Operating Systems: Choice and design

[Tiberius]

Oh yeah, that's why there's so many fucking variants ... silly me, of course it all makes sense now

Gnome is more like Windows, KDE is more flashy (Windows Vista), xfce is lightweight (works on older laptops). The point of it is choice, and generally you do this when you install the OS, not during usage.

DON'T put words into my mouth ... I never said it was "The correct" anything, I said Windows embraces SAA and by and large that is true. Recently MS has moved away from it with MS Office and there are well published reasons why that is so.

Fact is that Linux ISN'T as easy to switch to you as you think and I find it kinda ironic that the open source community has to copy what MS does ti make a real impact.

You said a consistent interface means people can easily switch from an OS to another, then you said Windows is the best at providing this. I took this to mean that you thought Linux should try to make it's interface look more like Windows, but if you didn't. my apologies.

Well, to be honest it really isn't easy to switch to Linux, because I did it 2 years ago, and this was before Dell started selling Ubuntu, the Eee PC and the "one laptop per child" came out and Linux became even more popular. Please explain how the open source community "copies" Microsoft? If you mean that it makes programs that do the same thing as Microsoft programs, then I cannot see how this is not a good idea. Microsoft aren't going to make any programs for Linux any time soon, so why can't other people do it? Last I heard you couldn't copyright the idea of a program.

Again Adrian, please don't misquote me ... I clearly said the main reason was "it worked worked well" not that it was marketing.

Apologies, I mistyped. I meant to say "I doubt the main reason Windows is top dog because it works well". My bad. Given that my entire argument afterwards was explaining how it was because of marketing, it must have seemed a little weird

I only think it's the superior OS FOR ME and that IS NOT quite the same thing is it?

Course it isn't, and I agree with you in that case. Although in terms of power and security, I think the evidence (not subjective) shows that Linux is clearly the superior.

I'm not a Linux evangelist, the reason I say "try Linux" is usually in jest, but if they actually want to I will help them with it. If someone comes with a Windows problem I probably have no idea how to solve it other than looking online, hence why I usually leave it to other people. The only reason I would never jump into a Linux problem thread and say "try Windows" is that people generally want a low-cost solution, and I don't think there is any Linux problem that cannot be solved by using Windows instead (unless the problem is "I can't get this game to work").

To say that I hate Windows is ridiculous. I use Windows myself, I just prefer Linux way more.

MS Office is possibly the worst out of all MS products. Most Windows users I know hate it, especially the latest version (y'know, the one where they fucked up the interface). OpenOffice, AbiWord, KOffice, there are loads of great alternatives.