Please elaborate on how gnome sucks and/or gets in the way?
It's hard to put into words, because in many ways it's just wrong.
It gets in the way because it has this dogged persistency about not letting you easily change the defaults or preferences for anything (one of the things I like about KDE). Windows does not have this problem, in many cases because Windows is simply more smoothly laid out.
It gets in the way because the bundled applications are simply not very good. Yes, the underlying software's good; I like BSD and Linux for server use and only have a Server 2008 box because Mono's not good enough to rely upon for ASP.NET quite yet. The stuff on top, the stuff that makes up the desktop, is just ugly and hideous and shitful. OpenOffice? No thanks, I own Office 2003. The GIMP? No thanks, I own Photoshop. Evolution? Oh hi there, Crash City. The list goes on and on. Frankly I'd rather the OS come with nothing and have to buy the software, a la Windows (but have the software be at least decent), if the bundled software is going to suck so hard.
It also has absolutely idiotic HCI guidelines. "Do you want to do this? [No] [Yes]"
It's just...amateurish. It's unpleasant. The problems stick out like a sore thumb.
KDE is better, but KDE4 is looking to be an epic disaster and KDE3 won't be supported forever.
It may be fine for you, but I consider it low-tier and shit compared to the free (MSDN subscription) copies of Windows I get.
Why? Because Solaris and Linux are unpleasant to actually do work on? Solaris/BSD/Linux are fine at a low level. I have a Linux server running in the other room right now (right next to the Windows Server 2008 box). But the idea that they come anywhere near the usability of Windows, as sad as that may be, for the desktop use is insane.
On the other hand, how many people have an actual need for full fledged professional suites ? If you are a professional photograph, a publisher, etc. I understand that you live and die by Photoshop & Illustrator. But a big majority of the windows users who are complaining about the lack of adobe software on linux, mainly use it to quickly crop and remove red eyes from the pictures they took during their vacation.
And they like how Photoshop works for that, so you're going to get a "fuck you" if you suggest that they give that up to use your OS of choice.
Adobe's product are a huge overkill and too much expensive for what the average Joe is doing with them. Of course the average Joe got them (illegaly) for free on some peer-2-peer system, so the price isn't really an issue for them.
Ding ding ding! Linux isn't competing against software that costs money, at least on the home desktop. They're competing against pirated software.
What the average user mostly does with a computer is pretty much covered under linux (and some times even better, see Firefox).
But the interface is utterly asstastic compared to Windows or even OS X (and I hate OS X). It's borderline unusable for somebody who's not a guru and has grown up on Windows. I'm pretty knowledgeable about both Linux and Windows, and the weirdnesses of GNOME and KDE still leave me scratching my head.
That's why you start to see success with Linux on sub note-books like the Asus eeePC, etc.
The EEE and Linux came together because of cheaper licensing more than anything.
Not everyone has tons of disposable money to throw on expensive toys. Thus pro-tools are an overkill, and similarly using Sever 2008 as a main OS on a workstation is just completely insane for anyone but the most hard-core gamers (who are also willing to spend several days tuning and "fiddle-farting" their OS around drivers and missing DLL problems to get their games working - making it as much easy to handle as the worst case scenario in Linux).
Those games are less likely to work on Server 2008, so you're pretty much wrong right there (the Server editions have some fun issues with DirectX).
Also: people don't use professional-level tools because they're overkill--they use professional-level tools because they're much, much more pleasant to actually use. People will pay money for decent presentation and decent layout. It's one reason why people like me don't use Linux on the desktop.
Your whining is tiresome and the only point of even the most remote value is in this sentence:
The OS isn't designed to be a home based OS for the masses.
And this article isn't talking about a home-based OS for the masses. It's talking about a home-based OS for the technically savvy. The big hint that this is the case is that they're talking about a "workstation," which has a fairly clearly defined role that doesn't include "the masses."
And yet they expect people to switch to their broken new system, and dick around with it trying to make it work in a manner that's pleasant for them. Marvelous.
Are there really any (non game) apps by anyone other than Microsoft that won't work on Linux or don't have any equivalent method in Linux?
Anything by Adobe. The GIMP is not a valid Photoshop equivalent. Inkscape is not a valid Illustrator equivalent. Scribus is not a valid PageMaker equivalent.
WINE is not an acceptable solution. You and the rest of your Linux advocates desperately want people to fiddle-fart with the computer in order to get to a place where they can do the work they originally came there to do. That's not going to fly.
I'd say "when you can point to a DE that's as good as Windows, then you're allowed to talk," but you've made it clear that in your little fantasy world, the Linux DEs that exist now meet that requirement. In the real world, they most certainly do not.
Linux is free and performs great on new hardware and old hardware alike.
It's also extremely unpleasant to use if you expect software to just work and be in a finished state. (Hi, KDE Project!) I write OSS code and I respect the work of Linux developers, but it's absolute shit on the desktop and will remain so as long as there are eight thousand different distros all zooming in diffrent directions.
Considering modern Linux distros have UIs which are easier to use and more productive than windows (give windows users a few days adjustment, of course)
Um, no. Modern Linux distros have terrible, terrible UIs. I spent six months using nothing but Linux, except for my dev tools in a virtual machine. I was never more happy to get back to Windows. You have no idea how shitty the Linux UI is to those who don't have any interest in bending their brains around weird, unintuitive paradigms that a bunch of nerds (they're nerds--geeks have social skills) find useful.
And I'm saying that as somebody who wanted Linux to be good. As it is, it's barely usable. It's unpleasant for anyone who just wants to sit down and do something, as opposed to fight with the system in order to get to the point wheere you can do something.
the only reasons left for running Windows are legacy apps that only run on Windows, difficulty with drivers and games.
Are you a child or something? Are you posting from your mother's basement? How about Windows application development (so actual people, and not just a tiny segment of the population, can use your software)? How about using those very-fucking-much-non-legacy apps that are required to do work? "Legacy" is not defined as "running on a platform that doesn't give RMS a boner."
And no, WINE is not the answer to using those non-legacy apps on Linux; I respect what the WINE guys do but their execution remains shitful.
The critical failure of Linux advocates like you is in assuming that other people want to work to make their computers do what they want them to do. Linux expects that. You expect that. Normal people will tell you to fuck off, like I'm doing now.
Any of them? I'm not the grandparent poster, but I work on Windows and Linux machines regularly and can say that GNOME, KDE, Fluxbox, e17, iceWM, and XFCE all suck massively in different and painful ways. None are pleasant to use and all get in the way. Of them all, KDE3 is the least painful, but hey! KDE4 sucks, so that one won't last long.
What, exactly, is a step backwards in XP from 2000? I've never been able to get a good answer out of people on this. I mean, sure, you can get better performance out-of-the-box, but other than that I just don't see it. And I turn off most of the eyecandy and other bullshit as a matter of course.
To me at least, XP with themes off feels as snappy as Windows 2000, even on older machines. Some stuff's been moved around, but meh--that happens in every version of Windows and complaining about that is somewhat silly. It's all still there. I do wish there was a way to establish Windows settings in a slipstream, though.
On my machines, I turn themes off, put the Start Menu and Control Panel back to classic view, show hidden files, show file extensions, and default all folder views to Detail. From a user perspective, it's pretty hard to distinguish that from Windows 2000, and you get the advantages (yes, advantages) of a more modern OS.
And a side note: decrying upgrades because you're afraid of your Windows admin knowledge becoming "obsolete" indicates that it already has.
I had this happen to me. I ended up using ClamAV, which sucked. That machine only connects to the 'net through a browser in a VM, though, so I don't really care.
Must be fun working for a company small enough not to need enterprise-level services.
(Setting aside the fact that Linux servers are, for most small business tasks, more trouble than they're worth--Ubuntu Server? Are you fucking nuts? If you have to use a Linux server, why aren't you using a distro from people with an actual clue about servers?)
Err...Windows 2008 is entirely capable as a home OS. Just because it has "Server" in the name doesn't mean that it isn't. Windows 2000 was a "server" OS for a long time. Windows 2003 was too. (And 2003 was way nicer as a desktop than XP ever was, if not for its embarrassing failures with DirectX.)
My other machine is running 2008 now, with a local work-copy of IIS 7 running. Occasionally I use it for playing old emulated games (because that way I don't have to mess with plugging in controllers to my main machine), and my brother uses it for surfing the web.
Saying that your "only alternatives" to Vista are Ubuntu and XP is completely idiotic. 2008 is Vista without the suck, and it takes about half an hour to twiddle the settings for desktop use.
Qt is arguably a better framework than GTK+ from a technical perspective. It's also better from a developer's perspective--GTK+ is a pain in the ass to program for. (It's also written in C and while wrappers do exist, they kind of suck--and I'd think we'd want fewer people writing code in C.)
Qt can be made to look like GTK+ if you really want it to, so there's no huge issue. But suggesting that KDE move to GTK+ is silly, because GTK+ doesn't even have a good chunk of the functionality that Qt does.
There are a few, mostly the less dogmatic churches, that do. Presbyterians in the northeast U.S. come to mind. They focus on the "good stuff," the whole "understanding and love" thing that Jesus preached that a lot of the rest conveniently forget. (No, I'm not a Christian, I just respect the Presbyterians.)
Nonsense. There are fines as judicial punishments. Money clearly replaces money.
It doesn't replace lost opportunity costs.
Time also shares a very close relationship with money; perhaps closer than anything else, and while money may not replace time served, it provides compensation. You cannot compensate the dead.
The idea of money being compensation for incarcerated time is preposterous nonsense.
Death is not a punishment, it's just a phase of life that some of us try to avoid.
The revocation of the right to life thanks to your actions most definitely is a punishment. Jail is the revocation of liberty. Execution is the revocation of life.
Really? Then when are MSNBC, CNN, and the Big Three going to start following it? You'll notice that all the yammer-yammer is about putting the screws to right-wing talk radio. I'm not a fan of it, but the reason they're dominant in radio is because leftists don't listen to talk radio.
There's nothing stopping Air America from succeeding except for that fact that nobody listens to their shit. That's why everyone dropped their programming like a stone.
Expecting businesses to adhere to something idiotic like the Fairness Doctrine is a contravention of the First Amendment. (As are "equal time" laws for elections.)
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Please elaborate on how gnome sucks and/or gets in the way?
It's hard to put into words, because in many ways it's just wrong.
It gets in the way because it has this dogged persistency about not letting you easily change the defaults or preferences for anything (one of the things I like about KDE). Windows does not have this problem, in many cases because Windows is simply more smoothly laid out.
It gets in the way because the bundled applications are simply not very good. Yes, the underlying software's good; I like BSD and Linux for server use and only have a Server 2008 box because Mono's not good enough to rely upon for ASP.NET quite yet. The stuff on top, the stuff that makes up the desktop, is just ugly and hideous and shitful. OpenOffice? No thanks, I own Office 2003. The GIMP? No thanks, I own Photoshop. Evolution? Oh hi there, Crash City. The list goes on and on. Frankly I'd rather the OS come with nothing and have to buy the software, a la Windows (but have the software be at least decent), if the bundled software is going to suck so hard.
It also has absolutely idiotic HCI guidelines. "Do you want to do this? [No] [Yes]"
It's just...amateurish. It's unpleasant. The problems stick out like a sore thumb.
KDE is better, but KDE4 is looking to be an epic disaster and KDE3 won't be supported forever.
It may be fine for you, but I consider it low-tier and shit compared to the free (MSDN subscription) copies of Windows I get.
Why? Because Solaris and Linux are unpleasant to actually do work on? Solaris/BSD/Linux are fine at a low level. I have a Linux server running in the other room right now (right next to the Windows Server 2008 box). But the idea that they come anywhere near the usability of Windows, as sad as that may be, for the desktop use is insane.
On the other hand, how many people have an actual need for full fledged professional suites ?
If you are a professional photograph, a publisher, etc. I understand that you live and die by Photoshop & Illustrator.
But a big majority of the windows users who are complaining about the lack of adobe software on linux, mainly use it to quickly crop and remove red eyes from the pictures they took during their vacation.
And they like how Photoshop works for that, so you're going to get a "fuck you" if you suggest that they give that up to use your OS of choice.
Adobe's product are a huge overkill and too much expensive for what the average Joe is doing with them.
Of course the average Joe got them (illegaly) for free on some peer-2-peer system, so the price isn't really an issue for them.
Ding ding ding! Linux isn't competing against software that costs money, at least on the home desktop. They're competing against pirated software.
What the average user mostly does with a computer is pretty much covered under linux (and some times even better, see Firefox).
But the interface is utterly asstastic compared to Windows or even OS X (and I hate OS X). It's borderline unusable for somebody who's not a guru and has grown up on Windows. I'm pretty knowledgeable about both Linux and Windows, and the weirdnesses of GNOME and KDE still leave me scratching my head.
