Windows 8 Is 'a Work of Art.' But It's No Linux 371
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."
A Review? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A Review? (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.
Re:A Review? (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.
Re:A Review? (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!
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, they aren't going to get flames from me, I love windows 8. Of course my opinion might change if I actually would have to use it instead of just install another OS over it. :-P
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. Still that is little praise if you consider that a goo job would still result in a revo
Re:A Review? (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.
Re:A Review? (Score:4, Interesting)
One very insightful thing:
Scrolling
Did anybody notice how the metro interface is generally horizontally scrolling?
What I perceived in a tablet try out was that while vertical scrolling is very easy and comfortable (you an have both your hands on the device and still scroll perfectly fine), horizontal scrolling, mostly due to the UX mandated device bezels and human anatomy, is much more difficult to do since you get roughly a third of the area of responsive screen real estate, unless you keep one hand free and we all know what that means [wikipedia.org]..
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Curiously enough, on Windows Phone this is actually done right - you pretty much only have vertically-scrollable lists, and the only kind of horizontal scrolling that you see is to switch panes, which is done by flicking left/right - easy to do with a thumb since you don't need the gesture to end at a precise point.
In Win8, on the other hand, the core UI (e.g. home screen) as well as stock apps all scroll left/right. So it's not quite the same Metro.
Re:A Review? (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't change the fact that starting new applications should not be a modal event that takes up the whole screen.. not on a desktop.
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Re:A Review? (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux kicks ass in certain areas, embedded, servers, HPCs, its just not a great desktop.
It is too a great desktop, I've been using it as such for, oh, 15 years now. It has just one thing going against it: it's not Windows. That means 1. little Johnny from next door can't help you out when you screw things up, and 2. it won't run Windows applications (at least not well), so it's not easy to exchange documents between you and people who do use Windows.
If there was only Linux on the desktop, people would be just as happy with it as they are with Windows. But it's a Windows world, so you might as well go with the flow and use it too, and there's nothing wrong with that.
But I maintain that from a pure usability viewpoint Linux-on-the-desktop is just fine.
(Caveat: talking about the classic Gnome 2/Windows 7-like interface. Haven't used Unity or Windows 8 for any length of time, and not planning to.)
Re:A Review? (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.
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Depends on what you mean by remove. You can't just remove the start menu in windows 7 trivially if you don't like it. That would be a disaster. Being able to remove icons is different than being able to remove UI elements. Windows (pre windows 8) basically has 3 UI elements on the desktop, the start button, the taskbar and the desktop itself. Being able to remove any one of those would be very strange. It's bad enough that you can actually move the task bar and start menu in windows by dragging it if
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It's bad enough that you can actually move the task bar and start menu in windows by dragging it if it's configured a particular way.
why is that bad?
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And what of that isn't true? IT exists because people don't know how to manage their own machines. Perhaps the correct term is 'ignorant' and not 'stupid' but the effect is the same, the vast majority of users are not capable of managing their own windows machines without help, whether that help is from relatives or IT staff, they still aren't doing it themselves.
Also, I'm a research scientist, it's my job to figure out why things are causing problems for IT. IT guys say to me 'we're getting a lot of que
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it was just a really long winded way of saying that if you want to customize -pretty much at all, even how big the window is- then metro apps ain't for you.
Re:A Review? (Score:5, Informative)
Unless of course you actually knew what you were doing and locked the panel and/or made the appropriate config files read only.
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You're assuming I set up her machine. If I did that for every person who calls me for help I'd have a job being an IT monkey, not being a scientist.
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Lets see:
Windows users are stupid, being in IT makes you a monkey.
Yeah, with those gross generalities and out right incorrect premise I'm sure you're just a great scientist~
But keep going on about a premise in windows that isn't true, you being such a genius and all~
Re:A Review? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember those couple versions of Office that had "everything is a toolbar, even the menus"? And users would accidentally either drag their menu bar out-of-position or manage to hide it? And there was no trivial way to get them back?
It was an unmitigated disaster.
So yes, I agree with you 100%. There's nothing wrong with customizability, but a lot of time it impacts usability.
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You've never had your aunt run into the "There are unused icons on your desktop" message have you?
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Oh god.... don't remind me.
Lots of people use their desktops to store bookmarks rather than to start programs. those people are going to be screwed by windows 8. It's wrong to use the desktop to link to bookmarks - but they do it anyway.
Re:A Review? (Score:5, Informative)
Funny thing, my Mom (nearly 70) uses an Ubuntu machine I set up for her to do browsing, email, and Mahjong and has never screwed it up.
