hahaha. Ever since being forced to learn vi, I wonder how any non nerd could ever hope to use it.
Actually, many non-nerds have had no problems learning "vi" or "emacs": those editors have well-documented, stable command interfaces, and there are good tutorials for them. Arguably, they are far easier to learn than Word and other GUI-based editors.
The MS Word GUI appeals to people who won't look at documentation and like to learn by poking around, but not everybody falls into that category. And those people generally make slower progress than those who actually treat learning an application seriously.
X11 on Mac is adequate--enough to get the job done, but little more than that. I'll take native apps over X11 any day of the week.
Quite right. And the reason for that is that Apple doesn't want people to write GUI apps to an open standard, they want to lock developers into Carbon and Cocoa.
If Apple made X11 start up transparently on a Mac, improved its performance, and provided a small X11 extension to access the menu bar and a few common Cocoa components, you'd have a version of OOo that looks and feels indistinguishable from a Cocoa application within a few months.
But Apple is still firmly stuck in their proprietary thinking. They'll take advantage of open source software when they can and when it is commodity functionality, but they want all the stuff that matters to be proprietary.
One major advantage of Windows is that it's everywhere and can run on anything.
You apparently don't have much experience actually trying to install Windows on lots of different hardware. I do. Installed out of the box, Windows often lacks drivers, misrecognizes hardware, and has all sorts of other problems.
The only reason Windows seems to "run everywhere" is because every manufacturer goes out of his way to make their hardware windows compatible (bug-for-bug) and preinstall Windows; and to fix a broken installation, manufacturers ship restore CDs rather than Windows distribution CDs because ordinary consumers wouldn't be able to reinstall Windows from the distribution (it requires too much tweaking).
In different words, Windows "runs everywhere" because Microsoft has a monopoly and every manufacturer does whatever is necessary to make it work, not because there is anything intrinsically portable about Windows.
If MS and Dell merged and produced one product, I can see the end of Windows as the monopoly operating system.
So, Microsoft effectively outsources hardware manufacturing--I fail to see how that makes a big difference to their monopoly status.
In any case, courts have found Microsoft guilty of monopolistic practices, so whether you "see" it or not really doesn't matter.
The level integration and interoperability of the Office suite is something that most other software vendors aspire to, but few (if any) have achieved.
Microsoft achieves its "integration" by shipping ever more bloated bundles of software. And, yes, other vendors are trying to emulate that, including Apple.
But that's the wrong way to go. Microsoft, Apple, and other vendors need to figure out how to create software platforms that allow good integration between applications that weren't developed by a single team. And none of them have managed that yet.
True integration requires open, flexible standards for content and inter-application communications. Nobody has really figured out how to do that yet, least of all Microsoft and Apple.
The network is not the computer. It's just a service.
Absolutely right. It just happens to be a service that changes how software can gets distributed and used.
A hard disk is cheap. People are going to stick their data and apps there, because it's cheap, quick, and easy.
Yes, and that will continue to be the case. It's just that the way software and data ends up there and gets administered changes. Cell phones, Hiptops, Debian, and Tivo are a preview of that, but it will extend to the desktop PC.
This does not work for me on Redhat Enterprise 3 update 3 release; utilities segfault around 100 users. I have asked redhat and they don't have an answer (its been 4 months).
Submit bugs to the creators of those utilities not to RedHat; RedHat just bundles the stuff.
Also, (on OSX same situtation as above)
OSX isn't UNIX, it has a cumbersome, hard-to-program, and non-standard administrative database, and it doesn't have UNIX file systems semantics, so these kinds of things may be a lot harder to do on OSX.
how about when the workflow is such that a file is created in a directory by one user and then another user works on it and then another user works on it and so on. Why should the files' ownership remain with the first user? How would you handle disk quotas? What if the first user isn't just one user but a subset of users that you don't know ahead of time (fluid workflow in dynamic teams).
You (or, rather, someone who actually knows how to write simple programs--most IT departments have such people around) create a small setuid program that implements the constraints you want for your workflow needs and your quota system.
For small course projects of 3 students for 2months (roughly 60 groups across multiple sections of the course), you want me to create unique groups and preconfigure a sub-directory for each group?
Most people would use a small shell script to do it, or they'd delegate the ability to create and manage groups to students.
(Actually, most people in the 21st century wouldn't dream of doing this sort of thing with ACLs at all, they'd use a network-based version control system like Subversion, which has its own permission system.)