That's why you start to see success with Linux on sub note-books like the Asus eeePC, etc.
The EEE and Linux came together because of cheaper licensing more than anything.
Not everyone has tons of disposable money to throw on expensive toys. Thus pro-tools are an overkill, and similarly using Sever 2008 as a main OS on a workstation is just completely insane for anyone but the most hard-core gamers (who are also willing to spend several days tuning and "fiddle-farting" their OS around drivers and missing DLL problems to get their games working - making it as much easy to handle as the worst case scenario in Linux).
Those games are less likely to work on Server 2008, so you're pretty much wrong right there (the Server editions have some fun issues with DirectX).
Also: people don't use professional-level tools because they're overkill--they use professional-level tools because they're much, much more pleasant to actually use. People will pay money for decent presentation and decent layout. It's one reason why people like me don't use Linux on the desktop.
Because Obama is Yet Another Politician who wants to pick your pocket and demand that you like it? His "change" rhetoric is empty (and empty-headed).
Your whining is tiresome and the only point of even the most remote value is in this sentence:
The OS isn't designed to be a home based OS for the masses.
And this article isn't talking about a home-based OS for the masses. It's talking about a home-based OS for the technically savvy. The big hint that this is the case is that they're talking about a "workstation," which has a fairly clearly defined role that doesn't include "the masses."
So yes, your bitching is idiotic.
And yet they expect people to switch to their broken new system, and dick around with it trying to make it work in a manner that's pleasant for them. Marvelous.
Fuck off and die, twitter. Nobody gives a shit about your little crusade.
Why not run a decent 'Workstation' OS like Solaris or Linux?
When those become a decent workstation OS, I might do that.
The power requirements are less than Vista's defaults--it doesn't come with Aero or the rest of that garbage.
It uses Vista's power management facilities, so there shouldn't be any change there.
Are there really any (non game) apps by anyone other than Microsoft that won't work on Linux or don't have any equivalent method in Linux?
Anything by Adobe. The GIMP is not a valid Photoshop equivalent. Inkscape is not a valid Illustrator equivalent. Scribus is not a valid PageMaker equivalent.
WINE is not an acceptable solution. You and the rest of your Linux advocates desperately want people to fiddle-fart with the computer in order to get to a place where they can do the work they originally came there to do. That's not going to fly.
I'd say "when you can point to a DE that's as good as Windows, then you're allowed to talk," but you've made it clear that in your little fantasy world, the Linux DEs that exist now meet that requirement. In the real world, they most certainly do not.
Linux is free and performs great on new hardware and old hardware alike.
It's also extremely unpleasant to use if you expect software to just work and be in a finished state. (Hi, KDE Project!) I write OSS code and I respect the work of Linux developers, but it's absolute shit on the desktop and will remain so as long as there are eight thousand different distros all zooming in diffrent directions.
Considering modern Linux distros have UIs which are easier to use and more productive than windows (give windows users a few days adjustment, of course)
Um, no. Modern Linux distros have terrible, terrible UIs. I spent six months using nothing but Linux, except for my dev tools in a virtual machine. I was never more happy to get back to Windows. You have no idea how shitty the Linux UI is to those who don't have any interest in bending their brains around weird, unintuitive paradigms that a bunch of nerds (they're nerds--geeks have social skills) find useful.
And I'm saying that as somebody who wanted Linux to be good. As it is, it's barely usable. It's unpleasant for anyone who just wants to sit down and do something, as opposed to fight with the system in order to get to the point wheere you can do something.
the only reasons left for running Windows are legacy apps that only run on Windows, difficulty with drivers and games.
Are you a child or something? Are you posting from your mother's basement? How about Windows application development (so actual people, and not just a tiny segment of the population, can use your software)? How about using those very-fucking-much-non-legacy apps that are required to do work? "Legacy" is not defined as "running on a platform that doesn't give RMS a boner."
And no, WINE is not the answer to using those non-legacy apps on Linux; I respect what the WINE guys do but their execution remains shitful.
The critical failure of Linux advocates like you is in assuming that other people want to work to make their computers do what they want them to do. Linux expects that. You expect that. Normal people will tell you to fuck off, like I'm doing now.
Which one?
Any of them? I'm not the grandparent poster, but I work on Windows and Linux machines regularly and can say that GNOME, KDE, Fluxbox, e17, iceWM, and XFCE all suck massively in different and painful ways. None are pleasant to use and all get in the way. Of them all, KDE3 is the least painful, but hey! KDE4 sucks, so that one won't last long.