The philosophical discussion is there, you're just overlooking it. The point is that Linux is fully modular (right down to the kernel). Don't like it? Remove it. That goes for the entire GUI system if you want, strip it ALL out and it will happily keep working. In extreme cases, you can strip out the entire userspace. Just stick your own app in as init in the initrd and be happy.
In Linux there is no sense of having anything crammed down your throat. If you don't like something, it's outta there, no questions asked.
The flip side is that there is nothing there that can get in the way of whatever you DO want on the system.
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Every car is supposed to have standard spacing on pedals so that anyone can put their feet in the right place on the car.
Do we design a WRX for your nanna?
Quite a lot of it actually yes, it is. Airbags, lights, wipers steering wheel position, pedal position etc. Just like every other car, that's sort of the gist of standardization. There are also a lot more cars than there are operating systems, so it's a slightly unfair comparison though.
Windows is the operating system the masses use, it needs to be designed with that in mind, or it's g
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And yet, here you are :-)
GNOME3's GNOME Shell fails the same way! (Score:5, Insightful)
I know others will say the same thing. But I wanted to say it first if that's possible.
On my list of most annoying things about GNOME 3's GNOME shell is that I can't remove or customize the bar on the top... not easily anyway.
I want my old panels back.
Re:GNOME3's GNOME Shell fails the same way! (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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I might want to check out the latest version again. It will be interesting to see how it approaches female users. :-)
It'll handle them just fine, provided that they install balls first.
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That's why I remove GNOME 3 itself. The whole thing bugs me, so it's gone.
If win8 is art.... (Score:5, Funny)
Then beauty is certainly in the eye of the beholder, and you need to get your eyes checked.
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As evil as eye tyrants i still don't get why would they like windows eight... maybe i should play less dnd.
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Isn't Salvador Dali the one who did that painting of the chick with a uni-brow and mustache?
Re:If win8 is art.... (Score:5, Informative)
Isn't Salvador Dali the one who did that painting of the chick with a uni-brow and mustache?
No, that would be the chick with the uni-brow and moustache, Frida Kahlo.
'a Work of Art' (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:'a Work of Art' (Score:5, Funny)
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.
That's what she said?
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More like Piet Mondrian.
http://www.abstract-art.com/abstraction/l2_grnfthrs_fldr/g022_mondrian_.html [abstract-art.com]
lameness (Score:3, Insightful)
you're lame; linux isn't about the UI dillhole.
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And there you have it folks. The reason that the Linux desktop has never taken off in just eight condescending little words.
file progress (Score:4, Funny)
I kid you not, the copy file progress dialog in Windows 8 is a thing of beauty. If you havenâ(TM)t seen it in action, and you are a fan of cool user interfaces, you owe it to yourself. To say I am impressed with what the team at Microsoft has accomplished would be a massive understatement.
So I take this to mean that MS did not fix the dialog's 5000% difference between guesstimated time and actual transfer time?
Re:file progress (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll just be happy if it doesn't take 20 hours to "calculate" which files are going to be deleted when things like "del" do the job almost instantaneously.
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Re:file progress (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as it doesn't say "One file in the middle of your large copy / move operation is in use, so I will have to abandon the entire rest of it in an unknown state"
Yah Right... (Score:4, Insightful)
Paid Troll anyone?
One man's art, is another man's trash (Score:4, Insightful)
'Work of Art' is an interesting choice of words. The art world is full of examples of 'art' that shocks and offends the viewer for precisely that purpose.
So when someone says Windows 8 is a 'Work of Art' I have to ask "Do you mean The Mona Lisa or L.H.O.O.Q.?"
Then why not a Mac? (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.
Re:Then why not a Mac? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Then why not a Mac? (Score:5, Informative)
[...] Gradients, drop shadows [...]
Try this [osxdaily.com].
A dock and a menu bar that you can't get rid of?
If you can deal with it just being hidden, you can hide it by going to the Apple menu and choosing Dock -> Turn Hiding On. If you want to actually get rid of it, there's this. [addictivetips.com]
The menu bar? Uh...you got me there. But without a menu bar, there's not that much you can do. Kind of like saying, "Why can't I get rid of the Start menu" in Windows.
Animations you can't turn off?
Well, you can turn off window animations [osxdaily.com], and a bunch more [chriswrites.com].
Transparency?
You can turn off the translucent menu bar by going to System Preferences, choosing Desktop & Screen Saver, and unchecking the "Translucent Menu Bar" checkbox.
Anything else?
Re:Then why not a Mac? (Score:5, Insightful)
My "shitbox" is fine. I can put a new video card into it.
Its my Macs that will have problems with this nonsense. They can't be upgraded.
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He's calling Macs shitboxes. Reminds of that "Crapple" logo I designed back in the late 90's in high school. A nicely formed little pile of turd with rainbow colors. I may have to find that and print up some t-shirts.