Instead of delegating right assignment permission to each student; they manage access to their group and their own file structure?
Yes, that's a great thing to do. Isn't it nice that it's so easy to do on UNIX?
You want me to setuid/setgid different utilities on a server where students have shell access?
Good grief, how dense can you be? No, I don't want you to "setuid/setgid different utilities", I want you to either use an existing framework or create your own set of utilities that actually express the kinds of operations you actually want to delegate to students.
But, actually, I don't want you to do even that because it's pretty clear that you would screw it up. In fact, I would prefer if people like you didn't use UNIX or Linux at all. I recommend that you switch to Windows NT with NTFS and ACLs. While that won't actually solve your problem correctly and will create lots of security problems for you, it will make you happy and it will keep UNIX/Linux from getting associated with your mistakes. Eventually, you'll lose your job and your successor can do things right.
Engineering involves many tradeoffs. In this case, voice quality is only one desirable feature; battery life, size, cost, human factors, support, robustness, etc., are others. You may be able to do better with a laptop or you may not; but don't assume that just because your laptop has a better text-to-speech system it is overall better at the task.
We've heard this how many times so far? The ideas been spinning around since the early 90s at least.
Yes, and it's in full swing of being implemented. Wake up: it's happening.
Repeat after me. As long as there are laptop computers there will be a strong demand for locally-installed software.
With WiFi, the times laptops aren't on-line are getting less and less frequent. What the few disconnected laptops are going to be running is going to be driven by the online applications.
Are you posting to Slashdot? Well, you are using an open remote GUI protocol for doing so (not a very powerful one, but good enough). A few years ago, that would have required platform-specific applications. In fact, many functions that would have been carried out by local applications in the past (CD databases, movie databases, calendaring, mail, etc.) are increasingly carried out over the web. That trend is just going to continue until pretty much everything will be on the web.
Microsoft is a player in that market, but they are hardly "leading" it: various serial protocols and X11 still reign in that space. Sun Ray is a late and expensive entry in that market as well.
Danger's platform is limited for developers, so you'll be able to find better apps for other devices that use J2ME, Palm, WinCE, etc.
I think what matters is not the total number of applications, but that it gets the job done. And when it comes to mobile Internet access, I think the Hiptop still beats any of the Palm, Windows, Symbian, or Blackberry-based offerings.
But it's quite clumsy as a phone (have to open it up to dial numbers - or selected them from a list on the phone using an awkward scroll wheel).
True, but that's not so different from a flipphone. Also, it has a speakerphone and comes with a headset, which I tend to use when I make a number of phonecalls anyway.
Windows style ACLs are n-way permissions (n = # of files + directories + users + groups) UNIX ugo/rwx is 3 way permissions
You seem to be missing a crucial fact about UNIX groups: every user can be in multiple groups. That gives you the same flexibility as ACLs.
I can give a concrete example of where UNIX style permissions fail.. A Linux server with students and instructors (college). Each user has a webspace (~/public_html) where they need to be able to run cgi, jsp, etc. How to set permissions such that.. a) apache user can read contents of ~/public_html b) no student can read contents of other students or staff's ~/public_html as cgi, jsp, which contain database connection information (should not be visible to anyone except owner).
Just configure the Apache web server to do what you want; it has an option to handle exactly that case.
Now what if some students need to work together in a group for a group project? You can't do it with one of the student's accounts, you have to create a special project group user for them to share. This is plain silly..
Of course, the students can do it with their own accounts. If you want students to work on a project in a group, you create a UNIX group for that project and put all the students into it. You don't need a "project user".
OR if I am really lazy (or if there are thousands of students).. b) I should be able to delegate permission assignment to each student, i.e. each student can assign rights to other stuednts/groups to files under their own homedirectory.
You can: delegation of privileges in UNIX is handled via setuid/setgid. There are various existing tools to handle specific kinds of delegation (e.g., sudo). If none of those meet your needs, you have far more flexibility to create your own than if you were stuck with ACLs.
You, sir, are out of your mind. Some people are stupid, therefore all complexity is to be removed. You make vague generalities about how some people somewhere (no actual proof, mind you) blew it on ACLs, so ACLs are bad.
No, you make vague generalities asserting that ACLs are somehow better, yet you fail to provide any proof for that assertion.
