[arch-general] We have lost the desktop war. The reason? Windows 7.

[Norbert Zeh]

I just had a look at the Windows 7 features and didn't see anything that
suggests the Linux world has lost the UI war.  It is probably true that
the eye candy looks more polished on OS X/Vista/7 than on anything the
Linux world has to offer.  (In fact, this is what lured me into the Mac
world for a while.)  That also shouldn't be surprising because this is
how commercial OS producers lure the gullible to buy their product.  For
example, it seems cool that I can wiggle a window in Windows 7 to hide
all the others or that I can drag a window to the edge to make it use up
half the screen.  But the reality of efficient computer use looks
different.  I can't see a good use for the first feature in every-day
use, and if I want windows side by side, chances are I don't want an
even split and I want more than two windows tiled on my screen.  What
I'm looking for in my desktop environment isn't eye candy but
efficiency.  Above all, this means that I want to be able to customize
my desktop for a workflow that suits me.  In more concrete terms, the
three major things I appreciate in my linux desktop and which Windows
cannot give me are:

* Tiling window management and customized keyboard shortcuts for pretty
  much everything I can dream of.  I don't want to touch the mouse
  unless I deal with a graphics program.

* Command line for almost everything.  Nobody can convince me that cp
  fileA dirB/dirC/dirD is less efficient than opening dirB/dirC/dirD in
  an explorer window and dragging fileA there.

* Scripting for all the recurring tasks.  This is extremely easy using
  shell scripts/perl/ruby/python/...  I could try that under Windows,
  too, but the DOS command prompt simply feels like something that was
  never really meant to be used.

I realize that this will not convince the computer-illiterate average
user to prefer linux over windows, but I sure am glad that Linux gives
me the choice to use an eye-candy-free desktop that works the way I
think a computer should work, on modest hardware.

I know that this is easy to be interpreted as another windows-vs-linux
flame, and I admit that I am certainly very biased on this subject.
However, it simply irks me that almost every time Apple/Microsoft come
out with the newest eye candy, we weep that we don't have it instead of
focusing on the advantages our linux boxes give us.

Cheers,
Norbert