Sorry, carry on now.
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All I need is a shell prompt and a blinking cursor.
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Install KDE or Gnome on OSX then and stop complaining. Aqua isn't a requirement. OSX is a BSD system and can run all compatible window managers accordingly.
Windows 8 is good but needs work. (Score:2)
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imho I don't care if it boots any faster.. got a nice ssd and win7 boots by the time I can get my ass on the sofa after plugging in the hdmi cable.
the improvements on desktop side aren't bad, but the redactions made on that side to move people into ms appstore metro land are just too much.
Dependencies (Score:2)
~ sudo $ apt-g
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It's not about de-installing it, it's about making sure it does or does not run.
Whether or not it contributes to cruft on the disk is fairly unimportant.
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~ sudo $ apt-get remove completely-unnecessary-application
Care to offer a real example?
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I'm not even a fan of Windows 8... (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?
Awesome (Score:5, Informative)
>And it is awesome.
Can't argue with that.
Oh, yeah? (Score:2)
"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"
Well, on KDE 4 on openSUSE 12.1, I have these screen tips that show up on the programs I have open in the panel. Every time my mouse gets near the panel - such as when I'm TRYING to click on something low on the screen and I overshoot a bit - they pop up and obscure what I want to click on. If I move the mouse a bit I can get rid of the obscuring screen tip but it's incredi
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Right click on the panel in vicinity of your icon > Task Manager Settings > uncheck "Show Tooltips".
Simple.
What a surprise (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...
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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".
It is a cleverly disguised OS-X plug meant to discredit the concept of letting users determine how they want their UI to look.. What better way to discredit Linux configurability than to suggest that the type of person who likes to configure their Linux installation will be impressed by the beauty of Windows 8?
Re:What a surprise (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.
Re: (Score:3)
Conveniently skipped over the 'can't find anywhere to legally get the Helvetica font', didn't you?
The 'make an XML file' was not for installing a font, it was for replacing a commonly used font that is not available.
Re:What a surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
And guess what? Helvetica isn't on Windows either. It's a commercial font you must buy to have. And this "hurr, you must make an .xml file" to replace another font is stupid, because after installing a font, you can just go to whatever control panel you use in Linux (kde's Gnome's, LXDE's, whatever) and set the font for the browser or desktop or whatever. Nobody *ever* goes to the command line anymore to install and use fonts. Not sane or smart people, anyway.
You're a moron *and* a liar.
--
BMO
Wow (Score:2)
Apt description? (Score:3)
Most artists don't like people messing with their artworks. So maybe the lack of customizability is a reflection of that. Linux OTOH is more like a mechanic's (or artist's, for that matter) toolbox. It usually looks like shit, but it can take a beating and still get the job done. And nobody is going to look at you funny if you rearrange things to your liking.
I can certainly understand the author. My home looks a lot more like a toolbox filled with random useful (and some not so useful) things than an architecture exhibit. And no matter how pretty they may look, I wouldn't want to live in one.
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To some, Goatse is a work of art, too (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows 8 will be great on tablets and phones. Laptops? perhaps 20% less annoying than desktops, where Win8 is a UI fail. Touchscreen UIs are not useful for desktops. We've had touchscreens for ages, but nobody wants to spend 8+ hours a day using gestures, nor does the idea of cheetos-stained fingers smudging up the screen excite me in the least (not that my fingers are cheetos-stained, but I've known plenty of people who fit this general type).
If removing UI elements is your idea of a "Dream OS" then perha
So are ... (Score:3)
pablo (Score:2)
Windows 8, who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
There was one comment from a keynote speech by John Carmack a few week ago. And for all the rest of the talk that was brilliant, this comment was the most relevant. And that was that he an iD recently switched from Windows Xp to Windows 7. And that yeah, it was nice. It was a bit better in a lot of areas, it did one technical thing a lot better. But for the most part, he just didn't care.
And for that matter neither did I when I made the same switch. Certainly, I wouldn't go back if I were just given a free
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Who cares? A lot of people who actually use their OS's GUI for stuff on a daily basis. All of whom, the moment they're forced to use Win8, will first go complain about it on a random forum, and then go download 3rd party apps to get everything back the way it was.
So I guess you're right.
Recession, dammit! (Score:2)
Price, price, and price.
I'll bite (Score:5, Funny)
And yet, at the end of the day, I am right back to using Linux. Why is that?
Because you're a human being and we all have different opinions. For some reason yours have been promoted to a Slashdot article, but for the life of me I can't figure out why.
At first...but then (Score:2)
Slashdot is probably the wrong place to ask this.. (Score:2)
The reviews RAVE about it, but it still looks terrible to me, and none of the reviewers have ever managed to explain what exactly is so good about it.
