From: Austin Ziegler Date: 2005-04-01T02:22:54+09:00 Subject: Re: Respect and Disappointment [OT] On Mar 31, 2005 12:11 PM, Ben Giddings wrote: > Austin Ziegler wrote: >> My criteria limited me to Wintel machines. I won't use Linux -- >> it's not ready for primetime. I despise Gnome and dislike KDE. >> There is a striking inconsistency in the usability of Linux GUI >> applications, mostly toward the "how can you use this stinking >> pile of..." sort of comment. (Interestingly, with my most recent >> system recovery, I was looking at doing a dual-boot to the >> machine I'm talking about; no Linux out there supported my >> hardware properly. I would have been looking at a 70% >> functionality limit.) > Which hardware is it that you're trying to support? The tablet PC? > If so, there's no surprise there, that's the type of hardware > that's least likely to be well supported under Linux, since it's > new and very windowsey. That's part of it, and why I went with a single-boot Tablet PC with Windows XP Tablet last time I needed to reinstall (on a larger hard drive). But Linux support of laptops is questionable in general (I haven't had any luck with hibernation or even suspend) and is as questionable on some USB/USB2 devices. I understand that most of this is the problem of manufacturers, but it's also a problem of the licence behind Linux and the hard-line that some kernel developers take wrt "non-free" code. > Sure, Linux users are only about 1% of the market, but they get > much less than 1% of the effort. I'd be surprised if Linux users are even that much of the market for new and hot hardware. > In any case, Linux UIs are getting better all the time. KDE 3.4 is > very good, and very consistent -- but only if you stick to KDE > applications. It's still a bit annoying for me, since I use > Thunderbird, Firefox and Emacs. I can get Thunderbird and Firefox > to use the same widgets as the other KDE apps with the help of > gtk-qt-engine, but some things like printing and clipboard usage, > etc. are still inconsistent. Yeah, well, KDE is my preferred GUI when I have to use Linux. Gnome is a beast and won't ever be anything but. > OTOH, I get the commandline. Having a native ZSH, a simple to use > package manager, and everything for free means that there's no > reason for me to use Windows at all anymore. Windows just didn't > work the way I needed, Linux does. I should say *nix does, because > I also have an iBook which I love. *shrug* That's where we differ. I use a Norton Commander clone (Total Commander) in place of the command-line most of the time. I use the command-line in Windows to great effect for many things, and I can drop into Cygwin if I need to. > The other factor for me is cost. I have thousands of packages on > my system, all of which are free. My work PC cost nothing more > than the components, but every Windows PC at work also requires an > OS ($), Office ($), an IDE ($), a virus scanner ($), and so on. My > PC is so hassle and cost-free for IT that they want to give me > hardware instead. The OS is included with the cost of my specialty hardware, but I'll grant you the OS cost. I haven't installed MS Office on my tablet PC this time around (I will, eventually, since I have the licence for it), but I have installed OpenOffice. I can use the free Windows development tools, but most of my development on that machine is in Ruby -- I don't need an IDE. The virus scanner that I use is free. The only thing that I use in development that I paid for is Total Commander -- and it's worth every penny. I do have other software which I've bought that makes it very hard to move from Windows, and it's really good software. But it's not my development or word processing software. -austin -- Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca