling dervish trying to find the pane that contains the application you want is just inefficient,
  a huge waste of energy (and one that gets more wasteful as your screen gets larger).
  The start bar and application menu that every desktop OS had wasn't developed and perfected over the years on a whim. Windows 8 desktop was.
  
  --
  Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
If win8 is art.... by DeeEff · 2012-08-30 08:26 · Score: 5, Funny

Then beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder, and you need to get your eyes checked.
'a Work of Art' by kheldan · 2012-08-30 08:27 · Score: 5, Funny

Art is in the eye of the beholder.
Personally I think it's a piece of crap.
Of course, if you definition of 'art' is 'something that evokes and emotional response', then I guess it's art: it evokes a feeling of disgust and revoltion in me, I want to get it as far away from me (and my equipment) as possible.

--
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Then why not a Mac? by nweaver · 2012-08-30 08:31 · Score: 5, Insightful

OS-X is almost entirely free of OS-derived graphical gunk. You have the desktop (which can be blank), and the doc (which can be hidden), and a few things along the menu bar in the upper right hand corner (which can be hidden).
Other than that, it already meets his "graphical gunk free" ideal.

--
Test your net with Netalyzr
I'm not even a fan of Windows 8... by Anubis+IV · 2012-08-30 08:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

...but this piece just reeks of trolling the Windows crowd. Why do we need a multi-hundred word paragraph explaining that you can hide items in Linux but not in Windows? An even better question: what reason do we have to be interested in colinneagle's opinion? It's neither insightful nor unique, let alone relevant to most people, since this is not the feature that will make or break the deal for the vast majority of users choosing between the two OSes. I'm glad he's been able to make a decision for himself, but why should a typical nerd be interested in this opinion piece?
Re:GNOME3's GNOME Shell fails the same way! by MrEricSir · 2012-08-30 08:32 · Score: 5, Funny

Sure you can! And it's a totally intuitive process. You just open your web browser, visit the Gnome Shell extensions site, click through a few pages of poorly organized extensions, and there will be five of them that sort of do what you want and are only partially broken.

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There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Re:First TROLL by Spy+Handler · 2012-08-30 08:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

not a troll, maybe a stealth shill. Look at the print in bold:

That's not a joke. Windows 8 is absolutely, unequivocally stellar.
It boots fast, looks great and, right out of the gate, fully supports every bell and whistle on my laptop (including the touch screen). Applications launch faster, and are generally more responsive, than I have ever seen on this piece of hardware. Hell, I even like the copy file dialog.
As I sat in traffic yesterday for a few hours -- as those of us in Seattle seem to enjoy doing so much -- I thought long and hard about this.
Awesome by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-30 08:34 · Score: 5, Informative

>And it is awesome.

adjective: awe-inspiring, striking, shocking, imposing, terrible, amazing, stunning, wonderful, alarming, impressive, frightening, awful, overwhelming, terrifying, magnificent, astonishing, horrible, dreadful, formidable, horrifying, intimidating, fearful, daunting, breathtaking, majestic, solemn, fearsome, wondrous (archaic or literary), redoubtable, jaw-dropping, stupefying
Collins Thesaurus of the English Language â" Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 Â© HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002
Can't argue with that.
What a surprise by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · 2012-08-30 08:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

Tech-savvy user prefer highly-configurable things that can be customized by tech-savvy users and dislikes things designed to be used as-is by computer idiots. News at 10...
What I'm really wondering though is whether this "article" is a cleverly disguise Windows 8 plug: the Linux bit is there to prevent the poster for being marked as a Microsoft shill, while the real message is "Windows 8 is a work of art". Because really, that's the only thing people who are afraid of Linux will read.
Linux lovers who find Windows 8 a work of art seem suspicious to me...

--
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
1. Re:What a surprise by bws111 · 2012-08-30 09:32 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  I disagree with your assessment. It is not tech-savvy users who prefer highly-configurable things, it is people that have nothing better to do than tinker with their system. And it is not computer idiots who like things to work as-is, it is people who just want to use their tools.
  I am tech-savvy. I have been developing Linux applications (server-side) and using them in critical production environments for over a decade. No complaints, Linux works perfectly and is trouble-free in that environment.
  A few weeks ago I decided to take the plunge and switch from using Windows on my primary workstation, to using Linux. Installation (RHEL 6) was very smooth, no problems.
  Here is my experience. Log on first time, get desktop window. Looks reasonable. Start web browser (firefox). Dear god, what is with those fonts? They are absolutely hideous. OK, I'll see what the wisdom of the web says about that. Aha! All you have to do is intall the msttcorefonts package, and you are good to go. OK, I'll give that a try - it works! I have usable fonts. Hmm, I wonder what the msttcorefonts package did? I see, it installed fonts from Windows!
  Go to another web page. Uh-oh, more trouble. Thi s pa ge h as tex t that lo oks li ke thi s. WTF? Back to the web. Well, you must be missing a font. Find out what the web page is trying to use. OK, it is using Helvetica, about the most popular font in the world. Well, you are in trouble then, because there is no legal Helvectica package for Linux. But, you are in luck, thanks to the wonderfulness of Linux. All you need to do I write some obscure XML and put it in the /etc/fonts/local.font file, and all of the 'Hevetica' requests will be automatically changed to use Microsofts(!) Arial font. I do that, and lo and behold it does work.
  OK, some I am doing some work with a maximizde window, and I move the mouse up to the lop right corner of the screen to close the window, and WTF! All of the windows on my desktop make a cute little circle, and I have to click on the window I wanted to close to make it active. Try to close it again, same thing! Oh, I see, I have to be very careful not to put the mouse all the way in the corner. I can't think of any reason I would want this behavior, so I want to turn it off. Should be easy, right? Just right-click on the desktop and there will be an option to turn that off, right? Nope. Well, I am stumped. Back to the web. Look, you stupid noob, that is not a desktop setting, it is a window manager setting. You must go into the 'Compiz Settings' app from the Control Center. Why didn't I think of that? It is plainly obvious that something called Compiz would be controlling what happens with my mouse! OK, I am in the Compiz settings, so where is the setting that says 'put the windows in a circle'? Aha! It is the one with a music note icon and the name of 'Scale'. Makes perfect sense. How could I be so stupid as to not know that?
  OK, now it has been a few days, and I want to add one of my frequently-used programs to the 'Favorites' menu. Right-click on the Favorites menu - nothing. OK, I'll create it on the desktop. Lo and behold, there is a 'create launcher' function. I create the launcher. The icon shows up as a spring with a board on it, but I don't really care about that. Right click on the icon, and Tada! there is an 'Add to favorites' option. Click it. Absolutely nothing happens. Back to the web. No, you stupid noob, you did it wrong. You need to go into the .local/share/applications directly and manally create a launcher. That launcher will the show up in the 'Application Browser', and you can add it to the favorites from there.
  I was never any kind of Windows fan, but I think I am starting become one after that experience.