In fact, there is some evidence that we have. UNIX permissions have been used successfully for decades on multiuser timesharing systems. Windows isn't even capable of timesharing, its local security has never been demonstrated, and it ships full of security and permission problems. I'd say it's pretty clear who gets it right and who gets it wrong. The burden of proof is clearly on you if you want to argue that the Windows permission system is "better".
Argument by assertion is not proof.
Yes, and don't you forget it. So, where is your data? Where is your proof?
A well-designed ACL system is leaps and bounds better than Unix permissions. The problem is mostly that people implement ACLS very, very poorly, scattering permissions all over the filesystem where they are hard to find.
Yes, quite right: the problem with providing ACLs is that most people use them poorly. But people have been using them poorly for decades. Since people aren't changing, we have to conclude that ACLs are a poor mechanism for managing permissions in the real world.
[long-winded description of NT groups]
None of what you describe requires ACLs; in fact, the UNIX group system covers those cases very well. Perhaps you should try to understand them.
What ACLs make possible is ad-hoc, per-file permissions, and those create enormous security and adminstrative problems.
I haven't seen ANYTHING in Unix that will let me both have that kind of granularity and sweeping power.
Yes, and those restrictions are deliberate. They are the reason why UNIX permissions lead to more secure systems in practice than ACL-based systems.
ACLS are both far more elegant and far more powerful.
ACLs may be more elegant and more powerful, but they are not more secure or more usable in real-world scenarios. And what matters, in the end, is security and usability in the real world, not some operating system designer's wet dream.
Get a Danger Hiptop from T-Mobile. You turn it on and it just works. It supports web browsing, E-mail with push, AIM, SMS, a regular cell phone, a transparently web-synchronized organizer, some games, a VGA camera, Yahoo Messenger, and SSH (plus several more applications that I haven't tried). You also get an E-mail address and web-based access to your data. Also, the keyboard is the most usable among all the devices I have tried.
The device is $200 and you pay $20/month for unlimited data services. You have to add a voice plan to that; the cheapest is another $10/month, making the device $30/month (1 year commitment).
That doesn't let you make phone calls, only talk to someone else with MSN Messenger. So, it's not a solution to the problem of making international long distance calls.
Furthermore, even if MSN Messenger were technically better than other options right now, the solution would be to create other options that are not tied to a Microsoft service, since the consequences of Microsoft becoming a force in the VoIP market would be disastrous for everybody in the long term.
However, I seriously doubt that MSN Messenger is the best solution right now. There are lots of VoIP systems, many of which have been around longer and have had a lot of smart people working on them to optimize them.
This is not like setting off a flash at all. In order to be affected by a laser, you have to be looking at it. It is highly unlikely that both pilot and copilot would be looking at the laser at the same time.
Furthermore, pilots are trained not to do anything stupid when something unexpected happens. They have to deal with glare, reflections, and unexpected events all the time. This seems pretty minor.
What these people are doing sounds little different from the next version of KDE or Gnome. Their web site has no new ideas for how to improve usability of the desktop, nothing that differs from the standard WIMP paradigm, and no interesting new functionality that they are implementing. It's unfortunate that so much energy gets wasted on trivial variations of the standard desktop paradigm. It's good to have choices in software, but only up to a point.
I actually doubt that any desktop effort based on an existing toolkit (Qt, Gtk+, etc.) will lead to significantly improved usability or functionality: those toolkits already encode a lot of assumptions and restrictions that any desktop effort based on them will be constrained by.
Good operating system design is not about throwing ever more flexibility at the user or adding every possible gimmick under the sun.
The UNIX permission system has survived for so long because it works. There have been numerous attempts at adding ACLs to the UNIX file system, and they have not had a lot of success. In practice, ACLs cause numerous problems, in user interfaces, in usability, in system security, and in system management.
Given the way UNIX systems are used today, the real question is not whether one should move to ACLs but whether one can simplify the system further; group permissions and execute permissions perhaps should be eliminated, leaving us with just read/write and user/world permissions (plus setuid).
In my experience, most users of Word and Excel just use them because they are there and because they have memorized how to do a few things in them. Don't fool yourself into thinking that that means they "like" those applications.
and the great selection of windows apps
Most of them self-installing, as soon as you connect your Windows machine to the Internet, right?
Slashdot Mirror
hahaha. Ever since being forced to learn vi, I wonder how any non nerd could ever hope to use it.
Actually, many non-nerds have had no problems learning "vi" or "emacs": those editors have well-documented, stable command interfaces, and there are good tutorials for them. Arguably, they are far easier to learn than Word and other GUI-based editors.
