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

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."

Awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

>And it is awesome.

adjective: awe-inspiring, striking, shocking, imposing, terrible, amazing, stunning, wonderful, alarming, impressive, frightening, awful, overwhelming, terrifying, magnificent, astonishing, horrible, dreadful, formidable, horrifying, intimidating, fearful, daunting, breathtaking, majestic, solemn, fearsome, wondrous (archaic or literary), redoubtable, jaw-dropping, stupefying

Collins Thesaurus of the English Language â" Complete and Unabridged 2nd Edition. 2002 © HarperCollins Publishers 1995, 2002

Can't argue with that.

Re:Then why not a Mac?

[bananaquackmoo]

You're kidding right? OSX has TONS of OS-derived graphical gunk. Gradients, drop shadows, and I hope you like chrome. A dock and a menu bar that you can't get rid of? Animations you can't turn off? Transparency? I don't want ANY of that crud, especially since its eye-candy that slows things down.

Re:Then why not a Mac?

[PPH]

All I need is a shell prompt and a blinking cursor.

Re:If win8 is art....

[Mike Buddha]

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.

Re:A Review?

[Zero__Kelvin]

"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."

Unless of course you actually knew what you were doing and locked the panel and/or made the appropriate config files read only.

Re:A Review?

[sjames]

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.

Re:Then why not a Mac?

[R3d M3rcury]

[...] 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?