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What linux needs on the desktop is...

... oh, screw it, why not say what it does­n't need? It's bet­ter for my blood pres­sure.

  • It does­n't need Be refugees whin­ing about how BeOS was so awe­­some and Lin­ux desk­­tops suck. You know what, guys? If BeOS was so cool, and Lin­ux sucks so much, how come BeOS is dead? Now put a sock in it and go prac­tice your OS­­-necrophil­i­a.

  • It does­n't need win­­dows users say­ing "it's not like win­­dows, it suck­­s". If Lin­ux was just like win­­dows, you would say that there is no rea­­son to switch, so put a sock in it, be­­cause you can't have it both ways.

  • It does­n't need Mac users say­ing how there's no point work­ing on it be­­cause OSX is al­ready as good a unix desk­­top as there's gonna be, so why both­­er?. Put a (de­sign­er) sock on it, be­­cause in or­der to use OSX you have to buy an un­­god­­ly ex­pen­­sive (ex­­cept the 12" ibook, that's kin­­da cheap and cute) com­put­er that pro­­vides on­­ly ad­e­quate per­­for­­mance, and I am a cheap bas­­tard.

  • It does­n't need old unix gu­rus ex­­plain­ing how there's no need to work on KDE or GNOME be­­cause Win­­dow Mak­er is lighter, and all that's need­ed is a way to keep their xterms sort­ed. Put a sock in it, be­­cause xterm suck­­s, Win­­dow Mak­er is fea­­ture­­less, and you can't do any­thing use­­ful for a reg­u­lar us­er with just xterms and Win­­dow Mak­er, so you are com­­par­ing ap­­ples to ap­­ple or­chard­s.

Most of al­l, it does­n't need any "What lin­ux needs on the desk­top" ed­i­to­ri­al­s.

On oth­er news, I will be speak­ing about Lin­ux on the desk­top at the UADE in Buenos Aires, Ar­genti­na, this sat­ur­day, and about PyQt/PyKDE pro­gram­ming this fri­day.

More in­for­ma­tion at the CafeL­UG site. If you read it here and men­tion my blog, I will pay you a beer (of­fers lim­it­ed to a max­i­mum stock of three beer­s).

superstoned / 2006-04-03 14:31:

you're SOOOOO right... :D

Keith Gaughan / 2006-04-03 14:32:

But WindowMaker rocks! Expecially with ROX Filer.



But then again, I'm a RISC OS necrophiliac. ;-)



K.

an anonymous coward / 2006-04-03 14:32:

Heh, I take it you've been reading Eugenia's latest self righteous article.

Roberto Alsina / 2006-04-03 14:33:

Never thought I was so obvious :-)

Boudewijn Rempt / 2006-04-03 14:34:

I don't know why I even keep osnews.com in my morning quiver of websites to check... But, gosh, Roberto, you're absolutely right. Even about Windowmaker, although that does have a function. KDE makes it so easy to multitask that I sometimes want an environment where I can do nothing easily but write with Emacs. That's WindowMaker for me :-).

elkrammer / 2006-04-03 14:34:

I agree in all of the above points ;-)

I specially liked the last point, about old unix gurus saying Window Maker rules and KDE sucks. (What is GNOME? Hehe) Linux doesn't need them.

Roberto Alsina / 2006-04-03 14:35:

Boudewijn: I had this customer who had me set up his computer. He intends to use Linux and free software for his business management (he's trying kumula... I think it's too green, but hey, it's PyQt, I can hack it ;-).



He's an old casual linux user. He used it circa 1996, and is a Jobs fan. He wanted Window Maker because he had read it was NeXT-like.



So, I experienced Window Maker for hours and hours.



Man, I love KDE more now :-P

Georg Bauer / 2006-04-03 14:36:

WindowMaker sucks. It has far too much features. aewm++ rules almost - almost no features and it's only configureable by hacking the source, just as god (if one existed) would have meant window managers and configuration to be. :-)



(okok, that's only on Linux at work - at home I am a designer sock wearing Mac OS X weany ;-) )

Roberto Alsina / 2006-04-03 14:40:

Georg, you are going to develop a split personality :-)


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