The MS Word GUI appeals to people who won't look at documentation and like to learn by poking around, but not everybody falls into that category. And those people generally make slower progress than those who actually treat learning an application seriously.
X11 on Mac is adequate--enough to get the job done, but little more than that. I'll take native apps over X11 any day of the week.
Quite right. And the reason for that is that Apple doesn't want people to write GUI apps to an open standard, they want to lock developers into Carbon and Cocoa.
If Apple made X11 start up transparently on a Mac, improved its performance, and provided a small X11 extension to access the menu bar and a few common Cocoa components, you'd have a version of OOo that looks and feels indistinguishable from a Cocoa application within a few months.
But Apple is still firmly stuck in their proprietary thinking. They'll take advantage of open source software when they can and when it is commodity functionality, but they want all the stuff that matters to be proprietary.
One major advantage of Windows is that it's everywhere and can run on anything.
You apparently don't have much experience actually trying to install Windows on lots of different hardware. I do. Installed out of the box, Windows often lacks drivers, misrecognizes hardware, and has all sorts of other problems.
The only reason Windows seems to "run everywhere" is because every manufacturer goes out of his way to make their hardware windows compatible (bug-for-bug) and preinstall Windows; and to fix a broken installation, manufacturers ship restore CDs rather than Windows distribution CDs because ordinary consumers wouldn't be able to reinstall Windows from the distribution (it requires too much tweaking).
In different words, Windows "runs everywhere" because Microsoft has a monopoly and every manufacturer does whatever is necessary to make it work, not because there is anything intrinsically portable about Windows.
If MS and Dell merged and produced one product, I can see the end of Windows as the monopoly operating system.
So, Microsoft effectively outsources hardware manufacturing--I fail to see how that makes a big difference to their monopoly status.
In any case, courts have found Microsoft guilty of monopolistic practices, so whether you "see" it or not really doesn't matter.
The level integration and interoperability of the Office suite is something that most other software vendors aspire to, but few (if any) have achieved.
Microsoft achieves its "integration" by shipping ever more bloated bundles of software. And, yes, other vendors are trying to emulate that, including Apple.
But that's the wrong way to go. Microsoft, Apple, and other vendors need to figure out how to create software platforms that allow good integration between applications that weren't developed by a single team. And none of them have managed that yet.
True integration requires open, flexible standards for content and inter-application communications. Nobody has really figured out how to do that yet, least of all Microsoft and Apple.
The integration between Apple applications and the system is simply amazing.
What specifically are you referring to? What kind of integration do you believe OSX provides that something like KDE doesn't?
Maybe we don't need game companies at all: there are lots of good, non-commercial games for UNIX/Linux already, and more and more are being created.
That's bound to change, though: Linux makes a lot of sense for home users.
I suspect Halo has become so big mostly because Microsoft marketed it so much. I'd rather have Quake or Doom or Half Life.
it doesn't support iSync with bluetooth thing
Well, I guess you won't be buying one. Most other people don't care (hell, I don't even use its organizer functions).
The network is not the computer. It's just a service.
Absolutely right. It just happens to be a service that changes how software can gets distributed and used.
A hard disk is cheap. People are going to stick their data and apps there, because it's cheap, quick, and easy.
Yes, and that will continue to be the case. It's just that the way software and data ends up there and gets administered changes. Cell phones, Hiptops, Debian, and Tivo are a preview of that, but it will extend to the desktop PC.
This does not work for me on Redhat Enterprise 3 update 3 release; utilities segfault around 100 users. I have asked redhat and they don't have an answer (its been 4 months).
Submit bugs to the creators of those utilities not to RedHat; RedHat just bundles the stuff.
Also, (on OSX same situtation as above)
OSX isn't UNIX, it has a cumbersome, hard-to-program, and non-standard administrative database, and it doesn't have UNIX file systems semantics, so these kinds of things may be a lot harder to do on OSX.
how about when the workflow is such that a file is created in a directory by one user and then another user works on it and then another user works on it and so on. Why should the files' ownership remain with the first user? How would you handle disk quotas? What if the first user isn't just one user but a subset of users that you don't know ahead of time (fluid workflow in dynamic teams).
You (or, rather, someone who actually knows how to write simple programs--most IT departments have such people around) create a small setuid program that implements the constraints you want for your workflow needs and your quota system.
For small course projects of 3 students for 2months (roughly 60 groups across multiple sections of the course), you want me to create unique groups and preconfigure a sub-directory for each group?
