And herein lies a problem that Microsoft faces much more than Linux: their own legacy.
You said yourself that you haven't used XP (which would probably invalidate the majority of your complaints). It's not like XP is hot off the assembly line... in fact, at this point, it's almost 3 years old. And add another year for 2k. If you were using a Mandrake version from 4 years ago, I guarantee you would not have the same experience you do with the latest one.
The current Microsoft product cycle is such that each product release is a substantial step forward, but, by the time the next release is ready, technically-proficient users perceive the previous product as having fallen behind the times. I am quite confident that if Windows was on a 3-month product cycle and you always had the latest components, your impression of the OS would be substantially different. Of course, such a cycle would makes things a little more difficult for businesses that like only having a couple versions of the OS to work with. It would also confuse the @#%$ out of the majority of "Joe users" that still think 98 is the latest version. Most imporantly, it would hamper larger-scale innovations like those due in Longhorn because they simply couldn't fit in a single product cycle - changing the platform that the innovators are targeting every 3 months.
I don't have a solution for Microsoft's problem. And it's certainly fair to criticize whatever version of the OS you have and use---as long as you realize that they've probably already addressed a lot of your criticisms in some later version.
Is it just me or is this exactly the type of barrier that Linux needs to get over before it can "move to the desktop?" I'd venture a guess that a good billion or so of the world's people running Windows on their desktop don't even know what a kernel is... let along how to compile one... or configure modules...
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And herein lies a problem that Microsoft faces much more than Linux: their own legacy.
You said yourself that you haven't used XP (which would probably invalidate the majority of your complaints). It's not like XP is hot off the assembly line... in fact, at this point, it's almost 3 years old. And add another year for 2k. If you were using a Mandrake version from 4 years ago, I guarantee you would not have the same experience you do with the latest one.
The current Microsoft product cycle is such that each product release is a substantial step forward, but, by the time the next release is ready, technically-proficient users perceive the previous product as having fallen behind the times. I am quite confident that if Windows was on a 3-month product cycle and you always had the latest components, your impression of the OS would be substantially different. Of course, such a cycle would makes things a little more difficult for businesses that like only having a couple versions of the OS to work with. It would also confuse the @#%$ out of the majority of "Joe users" that still think 98 is the latest version. Most imporantly, it would hamper larger-scale innovations like those due in Longhorn because they simply couldn't fit in a single product cycle - changing the platform that the innovators are targeting every 3 months.
I don't have a solution for Microsoft's problem. And it's certainly fair to criticize whatever version of the OS you have and use---as long as you realize that they've probably already addressed a lot of your criticisms in some later version.
Is it just me or is this exactly the type of barrier that Linux needs to get over before it can "move to the desktop?" I'd venture a guess that a good billion or so of the world's people running Windows on their desktop don't even know what a kernel is... let along how to compile one... or configure modules...