Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Having said that, from what I can tell, Linux is far more flexible, and
> >> Windows has a far higher probability of actually working.
> >
> > That about sums it up for laptops with their extra buttons, hard-drive
> > protection, thumb scanners, etc. Linux "just works" (maybe not 100% optimally,
> > but you probably wouldn't notice) for a standard desktop.
>
> This has not been my experience. I'm sure we could have a very long
> flamewar about this. (In fact, I can promise you that somebody,
> somewhere is having this exact discussion /right now/...)
>
> In essence, my experience has been this:
>

Fair enough. You're probably more of a "power user" than I am. I don't even work
on things remotely. That being said, VMWare is on the Arch Linux wiki, and I'll
bet you could get it working in ten minutes if you followed that.

>
> > But Linux has more going for it than "far more flexible". It won't be as
> > compatible as Windows, but it will do what it does do (e.g., window managers)
> > better[1]. Windows only wins with top-shelf software installed.
>
> That's an interesting choice of example.
>
>  From what I've seen, KDE is reasonable, and GNOME is reasonable. Every
> other window manager I've ever seen has been /horrifyingly awful/! I
> mean, they're literally /so bad/ that you wonder why the hell anybody
> even bothered to build the RPM for it. It looks so utterly hideous, and
> it's so difficult to use... WHY WOULD YOU BOTHER?

Why I would bother:
(12" laptop)
* Multiple workspaces
* Keybord control
* Ability to fullscreen almost any application
* Ability to alter and hide window decorations
* At least rudimentary tiling
(Shared Desktop)
* Switch users with a key-combination
* Configurable for wide monitors

Of course, that's not only true of the ugly ones. I prefer xfce (an ugly one).
It's easy to make attractive (fo my tastes: small, simple, square window
decorations and a nice nature wallpaper) and it's simple to set up hotkeys. The
default ugliness must be a pride issue with some of those projects. Doesn't make
sense to me either.

>
> Yeah, I'm not fond of that. Basically Microsoft is all like "why should
> you care where your file are, or what the filesystem structure looks
> like? Let me hide all that computery stuff away from your so you don't
> have to even /touch/ it. Let's just pretend that I'm in charge of your
> PC, not you..."
>
> You can fight it, and work around it. But you can't turn it off, sadly...

I guess I'm bone-headed. I'm a user. I don't try anything fancy with the
interface. But I always seem to quickly run into something the UI guys didn't
expect me to.

>
> > [1] This mirrors my limited experience with IDEs vs. text editors: the IDE can
> > do a lot of things, but the text editor component is never as nice ime as a
> > dedicated text editor.
>
> IME, a good IDE has a text editor roughly comparable to a good
> standalone text editor.

I remember now: you don't care for featureful text editors. They've been working
on Vim for decades now. It can do a lot of things.

>
> > Similarly, Windows Explorer, Internet Explorer, and
> > Explorer shell aren't nearly as nice as their FOSS counterparts.
>
> I don't like Internet Explorer at all. I use Firefox instead. (I tried
> Chrome, but didn't like it.)
>
> However, I prefer Windows Explorer to any FOSS alternative I've seen.

Ignore the FOSS. I don't know what is and isn't FOSS. I was just too lazy to
type 'Open Source'. I meant Firefox, KDE, etc.

 -Shay

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