Most people would use a small shell script to do it, or they'd delegate the ability to create and manage groups to students.
(Actually, most people in the 21st century wouldn't dream of doing this sort of thing with ACLs at all, they'd use a network-based version control system like Subversion, which has its own permission system.)
Instead of delegating right assignment permission to each student; they manage access to their group and their own file structure?
Yes, that's a great thing to do. Isn't it nice that it's so easy to do on UNIX?
You want me to setuid/setgid different utilities on a server where students have shell access?
Good grief, how dense can you be? No, I don't want you to "setuid/setgid different utilities", I want you to either use an existing framework or create your own set of utilities that actually express the kinds of operations you actually want to delegate to students.
But, actually, I don't want you to do even that because it's pretty clear that you would screw it up. In fact, I would prefer if people like you didn't use UNIX or Linux at all. I recommend that you switch to Windows NT with NTFS and ACLs. While that won't actually solve your problem correctly and will create lots of security problems for you, it will make you happy and it will keep UNIX/Linux from getting associated with your mistakes. Eventually, you'll lose your job and your successor can do things right.
Engineering involves many tradeoffs. In this case, voice quality is only one desirable feature; battery life, size, cost, human factors, support, robustness, etc., are others. You may be able to do better with a laptop or you may not; but don't assume that just because your laptop has a better text-to-speech system it is overall better at the task.
We've heard this how many times so far? The ideas been spinning around since the early 90s at least.
Yes, and it's in full swing of being implemented. Wake up: it's happening.
Repeat after me. As long as there are laptop computers there will be a strong demand for locally-installed software.
With WiFi, the times laptops aren't on-line are getting less and less frequent. What the few disconnected laptops are going to be running is going to be driven by the online applications.
Are you posting to Slashdot? Well, you are using an open remote GUI protocol for doing so (not a very powerful one, but good enough). A few years ago, that would have required platform-specific applications. In fact, many functions that would have been carried out by local applications in the past (CD databases, movie databases, calendaring, mail, etc.) are increasingly carried out over the web. That trend is just going to continue until pretty much everything will be on the web.
Microsoft is a player in that market, but they are hardly "leading" it: various serial protocols and X11 still reign in that space. Sun Ray is a late and expensive entry in that market as well.
Danger's platform is limited for developers, so you'll be able to find better apps for other devices that use J2ME, Palm, WinCE, etc.
I think what matters is not the total number of applications, but that it gets the job done. And when it comes to mobile Internet access, I think the Hiptop still beats any of the Palm, Windows, Symbian, or Blackberry-based offerings.
But it's quite clumsy as a phone (have to open it up to dial numbers - or selected them from a list on the phone using an awkward scroll wheel).
True, but that's not so different from a flipphone. Also, it has a speakerphone and comes with a headset, which I tend to use when I make a number of phonecalls anyway.
Windows style ACLs are n-way permissions (n = # of files + directories + users + groups) UNIX ugo/rwx is 3 way permissions
You seem to be missing a crucial fact about UNIX groups: every user can be in multiple groups. That gives you the same flexibility as ACLs.
I can give a concrete example of where UNIX style permissions fail.. A Linux server with students and instructors (college). Each user has a webspace (~/public_html) where they need to be able to run cgi, jsp, etc. How to set permissions such that.. a) apache user can read contents of ~/public_html b) no student can read contents of other students or staff's ~/public_html as cgi, jsp, which contain database connection information (should not be visible to anyone except owner).
Just configure the Apache web server to do what you want; it has an option to handle exactly that case.
Now what if some students need to work together in a group for a group project? You can't do it with one of the student's accounts, you have to create a special project group user for them to share. This is plain silly..
Of course, the students can do it with their own accounts. If you want students to work on a project in a group, you create a UNIX group for that project and put all the students into it. You don't need a "project user".
OR if I am really lazy (or if there are thousands of students).. b) I should be able to delegate permission assignment to each student, i.e. each student can assign rights to other stuednts/groups to files under their own homedirectory.
You can: delegation of privileges in UNIX is handled via setuid/setgid. There are various existing tools to handle specific kinds of delegation (e.g., sudo). If none of those meet your needs, you have far more flexibility to create your own than if you were stuck with ACLs.
You, sir, are out of your mind. Some people are stupid, therefore all complexity is to be removed. You make vague generalities about how some people somewhere (no actual proof, mind you) blew it on ACLs, so ACLs are bad.
