[sclug] Choice of window managers

[Will Dickson]

Neil Haughton wrote:
> 
> I agree  - best concentrate on the weaknesses of Windows - viruses, 
> trojans, BSOD (though not so much these days), massive memory greed, if 
> you want to win converts.

FWIW, what finally decided me to swap wasn't really any of the above:

- viruses and trojans: not a problem - I used a combination of a real 
email client, a real firewall and some simple but effective layer 8 
code. Only ever failed once (the layer 8 code decided to press "enter" 
rather than "delete" - oops), the clean-up was effective and the damage 
limited to giving aforesaid layer 8 code a nasty scare.

- BSOD's: my machine and Windows 2000 were rather stable; reboot once a 
week and it stayed happy, which isn't a big deal for a workstation.

- massive memory greed: memory's cheap and I had a gig of the stuff.
'Doze 2000 is not _qualitatively_ more bloated than KDE (all bets are 
off on XP, mind you). [ObAntiReligiousWar: I use KDE, and like it. I 
don't know how GNOME stacks up, and, to be honest, I don't especially 
care. Those that do, and do, HAND.]

No, what did it for me was:

- constantly being patronised by the GUI. "Hi there, I'm 
Clippy^WWindows. The file 'experimentIveJustWrittenWhichDoesntWork.exe' 
is a program. If you delete this program, [FUD FUD FUD]. Are you sure 
you want me to do what you just fscking well told me to instead of what 
I think you should have [you incompetent moron who ought to be drooling 
at a TV instead]?" That, and its habit of concealing important 
information from you, and / or translating it (lossily) into luserspeak, 
so that you have to translate it back into real terminology before you 
can work out what it's saying. My thankfully brief exposure to XP 
indicates that both of these problems are now a lot worse. (Please 
excuse the venting, my exposure to XP was quite recent. Ugh!)

- the equally constant feeling of low-grade paranoia, caused by knowing 
that the OS vendor is basically an enemy, and the product infrastructure 
design of low quality. If I install this minor driver patch, will my 
system come back up again when I reboot, or will I be looking at a 3-day 
unscheduled outage while I reinstall and reconfigure everything? Will 
the next service pack send all my personal details back to Redmond? Is 
there something really evil and invasive buried in the enormous EULA for 
this security patch I need? Am I going to be coerced into upgrading to a 
new version I don't want, which is worse than this, which will cost me a 
lot of money, and which will be loaded to the gunwales with invasive DRM 
which will try to take my machine away from me?

The first point might not apply to the average user, but I'd say the 
second ought to - the DRM aspect in particular. The point at which I 
thought I might have to "upgrade" from 2000 to XP was the point at which 
I actually decided to upgrade to Linux instead.

Just my ?0.02,

Will.