[Nottingham] Better than Windows? was: Response on awareness day

[Rob Andrews]

On 03-Nov-2005 09:54.31 (GMT), Mike Cardwell wrote:
 > WindowsXP has better hardware support,

'More' is the word you're looking for.

 > a bigger range of software, a better Office package,

Software, sure, there's more of it. The office package I'm fairly
dubious of - I see little use in Access these days, Word has become less
usable as versions increase, Excel is quite good and PowerPoint is quite
good.

 > can play more games

Because more have been written for it.

 > and has a slicker graphical interface.

I don't get it. Each new version of Windows is closely followed by a new
version of Office. The Office team decide they want to write a new
novelty widget set, so do and use it within their office apps. The
office GUI then falls out of consistency with the rest of the OS. As far
as third party GUIs are concerned, I see fewer and fewer well designed
ones, instead get overcluttered interfaces that look like they've been
designed by an eight year old. The file management frontend feels clunky
and the new themeing interface can't style all windows. Various GUI
features break down when the screensaver kicks in (transparency doesn't
recover after screensaver/terminal lock).

Maybe it's just me.

 > That's why I use WindowsXP on my desktop. I use Ubuntu on my 
 > laptop and Debian sarge on my colocated server for different reasons.

And you're entitled to run what you choose. But I don't get it either
when people say Linux isn't ready for the desktop. Sure, for the end
user, you might have to be a bit careful with what hardware you purchase
for your desktop machine in order to have everything working as
expected.

Fedora, or specifically Red Hat's Bluecurve GNOME Desktop and the
associated configuration utilities do a damned good job of implementing
a consistent, usable and reliable desktop interface. The configuration
tools take the arcana out of getting things configured. I'd say it's
mother-proof (if your mum can use it without asking questions, it's
easy to use).

But mostly, more software and drivers for Windows doesn't mean Linux isn't
ready for the desktop. 

r.