No, you make vague generalities asserting that ACLs are somehow better, yet you fail to provide any proof for that assertion.
In fact, there is some evidence that we have. UNIX permissions have been used successfully for decades on multiuser timesharing systems. Windows isn't even capable of timesharing, its local security has never been demonstrated, and it ships full of security and permission problems. I'd say it's pretty clear who gets it right and who gets it wrong. The burden of proof is clearly on you if you want to argue that the Windows permission system is "better".
Argument by assertion is not proof.
Yes, and don't you forget it. So, where is your data? Where is your proof?
A well-designed ACL system is leaps and bounds better than Unix permissions. The problem is mostly that people implement ACLS very, very poorly, scattering permissions all over the filesystem where they are hard to find.
Yes, quite right: the problem with providing ACLs is that most people use them poorly. But people have been using them poorly for decades. Since people aren't changing, we have to conclude that ACLs are a poor mechanism for managing permissions in the real world.
[long-winded description of NT groups]
None of what you describe requires ACLs; in fact, the UNIX group system covers those cases very well. Perhaps you should try to understand them.
What ACLs make possible is ad-hoc, per-file permissions, and those create enormous security and adminstrative problems.
I haven't seen ANYTHING in Unix that will let me both have that kind of granularity and sweeping power.
Yes, and those restrictions are deliberate. They are the reason why UNIX permissions lead to more secure systems in practice than ACL-based systems.
ACLS are both far more elegant and far more powerful.
ACLs may be more elegant and more powerful, but they are not more secure or more usable in real-world scenarios. And what matters, in the end, is security and usability in the real world, not some operating system designer's wet dream.
Get a Danger Hiptop from T-Mobile. You turn it on and it just works. It supports web browsing, E-mail with push, AIM, SMS, a regular cell phone, a transparently web-synchronized organizer, some games, a VGA camera, Yahoo Messenger, and SSH (plus several more applications that I haven't tried). You also get an E-mail address and web-based access to your data. Also, the keyboard is the most usable among all the devices I have tried.
The device is $200 and you pay $20/month for unlimited data services. You have to add a voice plan to that; the cheapest is another $10/month, making the device $30/month (1 year commitment).
That doesn't let you make phone calls, only talk to someone else with MSN Messenger. So, it's not a solution to the problem of making international long distance calls.
Furthermore, even if MSN Messenger were technically better than other options right now, the solution would be to create other options that are not tied to a Microsoft service, since the consequences of Microsoft becoming a force in the VoIP market would be disastrous for everybody in the long term.
However, I seriously doubt that MSN Messenger is the best solution right now. There are lots of VoIP systems, many of which have been around longer and have had a lot of smart people working on them to optimize them.
This is not like setting off a flash at all. In order to be affected by a laser, you have to be looking at it. It is highly unlikely that both pilot and copilot would be looking at the laser at the same time.
Furthermore, pilots are trained not to do anything stupid when something unexpected happens. They have to deal with glare, reflections, and unexpected events all the time. This seems pretty minor.
What these people are doing sounds little different from the next version of KDE or Gnome. Their web site has no new ideas for how to improve usability of the desktop, nothing that differs from the standard WIMP paradigm, and no interesting new functionality that they are implementing. It's unfortunate that so much energy gets wasted on trivial variations of the standard desktop paradigm. It's good to have choices in software, but only up to a point.
I actually doubt that any desktop effort based on an existing toolkit (Qt, Gtk+, etc.) will lead to significantly improved usability or functionality: those toolkits already encode a lot of assumptions and restrictions that any desktop effort based on them will be constrained by.
Good operating system design is not about throwing ever more flexibility at the user or adding every possible gimmick under the sun.
The UNIX permission system has survived for so long because it works. There have been numerous attempts at adding ACLs to the UNIX file system, and they have not had a lot of success. In practice, ACLs cause numerous problems, in user interfaces, in usability, in system security, and in system management.
Given the way UNIX systems are used today, the real question is not whether one should move to ACLs but whether one can simplify the system further; group permissions and execute permissions perhaps should be eliminated, leaving us with just read/write and user/world permissions (plus setuid).
People like word and excel
In my experience, most users of Word and Excel just use them because they are there and because they have memorized how to do a few things in them. Don't fool yourself into thinking that that means they "like" those applications.
and the great selection of windows apps
Most of them self-installing, as soon as you connect your Windows machine to the Internet, right?