What, exactly, is a step backwards in XP from 2000? I've never been able to get a good answer out of people on this. I mean, sure, you can get better performance out-of-the-box, but other than that I just don't see it. And I turn off most of the eyecandy and other bullshit as a matter of course.
To me at least, XP with themes off feels as snappy as Windows 2000, even on older machines. Some stuff's been moved around, but meh--that happens in every version of Windows and complaining about that is somewhat silly. It's all still there. I do wish there was a way to establish Windows settings in a slipstream, though.
On my machines, I turn themes off, put the Start Menu and Control Panel back to classic view, show hidden files, show file extensions, and default all folder views to Detail. From a user perspective, it's pretty hard to distinguish that from Windows 2000, and you get the advantages (yes, advantages) of a more modern OS.
And a side note: decrying upgrades because you're afraid of your Windows admin knowledge becoming "obsolete" indicates that it already has.
Saying "it's more like 2003" is misleading. It is Server 2003 in all ways that matter.
I had this happen to me. I ended up using ClamAV, which sucked. That machine only connects to the 'net through a browser in a VM, though, so I don't really care.
Must be fun working for a company small enough not to need enterprise-level services.
(Setting aside the fact that Linux servers are, for most small business tasks, more trouble than they're worth--Ubuntu Server? Are you fucking nuts? If you have to use a Linux server, why aren't you using a distro from people with an actual clue about servers?)
Err...Windows 2008 is entirely capable as a home OS. Just because it has "Server" in the name doesn't mean that it isn't. Windows 2000 was a "server" OS for a long time. Windows 2003 was too. (And 2003 was way nicer as a desktop than XP ever was, if not for its embarrassing failures with DirectX.)
My other machine is running 2008 now, with a local work-copy of IIS 7 running. Occasionally I use it for playing old emulated games (because that way I don't have to mess with plugging in controllers to my main machine), and my brother uses it for surfing the web.
Saying that your "only alternatives" to Vista are Ubuntu and XP is completely idiotic. 2008 is Vista without the suck, and it takes about half an hour to twiddle the settings for desktop use.
What exactly is so bad about it? It seems fairly intuitive to me. It's easily the best threaded commenting interface I've ever seen.
But I keep all comments open by default, so maybe it's collapsing/expanding you're talking about?
"Working properly" isn't a feature end users should be concerned with?
You...do know that they fixed the FPU bug in later releases, right? "That particular bug" is no more.
Qt is arguably a better framework than GTK+ from a technical perspective. It's also better from a developer's perspective--GTK+ is a pain in the ass to program for. (It's also written in C and while wrappers do exist, they kind of suck--and I'd think we'd want fewer people writing code in C.)
Qt can be made to look like GTK+ if you really want it to, so there's no huge issue. But suggesting that KDE move to GTK+ is silly, because GTK+ doesn't even have a good chunk of the functionality that Qt does.
I wouldn't bash him if he wasn't a dickhead.
There are a few, mostly the less dogmatic churches, that do. Presbyterians in the northeast U.S. come to mind. They focus on the "good stuff," the whole "understanding and love" thing that Jesus preached that a lot of the rest conveniently forget. (No, I'm not a Christian, I just respect the Presbyterians.)
Nonsense. There are fines as judicial punishments. Money clearly replaces money.
It doesn't replace lost opportunity costs.
Time also shares a very close relationship with money; perhaps closer than anything else, and while money may not replace time served, it provides compensation. You cannot compensate the dead.
The idea of money being compensation for incarcerated time is preposterous nonsense.
Death is not a punishment, it's just a phase of life that some of us try to avoid.
The revocation of the right to life thanks to your actions most definitely is a punishment. Jail is the revocation of liberty. Execution is the revocation of life.
Really? Then when are MSNBC, CNN, and the Big Three going to start following it? You'll notice that all the yammer-yammer is about putting the screws to right-wing talk radio. I'm not a fan of it, but the reason they're dominant in radio is because leftists don't listen to talk radio.
There's nothing stopping Air America from succeeding except for that fact that nobody listens to their shit. That's why everyone dropped their programming like a stone.
Expecting businesses to adhere to something idiotic like the Fairness Doctrine is a contravention of the First Amendment. (As are "equal time" laws for elections.)