Can somebody take a stab at telling me just what the appeal is?
Re:Slashdot is probably the wrong place to ask thi (Score:4, Funny)
But honestly, what is attractive about windows 8? I admit, I have never used it. But to me it looks god-awful. Just terrible. A completely disorganized mish-mash of ugly tiles. I look at it and can't see how it's supposed to work.
You've heard the advice "make it so simple a 5-year-old could use it", right? Well, unfortunately the head of Windows development is a bit hard of hearing - he thought they said "make it look like a 5-year-old designed it".
I Love all of them, I hate most of them. (Score:2)
First, you are not talking about operating systems but graphical user interfaces.
But to the point.
My personal opinion is that I love OS X look and simplicity. And I love(d) GNOME 2.x simplicity and pastel look.
But I can not stand neither of them in my computer as I want to do more than copy few files from USB-stick to desktop and use WWW-browser or listen music and watch videos.
(For me, even moving some files with Finder is pain in the ass unless they are right front of me.)
I want to love Metro (or what oth
Wow. (Score:2)
"Guy prefers something; blogs about it" is front-page news now? Even more so, "Guy prefers old thing he's grown used to over many years"?
Personally, I like OS X the most. I'm sure we could find other people who think Windows XP, 7, or 8 are the best. What was the point of this again?
I don't want a work of art (Score:4, Insightful)
The "Mona Lisa" is a work of art, but I can't use it to get my work done. I want a *tool*.
A Work of Art? (Score:3, Funny)
Is it art, as in Manzoni's "Merda d'artista"? [wikipedia.org]
Not a lot of right-click-remove in ANY Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
I rarely use Windows and then only because something absolutely requires it. Like the TFA author, removing unwanted cruft from the desktop (and system) is a key reason I dislike Windows. For example, Windows Update repeatedly nagged to install Windows Media Player 11 (the newest one) which I finally did to watch (I thought) DVDs. However, as many of you probably know, Windows Media Player 11 will NOT play DVDs. Instead, it advises you that the necessary decoder is not present on the system and points you to places where you can purchase the decoder 'plugin' for a price of anywhere from $15 to $30. Okay, fine, now it's time to dump (uninstall) the newly-installed Media Player 11 but...not so easy is that. It can only be removed by (according to Microsoft) either 1) booting to safe mode and running something called 'appwiz.cpl' or, if 1) doesn't work, then 2) running something as '%windir%\$ntUninstallwmp11$\spuninst\spuninst.exe'. This is just one small example but, generally, Microsoft decides what the user should install, use and see and then makes it extremely difficult for you if you try to stray off of the reservation.
Windows 8 is art? (Score:3)
Yes. I even claim it's modern art. Let's see:
Looks kinda pretty or cool? Check.
Makes people think and ponder about its purpose? Check.
Makes people talk about it? Check.
Serves no practical purpose? Check.
Is overpriced eye candy? Check.
This is a pretty... (Score:3)
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9225016/Free_tool_restores_Start_button_to_Windows_8 [computerworld.com]
It is made by the same people who made Window Blinds and it supposedly adds a "Start" button to Windows 8. So if you are one of those people that misses the "Start" button then your answer lies above.
Re:First TROLL (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.
Re:News for Herds? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Some people find their tools a source of endless excitement. A word for such people is "wankers".
I think the point about the article is made...
Re: (Score:2)
And as long as the proper libraries/headers/whatnot are supplied, how is a program written in, say, C/C++ for Windows different from one written in the same language for Linux?
[IANAP] Ideally, the most important libraries would be supplied with the OS, and you would only need the hardware-specific ones (which should already be on the system, since you're using the hardware), so that the same source code would compile the same way across all platforms, no code changes needed. [/IANAP]
Re: (Score:2)
Good question. It all boils down to the fact that the operating systems have scheduling differences and can't run together, unless virtualised. Unless you intend to ship a program with all of its dependancies, but I'm not so sure that a simple app plus 123terrabyte of Vista is practical and legal to distribute ;-) Let alone run...
Re:The OS Is Irrelevant...Resistance Is Futile (Score:4, Insightful)
No it is not, you fscking moron. Ulgh...
If you mod this down, may God strike you dead at once.
-- ;-)
You and I are both universe. We all are. So why get 'personal'?
Interesting conflict between post content & signature.
Re: (Score:3)
I could explain why I wrote that, but the fact remains that you are right ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
I could explain why I wrote that, but the fact remains that you are right ;-)
Well - that response was a surprising one - and a good one.
Cheers
Re: (Score:2)
Cool. Have you met my friend John Cloud, the super scaleable, next generation Operating System, virtualizing your stupid API? :)